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The Notting Hill strangler

Reg Christie turned his London home into a cemetery
By David Cocksedge

TO LONDONERS, few addresses are as spine-chilling as 10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill, the venue where necrophile John Reginald Christie killed and interred his female victims. Worse still is the fact that another tenant was executed for one of the murders that Christie himself had committed.

John Reginald Halliday Christie, known as ‘Reg' was one of seven children born to a carpet designer from Halifax, Yorkshire and his attractive actress wife. Reg first saw the light of day on 8 April 1899 and grew into an insipid child who preferred to scamper around local cemeteries instead of playgrounds. He became a choir boy and later a scoutmaster, but he was never popular, because of his strange aloof manner. His mother perhaps over-protected him, and instilled in Reg an idea that he was somehow superior to most people around him. Later in life he claimed that, as an eight year old, the sight of his dead grandfather, waxy and impassive in his coffin, had a great effect on him.

As a teenager Christie fought in the trenches of France during the appalling carnage of World War 1, but his service came to an abrupt end in 1917 when a mustard shell exploded nearby, injuring his eyes and larynx. Aged 20, he was demobbed in 1919 and awarded a small disability pension. Back in Halifax , he courted and married Ethel Waddington, a local girl that he had known for years.

On the outside Christie appeared to be a perfectly respectable postal office worker with an air of authority and self-importance about him, but in 1926 he was convicted of fraud (stealing postal orders) and spent some time in jail for the felony. His wife was appalled when she discovered that her husband also consorted with prostitutes.

After his prison term, he moved from Halifax to London where he continued his life of petty crime and was convicted for violence against a sex worker. Pondering his predicament in a prison cell, Christie wrote to his wife asking for reconciliation. She agreed, and they moved to number 10 Rillington Place , Notting Hill in 1938. It was a rundown house in a cul-de-sac with a tiny garden and wash-house which contained the communal lavatory. He and Ethel rented the ground floor flat. Somehow the shabby slum surroundings perfectly mirrored the poverty of Christie's spirit.

Christie rarely spoke at length and had a chilling habit of moving about as silently as a cat. A neighbor said: “He was a very creepy man. He would suddenly be next to you, moving there without a sound. Or you would look around and see him behind you, standing quietly, just looking at you, and you wondered how long he had been there. Because of his war disability, he spoke very quietly, and he moved around like a ghost. He was tall and imposing but totally humorless. In the dozen or so years that I knew Reg Christie, I don't think I ever saw him smile or crack a joke.”

Astonishingly, Christie was accepted as a special constable in the War Reserve Police in 1939. In the jittery climate of pending war, no checks were made into his background; which would have revealed his criminal past. Of course Christie reveled in the position of uniformed authority: being an authorized petty tyrant was something at which he excelled. In August 1943, whilst Ethel was away visiting relatives in Sheffield , Reg brought 17-year-old Ruth Fuerst, an Austrian refugee and part-time prostitute, into his house. After sex, he partially gassed and then strangled her to death. His career as a serial killer had begun.

At first Christie hid the body under the floorboards. Then he dragged it into the toilet, concealing it in a wood pile as he dug a grave in the back garden, in full view of his neighbors. Under cover of darkness, he then buried Ruth's body, which lay undiscovered for a decade.

In May 1944, Christie killed again. He enticed attractive Muriel Eady into his home on the grounds that he had medical training (untrue) and could examine her and determine if she could undergo an abortion. When she slipped into unconsciousness after inhaling coal-gas fumes, he raped and then strangled her with one of her stockings. In his confession, Christie wrote, “I gazed down at her body and felt a quiet, peaceful thrill. I had no regrets.” Muriel's body was buried in the patch of garden beside Ruth Fuerst.

Welsh lorry driver Timothy Evans (24), his wife Beryl and their baby Geraldine moved into the top flat at the end of 1948. The young couple were both awed by Christie's authoritarian manner, and never doubted him when he told them he had medical training during the war. The couple had a tempestuous relationship, however, and often had blazing rows in the flat that disturbed the neighbors. When Beryl found herself pregnant with an unwanted child Christie offered his services as a ‘medical expert' in such matters. If required, he was ‘qualified' to perform an abortion, he said. Beryl submitted to his care and died under his hands later that day. She was gassed and then strangled just as his other victims had been.

When Evans returned from work later, Christie gave him the sad news: Beryl had died whilst “undergoing a medical operation”. As Evans had agreed to the abortion, both he and Christie were facing murder charges, he said. If Evans was to move away from London immediately and then confess to Beryl's murder days later, Christie would stow Beryl's body in a drain outside the house, and see that little Geraldine was put into foster care. Amazingly, Evans agreed to this fantastic proposal, which was clearly designed to save only Christie's hide.

On 30 November 1949 , the illiterate Evans walked into a police station in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales , and confessed to having murdered his wife. Metropolitan police searched around 10 Rillington Place and failed to find the body of Beryl Evans in a storm drain outside the house where Evans said he had hidden it. The drain cover could not be lifted by one man alone, but Evans could not have known that. He was simply repeating what Christie had told him to say.

Investigators also failed to uncover the bodies buried in the garden. Finally, after several visits, they found Beryl's body under logs in the washroom alongside that of the baby Geraldine, just 14 months old at the time of her death.

On hearing that his daughter was dead, Evans looked shocked and then dramatically changed his story. He was not the killer, he claimed, but his neighbor Reg Christie was. “Christie done it!” he shouted.

Though Tim Evans was not bright, he was also not guilty. It was obvious that Christie had also killed the baby simply because she was in the way. He then threw all the blame on the dim-witted Evans during the trial that followed in January 1950.

The dapper Reg Christie cut a much finer figure in the witness box than Evans ever could as he sat in the dock reserved for the accused. Christie's spell of duty as a special constable during the war cast him as a reliable, honest man. His criminal past was not revealed to the jury as Evans' defense team did not discover it. Reg Christie's testimony convinced both judge and jury that he was an innocent bystander and his damning words sealed Evans' miserable fate. The luckless Welshman was convicted of murdering his baby daughter and sentenced to the gallows. He was executed, still protesting his innocence, in Pentonville Prison on 9 March 1950 .

A true sociopath, Christie was not plagued by guilt for his actions, but did suffer a variety of minor aliments including headaches, backache and amnesia for which he consulted a doctor. Then sometime in 1952 he strangled his wife as she slept at night. This was no thrill-seeking murder, however. Just like baby Geraldine, Ethel was in the way. Reg hid her body under the floorboards and told her friends that they were now separated and that she had returned to Yorkshire . Now jobless, he had to sell almost every stick of furniture to raise enough cash for the rent and his addiction to sex with prostitutes.

He met Kathleen Maloney (26) in a nearby public house in January 1953 and took her home. She was gassed, strangled, abused after death and her body stowed behind a kitchen cupboard. Just six days later he also murdered 25-year-old Rita Nelson and stowed her body under the floorboards.

Christie claimed his last victim, Hectorina MacLennan (26) a month later. Her body was placed behind a wallpapered alcove. When her boyfriend called, searching for the missing woman, Christie denied all knowledge of her. He packed a bag, took his mongrel dog to the vet to be destroyed, then locked his front door and walked away. He had turned his home into a mortuary in the 15 years that he had been resident there, and now he had finally reached endgame.

It was not until a new tenant moved in and noticed an unbearable stench pervading the house that Reg Christie was finally unmasked as a mass killer. Trying to locate the reason for the horrible smell, the unlucky fellow poked about in the newly wallpapered alcove and exposed the decaying legs of Christie's final victim. His frantic call alerted police who swiftly unearthed all the bodies buried in and around 10 Rillington Place. In the yard they found a tobacco tin containing four sets of pubic hair.

Reg Christie, a prime prosecution witness in the Evans murder case, now became the subject of one of biggest manhunts ever launched by London 's Metropolitan Police Force. Homeless and alone, he was arrested on 31 March 1953 after being recognized by a policeman as he stared down at the flowing tide on Putney Bridge over the river Thames . He had been living rough in south London , waiting to be caught.

Despite a physical and mental breakdown, Christie seemed composed as he was interviewed in depth by homicide detectives. The killings were all accidental, he claimed, caused by the victims themselves as they struggled. He described the resulting deaths as “those regrettable happenings,” as he attempted to help the women abort their unwanted babies. The policemen were amazed and appalled. There seemed to be no end to his hypocrisy and denial of guilt.

John Reginald Halliday Christie stood trial at London 's Old Bailey on 22 June, accused of four murders. He pleaded insanity. The presiding judge described the case as “a horrifying one.” The jury did not believe Christie's defense plea and took just an hour and twenty minutes to find him guilty. He was hanged in Pentonville Prison on 15 July 1953 . During his drab lifespan of 54 years and 97 days, he had prematurely ended the lives of eight females, one of them an infant. And his perjured evidence had sent an innocent man to the gallows.

Yet on the eve of his execution, a government tribunal failed to find a miscarriage of justice in the case of Timothy John Evans. John Scott Henderson, QC, decided that Christie had confessed to the murder of Beryl Evans only to help his own case, to add weight to his plea of insanity. Several Labour members of Parliament and the Howard League for Penal Reform were appalled at this decision and refused to accept the findings, which seemed rather convenient for the police investigation.

Public disquiet about the Evans case rumbled on, fanned by such notable writers as Ludovic Kennedy whose book, ‘ Ten Rillington Place ' was the basis for a powerful 1971 movie starring Richard Attenborough as Reg Christie and John Hurt as Timothy Evans. In 1966 an inquiry under Mr Justice Brabin ruled: “It is more probable than not that Evans killed Beryl Evans and it is more probable than not that Evans did not kill his daughter Geraldine.” This was obvious: Geraldine was still alive on the day Evans went away to Wales and made his subsequent confession. As Evans had been charged with the murder of Geraldine, it followed that a miscarriage of justice had been committed.

Brabin's conclusion was not satisfactory as far as campaigners were concerned, but it was enough to get Evans a posthumous Royal Pardon. His body was exhumed from Pentonville Prison and re-buried in consecrated ground. It had taken British Justice sixteen long years to admit that it may have made a mistake.

(Research: ‘John Reginald Christie' by Nigel Blundell, Sunburst Books 1994; ‘Ten Rillington Place ' by Ludovic Kennedy; christie_crimelibary.com)

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