The police pulled back the wallpaper in the small kitchen at 10 Rillington Place, and the smell hit them immediately. Behind the wall, stuffed into a tiny alcove, were three bodies wrapped in blankets. All women. All murdered.
The tenant who’d made the discovery couldn’t stop shaking. He’d only been trying to install brackets for a wireless set when he found them. Now police were tearing apart the entire house, and what they found in the back garden made everything worse: more bones, more bodies, more victims.
The man who’d lived in this ground-floor flat was gone. He’d moved out just days earlier, abandoning his crime scene like he was simply changing addresses. But police knew exactly who they were looking for.
His name was John Christie, and he’d already gotten away with murder once before—by sending an innocent man to the gallows in his place.
The Wrongful Execution of Timothy Evans
Let’s start with the victim no one talks about enough: Timothy Evans.
Timothy was 25 years old when he walked to the gallows at Pentonville Prison on March 9, 1950. He was convicted of murdering his wife, Beryl, and their infant daughter, Geraldine. The evidence seemed straightforward—he’d confessed. Multiple times, actually.
But Timothy Evans didn’t kill anyone.
He was a disabled man with an IQ between 60 and 70, barely literate, and easily manipulated. When police interrogated him, they kept him awake all night, fed him details of the crime, and suggested answers until he gave them what they wanted. He later said he feared violence if he didn’t confess. He recanted multiple times, insisting someone else had killed his family.
That someone else was his downstairs neighbor and supposed friend: John Christie.
Timothy told investigators that Christie had offered to perform an illegal abortion on Beryl (abortion was illegal in 1950s England). He said Christie told him the procedure had gone wrong and Beryl died. Christie promised to dispose of the body and arrange for Geraldine to be cared for by a loving couple. Timothy believed him and fled to Wales.
When police found both bodies strangled in the wash house, Timothy—confused, grieving, and intellectually disabled—confessed to crimes he didn’t commit.
At trial, it was Christie’s word against Timothy’s. And Christie had one major advantage: he was a former police constable. Despite having a criminal record that included violent assault with a cricket bat and multiple thefts, Christie had somehow been allowed to join the War Reserve Police. His testimony was believed. Timothy’s pleas were dismissed.
The trial lasted three days. The jury deliberated for 40 minutes. Timothy Evans was sentenced to death.
Three months later, he was hanged for murders he didn’t commit.
The Making of a Monster
John Reginald Halliday Christie was born on April 8, 1899, in Yorkshire, England. From the beginning, something was wrong.
His father was cruel and unfeeling, punishing his children over the smallest things. His mother coddled him while his sisters bullied him relentlessly. When his grandfather died in the house, young Christie didn’t feel sadness—he felt satisfaction. The power of seeing someone he feared reduced to a corpse thrilled him.
At age 10, he saw one of his sisters’ bare legs and became sexually aroused. This clash between attraction and hatred toward his sisters created a toxic foundation. Author Ludovic Kennedy wrote that Christie “both loved and hated them because they aroused his masculinity and then stifled it.”
By adolescence, Christie suffered from chronic impotence. His peers mocked him with the nicknames “Reggie No Dick” and “Can’t Do It Christie.” He could only perform sexually with prostitutes, and even then, rarely. This humiliation, combined with childhood trauma, created a deep, violent hatred of women that would define his entire life.
Christie enlisted in the British Army in 1916 and was caught in a mustard gas attack in France during World War I. He claimed it left him blind and unable to speak, though military records show no evidence of blindness. His inability to talk was likely psychological—PTSD manifesting as physical symptoms.
In 1920, he married Ethel Simpson. The marriage was troubled from the start. When Ethel suffered a miscarriage, Christie’s already fragile mental state deteriorated further. He began a pattern of petty crime that would follow him for years.
A Criminal Hiding in Plain Sight
Between 1921 and 1933, Christie was arrested multiple times:
- 1921: Stealing postal orders while working as a postman (3 months in prison)
- 1923: Obtaining money under pretenses (1 year probation)
- 1924: Two larceny convictions (3 and 6 months)
- 1929: Assault with murderous intent after beating a woman named Maud Cole with a cricket bat (6 months hard labor)
- 1933: Auto theft (3 months)
That 1929 conviction is especially disturbing. Christie took a cricket bat to his girlfriend’s head in an attempted murder. He served only six months. This should have been his last crime as a free man, but the justice system failed spectacularly.
After his final release, Christie decided to “turn his life around.” He reconciled with Ethel in 1934, and she took him back—a decision that would eventually cost her life. They moved into 10 Rillington Place, a run-down flat in Notting Hill, London.
When World War II began, Christie applied to join the War Reserve Police. Incredibly, the police never checked his criminal background. The man who’d been convicted of attempted murder with a cricket bat was handed a badge and told to keep the peace.
This gave Christie something he desperately craved: authority, respect, and access to vulnerable people.
The Murders Begin
Christie’s first confirmed murder happened on August 23, 1943. Her name was Ruth Fuerst, a 21-year-old Austrian munitions worker who occasionally worked as a prostitute. Christie invited her back to his flat while Ethel was visiting relatives.
After they had sex, he strangled her with a length of rope. He initially hid her body under the floorboards in his living room, then later moved it to the back garden. Police would eventually find her thigh bone being used as a fence post support.
One year later, Christie killed again. Muriel Eady, 31, worked with him at a radio factory. When she developed bronchitis and a terrible cough, Christie saw an opportunity. He invited her over and told her he’d invented a special inhalant that would cure her breathing problems.
She trusted him. She inhaled from a jar with a tube inserted in the top. What Muriel didn’t see was that Christie had connected a second tube from the jar to the gas line. As she breathed in poisonous gas, she lost consciousness.
He raped her while she was unconscious, then strangled her and buried her body in the garden next to Ruth.
This became Christie’s signature method: gas them, rape them while unconscious, strangle them, and hide the bodies. It was calculated, methodical, and utterly depraved.
Framing His Neighbor
By 1949, Timothy and Beryl Evans had moved into the top-floor flat at 10 Rillington Place with their baby daughter, Geraldine. Their marriage was struggling—they fought constantly, money was tight, and their tiny apartment felt smaller every day.
When Beryl became pregnant again, she panicked. They couldn’t afford another child. Abortion was illegal, but Timothy was desperate to help his wife. He confided in his friendly downstairs neighbor, John Christie.
Christie offered to perform the abortion himself. Timothy, intellectually disabled and trusting, agreed.
On November 8, 1949, Timothy returned home to find Beryl and Geraldine gone. Christie told him the abortion had gone wrong and Beryl had died. He promised to dispose of the body and arrange for a couple to adopt Geraldine. Christie told Timothy to leave town until everything “died down.”
Timothy believed him and fled to Wales.
But Christie hadn’t arranged for Geraldine to be adopted. He’d strangled her, too. She was barely a year old.
When Timothy went to the police weeks later—confused, guilt-ridden, and manipulated into multiple conflicting confessions—officers searched 10 Rillington Place. They found both bodies wrapped in a tablecloth in the wash house. Both had been strangled.
During the search, police literally walked over the garden where Christie had buried Ruth and Muriel. One officer even noticed a human thigh bone supporting the fence, but didn’t investigate further. Christie’s dog had dug up Muriel’s skull shortly after police left, and Christie simply threw it into a nearby bombed-out building.
At Timothy’s trial, Christie played the role of concerned neighbor and upstanding citizen perfectly. He was a former police constable, after all. The jury believed him over Timothy’s frantic claims of innocence.
Timothy Evans was hanged for the murders Christie committed.
The Final Victims
With Timothy dead and his crimes successfully pinned on someone else, Christie felt invincible. But his killing wasn’t finished.
On December 14, 1952, Christie strangled his wife Ethel in bed. She was 54 years old. She’d given him a second chance after years of arrests and abuse, and he repaid her by murdering her and selling her wedding ring.
Over the next three months, Christie killed three more women:
Rita Nelson (25, six months pregnant) — Murdered January 1953 Kathleen Maloney (26, prostitute) — Murdered February 1953
Hectorina MacLennan (26) — Murdered March 6, 1953
All three were lured to his flat, gassed with a rubber tube connected to the kitchen gas line, raped while unconscious, and strangled. By now, the garden was full, and the shed had been searched by police years earlier, so Christie stuffed these final three bodies into a small alcove behind his kitchen wall and covered it with wallpaper.
Then he moved out.
Read more: Pedro Rodrigues Filho: The “Vigilante” Who Killed Over 100 People
The Discovery and Capture
On March 20, 1953, Christie left 10 Rillington Place. He’d sold the flat without the landlord’s permission, and when the landlord discovered a new couple living there, he evicted them.
The tenant in the upstairs flat—the apartment Timothy Evans once lived in—was then allowed to use Christie’s kitchen. On March 24, 1953, Beresford Brown decided to install brackets for a wireless radio set. He pulled back the wallpaper to find the wall studs.
He found three decomposing bodies instead.
Police tore apart the house. They dug up the garden and found Ruth and Muriel’s skeletal remains. Christie’s crime scene was finally exposed, but Christie himself was gone. For days, he wandered London, sleeping on the streets, visiting cafes and cinemas like he was on holiday rather than on the run from murder charges.
On March 31, 1953, Police Constable Thomas Ledger stopped a suspicious man on the embankment near Putney Bridge. The man refused to give his name.
It was John Christie. He was arrested that same day.
Justice—Too Late for Timothy
Under interrogation, Christie confessed to murdering Kathleen, Rita, Hectorina, and his wife Ethel. When police found Ruth and Muriel in the garden, he confessed to those murders as well. Eventually, he admitted to killing Beryl Evans, too.
But he always denied killing baby Geraldine, though he sometimes hinted he might have been responsible. Many believe he refused to fully confess to murdering a child to avoid enraging the jury or becoming a target for other prisoners.
Christie’s trial began on June 22, 1953, in the same courtroom where Timothy Evans had been convicted three years earlier. He pleaded insanity. His defense team called him “mad as a March hare.”
The prosecution wasn’t buying it. Dr. Matheson, who evaluated Christie at Brixton Prison, testified that Christie had a hysterical personality but was not insane. He knew exactly what he was doing.
The jury deliberated for 90 minutes and found him guilty. Christie was sentenced to death.
On July 15, 1953, at 9:00 a.m., John Christie was led to the gallows—the same room where Timothy Evans had died. As the noose was fixed around his neck and a hood was placed over his head, Christie complained that his nose itched.
Albert Pierrepoint, the executioner, replied: “It won’t bother you much longer.”
The trap door opened. Christie’s neck snapped. He was 54 years old.
The Victims We Remember
John Christie murdered at least eight people:
- Ruth Fuerst (21)
- Muriel Eady (31)
- Beryl Evans (25)
- Geraldine Evans (14 months old)
- Ethel Christie (54)
- Rita Nelson (25)
- Kathleen Maloney (26)
- Hectorina MacLennan (26)
But there’s a ninth victim whose name belongs on this list: Timothy Evans.
Timothy died for crimes he didn’t commit because police railroaded him into a confession. After all, Christie’s word was trusted over his because the justice system failed catastrophically. He spent his final moments knowing he was innocent, crying out for help that never came.
In 1966—16 years after his execution—Timothy Evans was officially pardoned. In 2004, the British government acknowledged his execution was wrongful and constituted a miscarriage of justice.
It was far too late.
How This Changed British Justice
The case of John Christie and Timothy Evans had massive implications for British criminal justice. It became one of the strongest arguments against the death penalty in the UK, contributing to its abolition in 1965 (the last execution was in 1964).
The case exposed several critical flaws:
- Coerced confessions: Timothy’s interrogation involved sleep deprivation, suggestions, and intimidation
- Insufficient corroboration: In England and Wales at the time, a confession alone could secure a conviction without supporting evidence
- Police bias: Christie’s status as a former constable gave him credibility he didn’t deserve
- Investigative failures: Police walked over a crime scene containing multiple bodies and missed obvious evidence
The Monster of Rillington Place has been adapted multiple times, including a 1971 film starring Richard Attenborough and a 2016 BBC miniseries with Tim Roth. These adaptations keep the story alive—not to glorify Christie, but to remember the victims and the catastrophic failure of justice.
The Question That Haunts This Case
How many guilty people should go free to prevent one innocent person from being executed?
Legal philosopher William Blackstone argued it’s better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer. The case of Timothy Evans proves why this principle matters. No justice system is perfect. Confessions can be coerced. Evidence can be misinterpreted. Juries can be wrong.
Christie was executed for his crimes, and few would argue that he didn’t deserve it. But Timothy Evans was also executed, and he was completely innocent. His intellectually disabled, trusting nature made him the perfect scapegoat for a psychopathic killer who knew exactly how to manipulate the system.
One wrongful execution is one too many.
