The date was 30 November 1949. The victims were Beryl Evans and her infant daughter, Geraldine. The murderer was the husband, 25-year-old Timothy John Evans.
It was a tragic story that shocked some of the residents of Notting Hill in London, while others were only mildly surprised considering the turbulent history of arguments that had reverberated regularly up and down the street.
Married in January 1947 after meeting on a blind date, Timothy and Beryl entered into wedded bliss with both eyes wide shut and full of hope as most newlyweds are. Reality took a big bite out of their dreams and injected a healthy dose of reality when the following year Beryl became pregnant.
The first major change was the move out of the home of Timothy’s parents and getting their own place, a top floor flat on Rillington Place, just a two-minute walk away in Notting Hill. And with the new home came new expenses.
Their daughter, Geraldine, was born on 10 October 1948 into a household that was slowly getting overwhelmed under a mountain of bills, and her emergence further exacerbated the strain on the young married couple.
Timothy, already a heavy drinker, turned more towards the bottle, while Beryl turned inwards and the household began to suffer. The arguments became louder, longer, and quickly turned physical.
Things got even worse when Beryl announced the following year that she was pregnant with their second child. Timothy Evans hit the roof and more quarrels followed about the dire situation they were in financially. In the end, Beryl capitulated and agreed to have an abortion.
It was at this stage that things took a turn for the worse. Much worse.
On 30 November 1949 a few weeks later, Timothy Evans walked into the local police station and confessed to killing his wife.
He revealed that he had given her something orally to abort the fetus, a drink that had resulted in her death. Under questioning he admitted to disposing of her body in a sewer drain, yet when the police went to investigate the area, not only did it take three of them to pry the heavy manhole cover free, but inside there was no body.
Upon further interrogation, caught in the first of many lies, Evans changed his story, pointing the finger at his downstairs neighbor, John Christie. Evans explained that Christie was the one who had botched the illegal abortion and that he was actually the one who had disposed of his wife’s remains.
Unconvinced, the police nevertheless returned to Rillington Place and examined the garden area more thoroughly, but it wasn’t until the second visit that they found the body of Beryl Evans, wrapped in a tablecloth. The cause of death was strangulation.
Beside her was the body of their young daughter, Geraldine, also strangled to death.
Confronted with this discovery, Timothy Evans broke down and confessed to what he had done.
Armed with his new evidence, and the remains of his victims, there was never any doubt of his guilt, and at his trial on 11 January 1950, Timothy Evans was found guilty of murder.
His defense team tried, unsuccessfully, to claim that John Christie, a highly respected special constable, was the true perpetrator, but the jury was having none of it. Unanimously, they handed down the maximum sentence for this heinous crime, which in this case was the death penalty.
On 9 March 1950, Timothy Evans was executed by hanging for the murder of his wife and his infant daughter.
This is where the tragic tale would normally end. Except for one simple fact. Timothy Evans was innocent.
What the police had missed when examining the garden area at Rillington Place, were the skeletal remains of two undiscovered bodies, buried there by the serial killer known as John Christie.
This revelation only came to light purely by chance 3 years after the execution of Timothy Evans. An upstairs tenant, Beresford Brown, was allowed access by the landlord to Christie’s now vacant apartment to use the kitchen.
Whilst there, preparing to cook a meal, he uncovered the grisly remains. It was unknown what attracted him to the wall, but that suspicion that something was off led him to discover the papered-over pantry and the three bodies hidden within.
Aghast, he immediately alerted the authorities. Upon arrival, the police catalogued the corpses and conducted a further search of the premises to collect more evidence and to ensure nothing was overlooked. They were not expecting to unearth another two bodies in the small garden at the back of the house.
Among these victims was Christie’s wife, Ethel, whose body was found underneath the floorboards of the front room.
All of them had died from strangulation.
Arrested on 31 March 1953, John Christie confessed to murdering all of the women, as well as killing Beryl and Geraldine Evans.
Amazingly, four of the murders had occurred within the last three years, allowed to happen due to the mishandling of the case against Timothy Evans and the zeal of the police to get a conviction. At that time, contradictory clues were overlooked, eyewitness testimonies were ignored, and an innocent man paid the ultimate price with his life.
This time the right murderer was caught, the irrefutable evidence enough to sentence John Christie to the death sentence when the case was brought to trial.
The date was 15 July 1953 when John Christie, the serial killer of Rillington Place, was executed by the very same hangman who had executed Timothy Evans three years previously.