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John Reginald Halliday Christie

John Reginald Halliday Christie (April 8, 1898–July 15, 1953) was an English serial killer active in the 1940s and 1950s. He was arrested, tried and hanged for murder in 1953.

Prior to his arrest, he was involved in one of the most sensational murder trials in British legal history. His fellow tenant Timothy Evans was accused of the murders of his own wife and child, and subsequently convicted of, and executed for, the murder of the baby; many critics have speculated that Christie committed the murders and framed Evans for them. Others have suggested that there could have been two separate murderers living in the same shared house at the same time. While neither Christie's guilt nor Evans's innocence in these particular crimes have ever been conclusively proven, the case sparked massive public outrage, contributed to the suspension of the death penalty in Britain in 1965 (it was later abolished outright). The case remains controversial to this day. Evans was pardoned in 1966.


Early life

Born in April 1898 and raised in Halifax, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Christie was abused by his father and dominated by his mother and sisters. His one happy childhood memory, at the age of eight, was seeing his grandfather's corpse as it lay at rest in the family home; he felt powerful in front of the dead, helpless body of a man he had once feared. By the time he reached puberty, he already associated sex with death, dominance and violent aggression, rendering impotent unless in complete control. His first attempts at sex were failures, branding him as "Reggie-No-Dick" and "Can't-Do-It-Christie" throughout adolescence. He was a good student, particularly skilled at detailed work, and it was later found he had an IQ of 128. He was a hypochondriac and hysteric however, and often exaggerated or feigned illness as a ploy to get attention.

Christie enlisted as a signalman in World War I, during which he was hospitalised after a mustard gas attack, claiming to have been blinded. No record of his supposed blindness exists however; in Christie's biography, 10 Rillington Place, author Ludovic Kennedy wrote that Christie exaggerated his blindness, as well as the three-year period afterward in which he was mute.

Christie married 22-year-old Ethel Simpson from Sheffield, on May 1, 1920. It was a dysfunctional union, as Christie was impotent with her and frequented prostitutes. Friends and neighbours gossiped that she stayed with him out of fear. They separated after four years, when Christie moved to London and Ethel lived with relatives.

Over the next decade, Christie was convicted for many petty criminal offences. These included: three months' imprisonment for stealing postal orders while working as a postman in April 1921; nine months in Uxbridge jail in September 1924 for theft; six months' hard labour for assaulting a prostitute (with whom he was living) in May 1929; and three months' imprisonment in 1933 for stealing a car from a priest who befriended him. Christie and his wife reconciled after his release in late 1933. He did not reform, however; he continued to seek out prostitutes to relieve his increasingly violent sexual urges, which included necrophilia.

Christie and his wife Ethel lived in the ground floor flat of 10 Rillington Place , Ladbroke Grove, Notting Hill, London from 1938.

On the outbreak of World War II, he applied to join the police force and was accepted, despite his criminal record. Assigned to Harrow Road police station, he enjoyed the new respect his position gave him and was hard-working and efficient. He also began an intimate relationship with a woman working at the police station whose husband was a serving soldier. The relationship lasted until December 1943, when he resigned and got another job. The husband caught them in the act and beat Christie up.

Murders

First murders

Christie's first known victim was a mistress, Ruth Fuerst, whom he impulsively strangled during sex in August 1943. The following October, he murdered a colleague, Muriel Eady, by promising to cure her bronchitis with a "special mixture" he had concocted, using domestic gas which contained carbon monoxide that would render a person unconscious. Once Eady was knocked out, Christie choked her to death, and raped her post-mortem. It was a ritual Christie would continue for the rest of his life.

The murders of Beryl and Geraldine Evans

Christie buried both Fuerst and Eady in the building's communal garden. Timothy Evans and his wife, Beryl, moved into the top-floor flat of 10 Rillington Place in April 1948, a few months after their marriage. Six months later, Evans's wife gave birth to a daughter, whom they named Geraldine. In November 1949, Beryl Evans became pregnant again, but feared they could not afford another child. According to Christie's confession, he promised the couple he could abort the baby.

On November 8, he used his "special gas" to incapacitate Beryl, whom he strangled and raped. When Evans returned from work that night, Christie told him his wife had died during the procedure, and that they had to hide the body. Both of them could thus avoid being jailed (abortion was illegal in England at the time). Christie then convinced Evans, whom Kennedy describes as a gullible man with an IQ of 70, to stay with a relative in Wales and leave Geraldine in his care. Evans later said he returned to the flat several times to ask about Geraldine, but Christie had refused to let him see her, saying that it was too soon to take her back.

On November 30, Evans went to the police in Merthyr Tydfil and confessed to accidentally killing Beryl by giving her "abortion pills", and then disposing of her body in a sewer drain. He told the police that, after arranging for Geraldine to be looked after, he had gone to Wales. When police examined the drain, however, they found nothing. When re-questioned, Evans said that Christie had offered to provide an abortion for Beryl. Evans had returned home from work on November 8 to find Beryl dead. He said Christie then disposed of the body and made arrangements for some people to look after Geraldine while Evans laid low.

During a search of 10 Rillington Place on December 2, 1949, the police found the bodies of Beryl and Geraldine Evans hidden in the wash house in the back garden. Both had been strangled. When Evans was shown the clothing taken from the bodies of his wife and child, he was asked whether he was responsible for their deaths. He replied that he was. He now confessed to having strangled Beryl during an argument over debts on November 8, and strangling Geraldine two days later, after which he left for Wales.

This confession, along with other, contradictory statements Evans made during the police interrogation, is often cited as proof of his guilt, although Kennedy says his interrogation was brutal and manipulative. In any event, Evans recanted, and the case went to trial, which began on January 11, 1950. Christie was a key witness for the prosecution, and was instrumental in Evans being found guilty two days later. The jury took only 40 minutes to find him guilty. After a failed appeal on February 20, Evans was hanged on March 9, 1950.

Murders after the conviction of Timothy Evans

Christie was fired from his job from the Post Office Savings Bank, which he had held for the previous four years, due to the disclosure of the theft offence at Evans's trial. He sank into deep depression and lost 28 pounds. He remained unemployed until September 1950, when found a job with British Road Transport services. He stayed there until December 5, 1952, when he suddenly resigned. He claimed that he had found a new job in Sheffield, where he would be moving with his wife early in the new year. In reality he had found nothing and was not moving anywhere.

He murdered his wife on the morning of December 14, 1952. He kept up the pretence that she was alive, writing letters to her sister in Sheffield, altering the date from the 10th to the 15th on one letter, and claiming her arthritis prevented her from writing in person.

On January 6, 1953, Christie sold most of his furniture, including his bed, to a dealer. He also sold his wife's wedding ring and watch. He kept three chairs, a kitchen table and a mattress to sleep on, which he would use for the next 10 weeks. To support himself, along with the furniture money, he forged his wife's signature on an account she had and emptied it. He also claimed unemployment benefits.

Between January 19 and March 6, 1953, Christie murdered three more women — prostitutes he invited back to 10 Rillington Place. Nobody missed Kathleen Maloney from Southampton or Rita Nelson from Belfast, but Hectorina MacLennan was seen with Christie by her boyfriend, Alex Baker. Christie claimed that MacLennan had wandered off and kept up the pretence for two weeks, asking Baker how she was. Baker presumed she had gone back to Scotland.

Arrest, trial, and execution

Christie moved out of 10 Rillington Place on March 20, 1953. He defrauded a couple who took up residence by taking three months' rent money from them, although he was not authorised by the landlord of the property to do so. They were forced to move out within 24 hours. A few days later, a new tenant discovered the bodies hidden in a wallpapered-over coal cellar in the kitchen. Christie's flat was cold, and the bodies of the dead women had been preserved quite well. Pathological tests later revealed carbon monoxide in their bodies.

Christie booked a room at the King's Cross Rowton Houses under his real name and address. He asked for seven nights, but only stayed four, leaving when he heard about the widescale police hunt for him. A nationwide manhunt ensued on March 25. Three days later Christie telephoned the News of the World and arranged to meet a reporter in the dead of night. He offered an exclusive interview and said he would allow himself to be handed over to the police after consuming a meal that included a thick gammon rasher, two fried eggs, baked beans and chips. The meeting never took place because Christie was frightened by the appearance of two policemen as he waited to meet the reporter. He fled, thinking he had been set up.

By the end of March, Christie had run out of money. The search for him ended on the morning of March 31 when Christie was arrested at Putney Bridge after being challenged about his identity by a policeman. When asked what his name and address were, he said "John Waddington, 35 Westbourne Grove". He was then asked to remove his hat. The policeman recognized him and asked: "You are Christie, aren't you?" Christie confirmed that he was. When arrested, he had with him his his identity card, a ration book, his union card, an ambulance badge, and an old newspaper clipping about the remand of Timothy Evans, with details about those killings.

The next day he was charged with his wife's murder. On April 15, he was charged with murdering the three prostitutes.

While in prison, Christie confessed to murdering all the women found in the cellar, as well as Beryl Evans.

His trial began on June 22, 1953, in the same court where Evans had been tried. Christie was on trial solely for the murder of his wife. He pleaded insanity and claimed to have a poor memory of the events. The prosecution stated that although Christie may have been sexually perverted, that did not mean that he was insane. The jury agreed and after 22 minutes they found him guilty of murdering his wife.

Four days later, on June 29, Christie said he would not appeal against the death sentence. The Home Secretary, David Maxwell Fyfe, said on July 13 that he would not grant a reprieve because there were no physical or psychological grounds for doing so. Some Members of Parliament tried to postpone the execution so that Christie could talk more about the murders but Maxwell-Fyfe refused to grant this also. Christie was hanged on July 15, 1953, on the same gallows as Timothy Evans, by Albert Pierrepoint.

Controversy

While Christie neither confessed to nor was convicted of killing Geraldine Evans, public opinion widely considered him guilty, casting serious doubt on to the fairness of Evans's trial and execution. Christie had been a key witness against him; if he did kill Geraldine, then Evans was executed on the basis of perjury. Kennedy argued that it was unlikely that two strangler-murderers were living and killing in the same shared house at the same time, and cites the fact that Beryl's rape had been suppressed at trial; other critics cite Evans's confession, volatile temper, and motive of wanting to dispose of an unwanted pregnancy. To date, there exists no definitive evidence to prove or disprove either theory.


Popular Culture

In 1970, the movie 10 Rillington Place was released, based largely on Kennedy's book, starring Richard Attenborough as Christie and John Hurt as Evans. Parts of the film were shot in Rillington Place itself (renamed Ruston Close after Christie's execution), using a similar neighbouring gaslit property, shortly before the entire street was cleared for redevelopment.


It has always been mistakenly reported that Rillington Place murderer, John Christie was born at Black Boy House, Boothtown, Halifax. There was never a Black Boy House at Boothtown. He was in fact born John Reginald Christie. April 8, 1898 at Black Boy House, Turner Lane, Shibden, Halifax, West Riding of Yorkshire. His birth was not registered until over a year later in June 1899. He added the middle name 'Halliday' himself. Halliday was his mother's maiden name. Interestingly, amongst the Christies' neighbours, a few streets away in Chester Road lived the Portmans and their son actor Eric Portman (1903-1969). Map. A = Chester Road, B = Haley Hill, C = Black Boy House. http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=15475424280758261053,53.730096,-1.863032&time=&date=&ttype=&saddr=+20+chester+road&daddr=A647%2FHaley+Hill+%4053.730096,+-1.863032+to:HX3+6UQ&sll=53.73328,-1.85929&sspn=0.011373,0.02399&ie=UTF8&om=1&ll=53.733279,-1.859179&spn=0.010561,0.028367&z=15

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Part of this article consists of modified text from Wikipedia, and the article is therefore licensed under GFDL.