The Evil Within - A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals The Chilling True Stories of The World's Most Notorious Killers (44 page)

When Evans was brought back to London from Wales, all he was told on the way was that he was going to be questioned about a briefcase found in his apartment that belonged to someone else. When he arrived in London, however, there was no doubt in his mind that he was being arrested for murder. He was shown the pile of clothing taken from the bodies, with the tie on top, and was told that his wife and daughter had been found. Tears came to his eyes and he bent down and picked up the tie.

That night, police took two more confessions from Evans. He first admitted that he was responsible for the deaths of his wife and child and added that it was a relief to get it off his chest. He said he had killed his wife because she was running up debts. They had quarrelled and he had hit her. Then he had strangled her with a piece of rope. He wrapped Beryl’s body in the tablecloth in which she had been found and took it to the apartment below. After that, he put it in the wash-house at midnight on 8 November. The next day, he fed the baby and left her alone all day. He repeated this again the day after. Then he quit his job and came home and killed his child by strangling her with his tie. He put her into the wash-house as well.

Later that night, Evans offered a longer confession, which took
about 75 minutes to record and read back to him. Evans apparently claimed that, in fact, he was up all night talking with the police, until 5am. Painstakingly, Evans went through as much detail as he could recall about the days leading up to the murder, including hitting Beryl in the face. After that, in a fit of temper, he strangled her. He included putting her in the wash-house and using wood to hide the body. However, he twice made the statement that he had locked the wash-house door and this was untrue, since the carpenters had been in and out of it all week without having to get someone to unlock it. Also, the wood used to hide the bodies had come from the flooring that was pulled up on 11 November, which the carpenter recalled Christie asking for. At any rate, it was not available on the 8th and 10th. Moreover, Evans failed to provide an explanation as to why he killed his baby daughter. He also said he left the rope around Beryl’s neck, although no rope was ever found. Beryl weighed a little less than Evans. It would have been easy for him to have silently dragged her body past where the Christies’ bedroom overlooked the back yard. He also said that he left his baby unattended for two long days, but no one had reported her crying.

It is quite apparent that the police edited the statements and possibly even guided Evans’s confession. People who feel coerced or who seek relief have been known to confess to crimes they did not commit. This is not altogether unlikely in this case, especially in light of Evans’s limited intelligence. He later retracted the whole confession when speaking to his mother, but for some reason continued with his confessions to the police, and at no time did he ever protest his innocence to anyone other than his mother.

On 11 January 1950, Evans was tried at the Old Bailey for the murder of his daughter. His wife’s murder was also included in the prosecution case, and this contained major flaws that were not highlighted by Evans’s defence lawyers. This failure on their part would sadly lead to the conviction of Evans for the murder of his baby. On 9 March 1950, Timothy Evans was hanged.

Once the publicity and media attention Christie had been receiving in relation to the Evans trial was over, he and his wife settled back down in Rillington Place. However, Ethel Christie felt that it was time to move to a new place, especially since the third floor flat was now occupied by some recently-arrived Jamaicans. She thought they were low-class and frightening, and was extremely uncomfortable sharing an outhouse with them. In addition, Christie continually complained about various physical problems. Shortly after the trial, he had gone into a deep depression, losing about 28lbs. He also lost his job at the post office, due to certain disclosures during the trial about past crimes. Finally, he consented to a three-week observation period. A psychiatrist wanted to hospitalise him for analysis, but he refused to leave his wife alone. Nevertheless, he continued to visit his own doctor, going 33 times in eight months for stress-related symptoms. Christie became angry with his wife, whose presence stopped him from accomplishing certain schemes. She had also been taunting him about his impotence, which angered him.

On Thursday, 11 December, five days after Christie had lost his job, his wife went to watch television with a friend, Rosie. The next day, she took the washing to Maxwell Laundries and appeared, to those who saw her, well and cheerful. She said nothing to anyone about taking a trip. However, after that, no one saw her again. Christie then began to tell neighbours that his wife had gone off to Sheffield, saying that he had a new job there and would follow her shortly. Some of them were surprised that she had not said goodbye, nor mentioned any such plans. To relatives, he said that she was not feeling well enough to write to them or send Christmas greetings. He sent a few gifts ‘from Ethel and Reg’. Oddly, he began to sprinkle his house and garden with a strong disinfectant, which people soon began to notice. In January, Christie sold all his furniture to a dealer. He also sold his wife’s wedding ring and watch. Without a bed, he slept on an old mattress on the floor. All he had left were three chairs, one of which was of particular value to him, and a kitchen table. To get
money, he forged his wife’s signature on an account she had and emptied it. With that, he stayed in his unfurnished flat into March, no longer even bothering to answer the letters from relatives enquiring after his wife.

One day he noticed a woman, Mrs Reilly, looking for a place to rent and invited her to look at his flat. She brought her husband, which Christie had not anticipated. They decided to take the flat, paying three months’ rent in advance. Christie borrowed a suitcase from them and moved out on 20 March. He had his dog destroyed but left his cat with the tenants. He took their money and left. The Reillys had not been in the flat even one day when they learnt from the real landlord that Christie had no right to rent the flat, and they were asked to leave. They and the landlord argued about the rent money, but since the place smelt so bad, they were happy to vacate it. Christie himself was on the move. He did not wish to be around when certain discoveries were made.

The landlord now had an empty flat, so he allowed the upstairs tenant, Beresford Brown, to use the kitchen. Brown noticed a bad smell, so he began to clean things up. It then occurred to him that he might install a new shelf on the wall for his wireless radio. He began to knock on the walls and discovered one that sounded hollow. He assumed there was a cupboard behind. Brown pulled away some of the wallpaper, revealing a door, though it was closed fast. He shone a light through the crack and then stepped back, uncertain of what he had seen. It looked to him as if a naked woman were inside that wall. He called the police without hesitation.

When they arrived and opened the door fully, they saw the body of a woman sitting amid some rubble. She was leaning forward, her back to them. Behind her was a similarly sized object, wrapped in a blanket. The blanket was knotted to the victim’s bra, which was pulled up high, towards her neck. Otherwise, she wore only a garter belt and stockings. Her black sweater and white jacket were pulled up around her neck. She
was removed and taken to the front room for a photograph and examination. It was soon clear that she had been strangled with a ligature. Her wrists were tied in front of her with a handkerchief that had been tied in a reef knot. The body was fairly well preserved. Next, the police focused on the other object in the cupboard. As they photographed it, they noticed another tall, wrapped object just beyond it. They pulled out the first one and soon discovered that it was another body. It had been stood on its head in the cupboard and propped upside down against the wall. The blanket had been fastened with a sock into a reef knot around the ankles, and the head was wrapped in a pillowcase, also tied into a reef knot with a stocking. The third object was yet another body. This one was also upside down, with the head beneath the second body. The ankles were tied with an electrical cord, using a reef knot. A cloth covered the head and was similarly knotted. The investigators noticed some floorboards loose in the parlour, so they pulled these up and found more loose rubble. They started to dig and quickly found yet another female body. They left the property with a police guard for the night and determined to return the next day to make a thorough examination.

At the mortuary, four post-mortems were performed. The results were as follows:

• First body: a female brunette, aged around 20 (later determined to be 26); she had been dead around four weeks. She had died from strangulation and carbon monoxide poisoning. It was surmised that she had been under the effects of the poisoning when she was strangled with a smooth-surface type of cord. She had been sexually assaulted at the time of death, or shortly after. Scratch marks on her back indicated that she had been dragged across the floor after death.
  
• Second body: a female aged about 25-years-old with light brown hair, poorly manicured hands and feet; healthy. She
  was pinkish in colour, a sign of gas poisoning, and had been asphyxiated by strangulation. She had also had sexual intercourse near the time of death, and had been drinking heavily that day. She wore a cotton cardigan and vest, and another white vest had been placed between her legs in a nappy-like fashion. She had died 8–12 weeks earlier.
  
• Third body: a blonde female aged about 25, poorly manicured. She wore a dress, petticoat, bra, cardigan and two vests, with a piece of material placed between her legs. She was pinkish in colour and had been gassed and asphyxiated. She had been drinking shortly before death, which had taken place 8–12 weeks earlier. She was six months pregnant.
  
• Fourth body: this body, brought to the mortuary the following day, was of a woman in her fifties, plump and with several teeth missing. She had been rolled up in a flannel blanket, and her head covered with a pillowcase. A silk nightgown and a flowered dress were wrapped around her, under the blanket. She wore stockings, pulled up. She had been dead for 12–15 weeks. Unlike the others, there were no signs of coal gas poisoning or sexual intercourse. She had been strangled, probably by ligature.
  

The police’s next task was to identify the bodies. It was not hard to discover that the older woman under the floorboards was Ethel Christie. The others were all prostitutes whom Christie had brought home to his near-empty flat: Hectorina McLennan, 26; Kathleen Maloney, 26; and Rita Nelson, 25.

Police went through the entire flat. They found a man’s suit under the floor of the common hall area, which had been open during the time of the Evans murders. In the kitchen cupboard was a man’s tie, fashioned into a reef knot. They also found potassium cyanide in another area of the apartment and a tobacco tin that contained four clumps of pubic hair, none of which came from the bodies found in the kitchen. The presence of the pubic hair collection indicated another type of perversion,
but Christie had to be caught before anyone could make sense of it.

Police had also searched the garden. They found the human femur this time, in plain view supporting the trellis. More bones were found in flowerbeds and some blackened skull bones with teeth and pieces of a dress turned up in a dustbin. Bones were also found beneath an orange blossom bush. Nearby was a newspaper fragment dated 19 July 1943. A quantity of hair was discovered, along with some teeth. The police determined that, although only one skull was found, there were two female bodies in the garden. That made a total of six at the house.

The skeletons were reconstructed for identification purposes. It was soon determined from a tooth crown that one of the victims, both of whom were female, was from Germany or Austria. She was young, around 21, and around 5ft 6in tall. The other was between 32 and 35, and only about 5ft 1in tall. They had both been in the garden at least three years and may have been there as long as 10 years.

It was soon discovered that Ruth Margaret Fuerst had arrived in England from Austria in 1939 and had been missing since 24 August 1943. She was then 21 and measured about 5ft 6in tall. When she disappeared, she had been staying in Notting Hill. The other victim seemed likely to be Muriel Amelia Eady, 32, who had worked at a factory with Christie. She was 5ft 1in tall and had dark hair. The hair in Christie’s garden matched hair from one of Eady’s dresses, still kept at her former home. She had been wearing a black wool dress when last seen, like the remains of one found in the garden.

The search was now on to find and arrest Christie. On 20 March 1953, he booked a room at the King’s Cross Rowton House, giving his real name and address. He asked for seven nights, but only stayed four. It could be that he heard about the full-scale police search for him and decided it would be better to find another place to stay – at this point his name was on the front page of every newspaper. While he was at large, he was
considered a danger to unwary females. As he ran out of money, he walked around wherever he could and took naps on benches and in cinemas. Eventually he wandered to the banks of the Thames.

On the last day of March, a police officer spotted him on the Putney Embankment. By that time, Christie had been wandering for ten days. The constable asked him who he was and he gave a false name and address. Then he was asked to take off his hat, exposing the high, balding forehead said to be characteristic of Christie, and he was arrested. On his person were his identity card, a ration book, his Union card, an ambulance badge and, oddly, an old newspaper clipping about the remand of Timothy Evans, with details about those killings. At Putney police station, Christie willingly gave his statement about the murders, but only talked about four. He hinted that there was something else that he could not quite remember, possibly hedging to see if the police had yet discovered the skeletons in the garden.

With regard to the death of his wife, he said that her moving around in bed awakened him. Her face was blue and she was choking. It seemed to him too late to call for assistance; he tried but failed to restore her breathing. Unable to bear her suffering, he got a stocking and strangled her. He then found a bottle that had contained phenobarbitone tablets, which was now nearly empty. They were for his insomnia and he realised that she had taken them to kill herself. She had been deeply depressed over the new tenants, whom she thought were persecuting her (according to Christie). He left her there in the bed for two or three days and then, when he recalled that there were some loose boards in the front room and a depression in the ground beneath, he wrapped her in a blanket and placed her there to keep her near him. ‘I thought that was the best way to lay her to rest.’ He claimed he did not know what else to do, as if he did not already have two corpses out in the garden. The other three women, too, were ‘not his fault’. Since they were women of disrepute, he claimed they were the aggressors, with him, a man of virtue who had no
choice but do what he did. In his statement, Christie reversed the order of when he met the first two, but given their relative positions in the cupboard, the true sequence of events was fairly obvious. Medical tests also confirmed that Rita Nelson was the first to die. Nelson, 25, had allegedly demanded money from Christie in the street. (Christie says this was Kathleen Maloney, but it was Rita Nelson whom he killed first, so he seems to have mixed up the names.) According to Christie’s account, Nelson (or Maloney) told him she would scream and accuse him of assault if he didn’t give her 30 shillings. He walked away and she followed, forcing her way into his house. She picked up a frying pan to hit him. They struggled and she fell back onto a chair that happened to have a rope hanging from it. Christie blacked out and woke up to find her strangled. He left her there, had some tea and went to bed. When he discovered her still there in the morning, he wrapped her up, placed the ‘nappy’ on her and shoved her into the cupboard. ‘I pulled away a small cupboard in the corner,’ he recalled, ‘and gained access to a small alcove.’