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Transcript
The full episode, in writing.
A single lock of dark hair, clutched tight in the hand of a murdered child, was the clue that baffled police across London in the summer of 1949.
The story begins in the grey, bomb-damaged neighborhoods of West London, where war had left scars on bricks and hearts alike. The man at the center: John Reginald Halliday Christie, born in April 1899 in Halifax, West Yorkshire. Christie grew up in a family marked by a strict father and a series of tragedies, including the death of his older sister and the early loss of siblings. He was known as a quiet boy, sometimes bullied by peers, and described by teachers as having a withdrawn nature. Christie later served as a signalman in World War I, where he suffered a mustard gas attack that damaged his vocal cords, leaving him with a thin, reedy voice.
After the war, Christie drifted through a series of jobs: postal worker, cinema projectionist, and clerk. He married Ethel Simpson Waddington in 1920, but their marriage was plagued by separations and allegations of infidelity. In the 1920s and 1930s, Christie spent several years in prison for theft and assault, including sentences for stealing postal orders and for violent conduct. By the late 1930s, he had relocated to London, and in 1938, he and Ethel settled into the ground-floor flat of 10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill, an address that would become infamous.
Ethel worked as a seamstress, while Christie held various clerical jobs and eventually became a police war reserve constable during World War II. Their neighbors at 10 Rillington Place included working-class families, immigrants, and transient workers. The house itself was a narrow terraced property, divided into three flats, with tenants often coming and going.
The events leading to Christie’s crimes began in the dark days of the war. In August 1943, Ruth Fuerst, a 21-year-old Austrian waitress and part-time sex worker, came to know Christie. She had fled Nazi Austria and lived in squalid lodgings nearby. Christie invited her to his flat while Ethel was away. After a brief sexual encounter, Christie strangled Ruth with a length of rope, then buried her body in the garden behind the house. He would later say he acted “almost without thinking,” and this act marked the start of a pattern.
In October 1944, Christie lured a neighbor, 32-year-old Muriel Eady, to his home under the pretense of offering a home remedy for her bronchitis. He prepared a jar filled with domestic gas, telling Eady it was a medicinal inhalant. As she inhaled, she fell unconscious; Christie then strangled her and buried her in the garden beside Ruth Fuerst. These two murders went undiscovered for years.
The war ended. Ethel and Christie resumed a seemingly ordinary life, but Christie’s fascination with control, authority, and death simmered beneath the surface. In 1948, Timothy John Evans and his pregnant wife, Beryl, moved into the top-floor flat at 10 Rillington Place. Evans, a van driver from Wales, was described as slow-witted and often confused; Beryl, just nineteen, struggled with the stresses of poverty and motherhood. Their baby, Geraldine, was born not long after they arrived.
On November 30, 1949, Timothy Evans walked into Merthyr Tydfil police station in Wales and confessed that his wife was dead. He said he’d given her an abortifacient to end an unwanted pregnancy and that she had died as a result. When pressed, Evans changed his story several times, eventually claiming that Christie had offered to help with the abortion and that Christie must have killed Beryl. Police began searching 10 Rillington Place.
On December 2, 1949, detectives found Beryl’s body stuffed into a washhouse in the backyard. She had been strangled with a tie. Beside her was the body of 13-month-old Geraldine, also strangled. The bodies were discovered after police moved a pile of loose floorboards and followed the smell of decomposition. Both bodies had been hidden in a small, cramped outhouse.
Evans was arrested, formally charged with the murder of his daughter, and quickly became the focus of the investigation. Christie, who had police experience and an air of respectability, was treated as a key witness rather than a suspect. He gave a detailed statement to detectives, describing Evans as unstable and violent, and claiming Evans had confessed to him as well.
In January 1950, Timothy Evans stood trial for the murder of his daughter. The prosecution argued that Evans had killed Beryl in a fit of rage, murdered Geraldine to cover his crime, and then concocted a series of lies to mislead police. Christie gave damning evidence, presenting himself as a helpful neighbor who had tried to protect Beryl from Evans’s temper. Ethel Christie corroborated her husband’s account. The jury took just 40 minutes to find Evans guilty, and he was hanged in March 1950 at Pentonville Prison.
For three more years, Christie continued his quiet existence at 10 Rillington Place. Ethel vanished from sight in December 1952. Christie told neighbors she had gone to visit family in Sheffield or had died suddenly, but suspicions grew when her absence stretched for months. Christie began subletting his flat to a series of vulnerable women.
In January 1953, Christie struck again. He invited Rita Nelson, a 25-year-old pregnant woman who had recently moved to London, to his home. Christie offered her a place to sleep and a listening ear. He administered domestic gas via a homemade mask, rendering her unconscious, and then strangled her. He raped her corpse and concealed her body in a small alcove behind the kitchen wall.
Over the next two months, Christie killed Kathleen Maloney, a 26-year-old prostitute, and Hectorina MacLennan, a 26-year-old woman from Scotland. He used the same method each time: a promise of help, gas to subdue, and a garrote to finish the job. The bodies piled up in the tiny, filthy kitchen, behind a loose partition.
On March 24, 1953, the landlord at 10 Rillington Place found the property abandoned. Christie had left, and the house was being cleared for new tenants. Workmen discovered a hollow in the kitchen wall and pulled aside the partition to find three decomposing bodies wrapped in blankets and sacking. The police were called immediately. In the garden, they found the remains of two more women, later identified as Ruth Fuerst and Muriel Eady. On the floorboards under the parlor, they discovered Ethel Christie’s body, wrapped in a tablecloth. She had been strangled in her bed in December 1952.
The police investigation that followed was led by Detective Inspector Leslie Lipton. Officers scoured the house for evidence, documenting the arrangement of the bodies, the ligatures used, and the use of household gas to incapacitate victims. Christie’s use of a homemade inhaler, fashioned from a length of rubber tubing, a glass jar, and a metal mask, became a key detail. Investigators found Christie’s fingerprints on the apparatus and on personal effects belonging to the victims.
A search for Christie began immediately. He was eventually recognized by a police officer on March 31, 1953, sleeping on a bench near Putney Bridge. His disheveled appearance, mismatched clothing, and evasive answers gave him away. At the police station, Christie confessed to murdering his wife and five other women, calmly describing his method and the hiding places for each body. He denied responsibility for the deaths of Beryl and Geraldine Evans, claiming Evans had killed them himself.
Forensic analysis of the bodies revealed a consistent pattern: each woman had been strangled, most had been sexually assaulted after death, and traces of coal gas were found in their lungs. The use of domestic gas as a sedative was unprecedented in British criminal history. The garrotes had been fashioned from stocking, string, or in one case, a necktie.
The ramifications of Christie’s confession were immediate and dramatic. The Evans conviction was re-examined. Police and prosecutors admitted they had failed to consider Christie as a suspect in the 1949 murders, despite his proximity to the crime and his history of violence. Public outrage grew as details of Christie’s manipulation came to light.
Christie’s trial opened on June 22, 1953, at the Old Bailey. He was charged with the murder of his wife, Ethel, and evidence of the other killings was introduced to support the case. Christie’s demeanor in court was calm and unemotional. He claimed diminished responsibility, describing his childhood traumas, his war injuries, and his history of blackouts.
The jury rejected Christie’s plea after deliberating for 85 minutes. On July 15, 1953, he was sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out at Pentonville Prison on July 15, 1953.
The Evans case, meanwhile, continued to haunt British justice. In 1966, a government inquiry concluded that Timothy Evans had been wrongly convicted and executed for a crime most likely committed by Christie. Evans received a posthumous pardon in 1966, and his remains were reburied in consecrated ground. The scandal surrounding the case fueled calls for the abolition of capital punishment in the United Kingdom.
The 10 Rillington Place murders exposed severe flaws in the British criminal justice system. Police failed to connect Christie’s criminal record and psychological profile to the murders committed at his own address. Investigators relied on confessions from a vulnerable suspect, Timothy Evans, and ignored physical evidence pointing to another perpetrator. Prosecutors built a case on the testimony of a serial killer, while the real murderer continued his spree under their noses.
The case highlighted the dangers of police tunnel vision and the profound effects of class, education, and authority on legal outcomes. John Christie’s experience as a police war reserve enabled him to manipulate officers and present himself as trustworthy, while Timothy Evans’s illiteracy and naivety made him an easy scapegoat.
The methodical concealment of bodies at 10 Rillington Place revealed Christie’s increasing confidence in evading detection. His ability to lure victims with promises of help or comfort exploited the vulnerability of women with few social or economic resources. The use of domestic gas as a murder weapon unsettled the public, as coal gas was a ubiquitous feature of working-class British homes at the time.
The case’s notoriety led to the demolition of 10 Rillington Place in 1970, erasing the physical location but not the collective memory of the crimes. The scandal contributed directly to the suspension and eventual abolition of the death penalty for murder in Britain, as lawmakers and the public questioned how an innocent man could be executed while a serial killer remained at large.
Police files revealed that Christie had kept meticulous records of his job searches and movements, but wrote nothing about his crimes or motives. After his arrest, Christie gave a detailed account of his killings, describing the sensation of power as he strangled his victims and his subsequent sexual gratification. Forensic pathologists documented that the bodies had been stored for weeks or months before discovery, resulting in advanced decomposition.
Christie’s murders were referenced in the 1955 Royal Commission on Capital Punishment, and the case was cited in parliamentary debates leading up to the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965. The official inquiry into the Evans case found that police had failed to search 10 Rillington Place thoroughly after Beryl and Geraldine’s deaths, missing the bodies of Ruth Fuerst and Muriel Eady buried just yards away.
The serial killings at 10 Rillington Place resulted in at least eight deaths between 1943 and 1953, making Christie one of Britain’s most prolific murderers of the mid-20th century. The physical evidence included strands of hair, clothing fibers, and items belonging to the victims found hidden in cupboards and floorboards.
One of the most chilling details emerged from post-mortem reports: Christie’s victims often had remnants of coal gas in their lungs, proof of his unique method. The murder of Ruth Fuerst in 1943, buried in the garden for nearly a decade, was linked to Christie only after the discovery of the other bodies in 1953. The question of how many more victims Christie may have had remains unanswered.