‘I hanged John Reginald Christie, the monster of
Rillington Place, in less time than it took the ash
to fall off a cigar’.1
Christie did not have long to live. But now a new question loomed. Christie was a murderer of women by strangulation. It seemed hard to believe that there could be two stranglers of women living under the same roof. Had an innocent man been sent to the gallows? This was a question on the lips of some in politics, the legal and journalistic professions, to say nothing of the Evans family themselves.
After the trial, Christie was sent to Pentonville. Joseph Roberts was amongst those accompanying him and he recalled, ‘there was a slight public demonstration against Christie, people booing him and calling him foul names. This shook him up a little and he remarked, “How disgusting some people are”’. From then on two prison warders maintained a daily vigil on his cell.2
In prison, a reporter stated, ‘Christie is calm, talks cheerfully to his guards and sometimes plays cards with them. He is eating and sleeping well’. He often read books from the prison library, mostly on technical subjects. He recalled his murderous career:
I have flagrantly broken one of God’s foremost laws . . . I have always succumbed to a dark sinister force which has never allowed me to be at peace. Thou shalt not kill is the commandment that has haunted me all my life. I have broken this commandment so many times that I cannot be sure how many women have died at my hands.
He also wrote:
All my life I never experienced fear or horror at the sight of a corpse. On the contrary, I have seen many and they hold an interest, a fascination over me . . . That for years I had to kill just twelve women and then my work would be finished and I would continue for a further period. There was just some unknown urging me to do it and compelling me to go on . . . after she [Ethel] had gone the whole business seemed to come to the fore again. How and under what circumstances didn’t enter the picture after number five, six . . . It did occur to me as I looked on my gruesome handiwork, that I was gradually reaching the twelve mark. It would then be all I was expected to do . . . to me there was nothing gruesome about it. It still does not strike me that way.
Yet he also affected modesty, ‘I am a quiet humble man who hates rows or trouble. I love animals. I am fond of children . . . I am the sort of chap you would never look twice at on a bus’.3
Christie’s time in gaol was not at all bad. In his cell was a bed, a table, a chair, a shelf for his books, and he was allowed an hour’s exercise each day. He was guarded day and night, but looked on his end with calm, ‘I am not afraid’ he claimed. He wrote, ‘The food is good and all possible facilities are given’. There was a ‘liberal allowance of cigarettes and the food is good . . . really well cooked and plentiful. I am even putting on weight’. All his life he had been a heavy smoker.4
Christie also saw extracts from his autobiographical writings published in The Sunday Pictorial in several editions in July 1953. The accounts of his murders differed a little from some of his earlier statements, but he wrote ‘This is the correct version’. Such writings are common among notorious criminals. They write them in order to portray themselves to the public in the way they want to be remembered, and as a means of justifying their actions. Christie portrayed himself as a victim of his father and of cruel fellows, as a friend to animals and children and as a model husband, but showed no shred of sympathy for his victims.5
Meanwhile, in the real world, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, Home Secretary, appointed John Scott-Henderson, QC, to examine the case and to report on whether there were any grounds for thinking there might have been a miscarriage of justice. He was assisted in his work by George Blackburn, Assistant Chief Constable of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Neither had been involved in the case up to this point.6
From 8–10 July Scott-Henderson heard evidence from twenty-three people, including Christie.7
The enquiry then went through the evidence that Evans did indeed kill his wife, considering the confessions he had made at Notting Hill, evidence of mounting debts and problems within the marriage as well as physical evidence and reports by doctors and psychiatrists. Scott-Henderson noted, ‘I am therefore satisfied that there was a great deal of evidence to support Evans’ account of his confession’. He also thought that the method of disposal was similar to that used by Donald Hume. Both had bundled up their victims’ corpses with cloth tied with cord.8
Perhaps the most important part of this investigation was the interview with Christie. This took place on 9 July at Pentonville. Christie seemed agreeable to talk, as it made him feel important. He said that many people had been ‘trying to help’ him remember about the people he had killed. He was as non-committal in his responses as ever; when asked about Hobson’s visits to him, he replied, ‘He just called, and I was asked if I wished to see him, and I was not compelled to see him. I said that if it was in the interests of the case I would certainly see him’.9
Christie tried to show that his memory had been problematic:
I was very fogged about everything and I asked him for his assistance. I asked him to help me, and anything which he said or he mentioned that had happened at times was just for the benefit of trying to get me to recollect for the purposes of the defence, because as I stood at the time I could not have remembered anything practically, and I had to be helped . . . Inspector Griffin . . . told me that some bodies had been found, and I did not even know then about the case until he said, ‘You must have been responsible for it, because they were found in the kitchen in an alcove’ and so he said ‘There is no doubt about it that you have done it’. So I turned round and said ‘Well, if that is the case I must have done it’ but I did not know whether I had or I had not. From what he said it was very obvious that I must have done it.10
Christie claimed not to recall the murders, but said that he would accept that he had done them if people told them that he had, ‘They said I must have done it’. He carried on in this vein for some time, even talking about ‘the moment I get out of here’. He was also asked about other murders:
‘I think that you said something about them asking you to think about a case at Windsor [the murder of Christine Butcher in July 1952]; was that one of the cases that they asked you to think about?’
‘The question they asked me was, had I visited Windsor recently. I said emphatically that I had not been to Windsor for years. At that interview it was not mentioned to me at all why that question was asked, not until the following interview. In the meantime I think it had dawned on me about the Sugar Ray Robinson business, and then it just struck me: “Well, that is why I was asked about Windsor.” ’
‘That was a murder case, was it?’
‘It was a little girl, but anyhow I had not been to Windsor. I advised them to make investigations as to where I was at the time, and it would obviously have been proved that I could not have been at Windsor’.
Christie also said, ‘Mine were all adults’. The conversation continued:
‘In regard to Windsor it was not a question of thinking hard and then you might remember but you knew enough to know that you could not possibly have been there?’
‘Well, as far as I know, that is correct’.
‘Were there other cases–we need not go into details–but did they mention other deaths, and want to know whether you could remember anything about them?’
‘I cannot remember that’.11
Christie was then asked about whether he was responsible for the deaths of Beryl and Geraldine. He was equivocal about the former, stating, ‘Well, I am not sure’ and ‘Well, I cannot say whether I was or not’. When pressed, he replied, with the same apparent lack of memory as before: ‘It is not a case of whether I am prepared to or not. I just cannot unless I was telling some lie or other about them. It is still fogged, but if someone said: “Well, it is obvious you did, and there is enough proof about it” then I accept that I did’.
Christie was asked again about other murders, and replied, ‘Well, I could not say that I did. I should accept that I did’. Without proof brought before him, however, he was ‘not prepared to swear either way’. However, he also said that if there were any other murders committed by him ‘It would not surprise me’. When asked about the hairs in the tin, he replied, ‘I have tried hard to think whether there were other bodies but seem to think that it is possible. Those hairs in the tin lead me to think that, but I have no clear recollection’.12
Scott-Henderson considered that Christie’s confession about Beryl was incorrect, partly because it was uncorroborated and because he changed his mind as to whether he had killed her or not. He related a conversation with the prison chaplain, who stated that Christie used the phrase, ‘The more, the merrier’. ‘I am satisfied that Christie gradually came to the conclusion that it would be helpful in his defence if he confessed to the murder of Mrs Evans’. Therefore, as to his confession, ‘I am satisfied that they are not only not reliable but that they are untrue’.13
On 13 July, Scott-Henderson summarised his findings thus:
Reference has been made to Christie’s possible killing of Christine Vivian Butcher, a young girl (never solved), largely based on a photograph taken at Windsor on the day of the murder of a bald-headed man in a crowd, but also because he was deemed ‘a sexual pervert’ and the girl had been raped. Yet it was concluded, ‘Enquiries have been made into all the known information obtained about Christie, but no evidence has been disclosed which might associate him and the deaths of any persons other than those already referred to’. In fact, the bald-headed man was traced and it was not Christie. Furthermore, Christie’s description did not match that of the man last seen with the girl, nor was there any evidence he had been to Windsor, nor that he molested children.15
In some ways, Christie was unchanged. Dr Matheson noted, ‘He has not shown any alteration in his behaviour from what he has shown throughout the period in which he has been under observation at Brixton Prison’.16
A board of doctors had to examine Christie and determine whether he was sane enough to be hanged. The statement included the following conclusions that he was:
cool, calculating and plausible. No reliance could be put upon his statements and he was an intentional liar . . . He showed no remorse and had spoken of no one in terms of affection . . . conceited, cool, cunning, alert, bad tempered and vicious criminal . . . We have no reason to believe that he is a necrophiliac and he denies the suggestion that he is a sadist . . . We do however incline to the view that sadism is a part of his mental make up and may be connected with some of the murders but this is little more than an assumption.17
Dennis Hague, his old wartime comrade, wrote to him, asking if he was the same Christie he had known four decades ago. Hague was hoping that Christie would be given a reprieve, ‘in which case I shall always be pleased as an old comrade of the Sherwood Foresters to pay you a visit’. Christie wrote, ‘I was very happy to receive your pleasant letter. It was a surprise and just demonstrates that one begins to know one’s friends in times of adversity’. Hague asked permission to see his old comrade, and this was granted. Before the visit he wrote to Christie on 3 July, ‘I was very pleased to hear that you still have the smile which I always knew you to wear in the days gone by’. The two were reunited on 13 July, for half an hour, and spent much of it reminiscing about the war. Hague later said, ‘I saw a lonely, broken man. Christie is dejected, utterly dejected. I don’t think he realises what he has done’. Christie said, ‘I don’t care what happens now. I have nothing left to live for’. Towards the end of this time, Hague asked him if he had killed Geraldine and Christie was suitably vague, ‘I don’t know, I can’t remember’. He then gave a sly look and blinked. Apparently this was signalling code for ‘yes’. ‘I consider Christie killed the Evans baby’ concluded Hague, but there was some doubt over the exact meaning of the blinking. Apart from Hague, only Phyllis Clarke visited him in prison. She did so on the eve of his execution and found her brother in good spirits. He explained, ‘Don’t worry about the morning. They won’t hurt me. They’ll take my glasses off before they hang me so I won’t see much’. George Rogers requested to see him alone, but Christie refused.18
A less sympathetic correspondent was Evans’s mother. She wrote on 2 July and urged him to confess all, ‘it may save your soul from Hell and it will give me the peace of mind I have not had for three years past’. The press, too, were harsh in their references, ‘the bald headed bigot’, ‘the most ghoulish murderer of all time’, ‘just a nobody with a twisted mind’ and ‘he had no conscience about much at all’.19
In the meantime, Christie was preparing to meet his maker. Ever since the First World War he had not been a particularly religious man. Now he took a fresh interest in the faith of his youth. The Anglican chaplain at the prison since 1948 was the Reverend William George Morgan. He had two conversations with Christie. Christie denied killing Geraldine and was pretty certain that he had not killed Beryl either. Christie used the phrase ‘the more, the merrier’ at one of these interviews. In late June he attended a church service, with two warders, and sat in an alcove near to the altar.20
As with Evans, there was to be no reprieve and on 13 July the Commissioner of Police received a letter containing the ominous phrase, that the Home Secretary had ‘failed to discover any sufficient ground to justify him in advising Her Majesty to interfere with the due course of law’. On the following day, Christie made a will. He left almost everything to Phyllis Clarke. The photographs of his wife were willed to her sister, along with the marriage certificate. He ended the will with the following understatement, ‘. . . and an apology for any trouble I may have brought about’. On the 14th the governor visited him in case there were any last words; apparently there were not.21
The next day was Christie’s last. Despite his aversion to alcohol, he had a drink before his death. The execution took place at 9.00am on 15 July 1953. Pierrepoint described the scene:
Christie had his back to the door when I went in. He was listening with a tight lipped little sneer to the low consoling words of the chaplain . . . I hanged John Reginald Christie, the monster of Rillington Place, in less time than it took the ash to fall off a cigar. I had left my room at Pentonville. As I motioned towards (the execution chamber) all Christie’s face seemed to melt. It was more than terror. I think it was not that he was afraid of the act of execution. He had lived with and gloated upon corpses. But I knew in that moment that John Reginald Christie would have given anything in his power to postpone the moment of detail. My assistant and I had his skimpy wrists pinioned before he knew fully what was happening, and then he rose to his feet, a little taller than I was, so that I had to reach up to remove his spectacles. In that instant I met his eyes and quite slowly pulled off his glasses, laying them carefully upon the scrubbed bone table besides me. This was his last moment to speak. He blinked bewilderingly, screwing up his eyes. Then he focussed them on the door that stood open between the condemned cell and the execution chamber.
I had watched him in the prison yard the evening before and he had not seemed downcast there. He had come striding between his two death watch officers . . . His eyes glinted sharply behind spectacles, the big domed head with his carefully combed wisps of hair were so familiar. But his hair was uncombed now, and he was paying no heed to vanity . . . Faltering pitifully, his movements were not so much a walk, as a drifting forward, his legs stumbling. I thought he was going to faint.
There was only a half stride to reach the trapdoor. Pierrepoint pulled the lever to open it and pushed Christie forward and to his death. The death certificate gave cause of death thus, ‘injuries to central nervous system following judicial hanging.’ He was the last serial killer to be executed in England.22
Christie was buried within the prison, as Evans had been in 1950. On death, Christie was 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighed 148lbs. He was aged fifty-four years, three months and one week. He was stated as being well nourished. Appropriately, perhaps, Camps carried out the autopsy. There was also an inquest. About 200–300 people, including women, schoolchildren and babies, ‘laughing and jeering’, came to read the notice of his execution, which was posted on the prison gates at six minutes past nine. Meanwhile, people visited 10 Rillington Place to gape. Sightseers continued for months, to the annoyance of residents. Madame Tussauds had a wax figure of Christie alongside Heath and Haigh even before Christie was dead to capitalize on this morbid curiosity, and one can still be seen there to this day, though he now stands alone, a besuited middle-aged man with hands behind his back. Some people, though, had a grudging respect for the man who had killed and had eluded the police for a decade.23
The inquests on Christie’s victims were not complete until 27August when that for Ruth Fuerst and Muriel Eady was finally dealt with. Both Camps and Griffin attended the inquest, where the coroner, Mr Neville Stafford, stated that although the victims were identified, no cause of death could be established, such was the lack of data provided by the skeletons. Their final resting place is unknown. Meanwhile, the bodies of Rita Nelson and Kathleen Maloney had been buried in unmarked graves at Gunnersbury Cemetery on 18 April, with a Rev. Davies officiating, and Ethel was cremated. Hectorina, whose inquest was on 9 July (as were those of Ethel, Rita and Kathleen), was buried in Gunnersbury Cemetery too, in a marked grave.24
Later that year, three books were published which concerned the case to varying degrees. Ronald Maxwell wrote The Christie Case, described as ‘the only complete story of the most startling crimes of our times’. It was an account of the case from the discovery of the bodies to the passing of the death sentence, by a journalist who covered the case and attended all the court hearings. Dr Camps wrote Medical and Scientific Aspects of the Christie Case, which was a coolly factual forensic analysis of the corpses and skeletons found at 10 Rillington Place. Finally there was Hanged and Innocent? by Paget and Henry Silverman, an MP who passionately opposed capital punishment. One of the three cases examined was that of Evans. Paget concluded, ‘I would say that Evans was not guilty as charged, and that this is about as certain as one can be certain of anything in human affairs’.25 All subsequent books on this case concentrated on this issue.
After 1953 there was additional controversy. Michael Eddowes, in The Man on your Conscience, published in 1955, makes the case for Evans’s innocence, largely based on the number of coincidences which it would be necessary to believe if Evans was indeed guilty. He concluded, ‘We have come to the conclusion that . . . the unpalatable truth is that Evans was innocent and because his accusation against the real killer was not believed, four more women were later to be strangled by Christie’. Eddowes thought that a number of legal reforms should be brought about; independent witnesses being present at police interviews with suspects, all evidence being given to the defence and trial transcripts being given to the public afterwards.26
In the lengthy introduction to the valuable book that is a transcript of the trials of Evans and Christie, Miss Fryniwyd Tennyson-Jesse, a journalist and criminologist, discusses the controversy. She is not very sympathetic towards Evans, referring to him as ‘weak . . . unfaithful, insensitive, quarrelsome and given to violent impulses . . . a low form of life’. However, she was not certain he was a murderer as well, concluding:
it seems to me more likely that, in the pursuit of his lust and under the guise of performing an abortion, Christie murdered Beryl Evans, and that he murdered the baby . . . There are objections to this conclusion; it does not satisfy all the conditions or resolve all doubts. No explanation that I have thought of does this; each one leaves something unaccountable. I have arrived at it because it offers less obstruction to my mind than do the others, but I am fully conscious that it is not the only one.27
Another book, which was published in the following year, discussed both Haigh and Christie and came to a different conclusion, stating ‘I think Evans killed Beryl’ and ‘I incline to the view that it is very probable indeed that Evans killed his baby’. She had no time for Christie, of course, who, she claimed, had a ‘marked resemblance to a slice of yesterday’s filleted plaice’.28
Heald waded into the controversy thus:
I was Attorney General at that time and I prosecuted Christie. I knew all about the case and I think Evans was guilty . . . My own view is that both Christie and Evans were concerned in that matter and if there was a miscarriage of justice it was this technical one that Christie was not hanged at that time. However, we put that right later.29
Similarly Harold Scott, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, commented:
If, for a short time, it seemed to indicate a possible miscarriage of justice, in the case of Evans, this was cleared up by the searching enquiry conducted by Mr Scott-Henderson. It is still safe to say that the risk of an innocent man being executed is so remote that it can be disregarded.30
James Chuter Ede thought otherwise, noting about the Evans case:
the apparently cast iron case was unquestionably a false one . . . [had Christie been revealed as a double murderer before 1950] they might have found Evans guilty of murder in conjunction with Christie; I doubt whether they would have found Evans guilty of murder in any other circumstance . . . I think Evans’ case shows, in spite of all that has been done since, that a mistake was made.31
However, it was in 1961 that the most well known and most frequently quoted book on the subject was published, and on being republished and as the source of the film later to be discussed here, it has achieved its aim of being seen as the definitive and authoritative one on the topic, but it was highly partial. This was Ludovic Kennedy’s Ten Rillington Place. Kennedy had read Eddowes’s book and was convinced by his argument. Because his book is prefaced with an open letter to the Home Secretary–stating ‘I myself am wholly convinced of Evans’ innocence’–with an appeal for another judicial review of the whole affair, with a view to leading to Evans’s pardon, he endeavours to excuse every instance where evidence might indicate his guilt. Thus the arguments between the Evanses are merely stated as being commonplace between working-class couples. Kennedy argues that the confessions made by Evans were made under great emotional strain by a man of limited intellect, and that he was brainwashed by Christie and the police. Every benefit of the doubt is used in Evans’s case, while no such benefit is offered to Christie. Kennedy admitted, ‘My book was to put the case against Christie’.32
Kennedy’s argument is that Christie offered to abort Beryl; but instead strangled her and convinced Evans that she died as a result of a botched operation, and then convinced Evans that he should not say anything to his family nor the police for he would be implicated in murder. Christie then convinced him that he would give Geraldine to a family in East Acton, but in reality strangled her, too. Because he had his wife under his thumb, she backed him up in everything he said. Because Evans was of low intelligence, he swallowed Christie’s arguments and so paved the way for his own fate. It basically assumes that Evans’s second confession at Merthyr Tydfil is true and that the others are fabrications. The Scott-Henderson report is taken apart by Kennedy point by point. This argument has been hugely influential.33
It must be emphasized that Kennedy was not aiming to write an impartial history of the murders. Rather, as he admitted during the Brabin proceedings, he was writing the case against Christie, and looked for evidence which would incriminate him.34
Not all were favourable. Maurice Crump, who dealt with Kennedy during his researches, commented, ‘I regret to have to record that I found Mr Kennedy only interested in things which could somehow or other be construed as consistent with Evans’ innocence to the exclusion of anything tending to prove guilt’. Sir Theobald Matthew, Director of Public Prosecutions, read the book and stated, ‘it is a very readable reconstruction, I think, of how the crime could have been committed on the assumption that Evans was innocent; but it does not help much to determine whether he was innocent or not’. He added that Kennedy’s criticisms of the Scott-Henderson Report were ‘puerile and intemperate’. An even more intemperate comment came from Hume, writing in 1965 of Kennedy, ‘I know him from experience to be a phoney who has used the Evans case for nothing else than to further his literary ambitions and make money out of it’. However, Kennedy did interview some of the people involved in the case and spent rather more time on Christie’s life prior to 1949, but much of this was inaccurate. He portrayed Christie as a weak and inadequate man who sought power over others. In fact the book is a catalogue of factual errors and assumptions.35
One of Kennedy’s chief contentions was that Teare had not taken a vaginal swab from Beryl, for, ‘Had he done so, he would almost certainly have found traces of Christie’s spermatozoa . . . Here, so to speak, were Christie’s fingerprints . . . in the light of what we now know, it pins the crime fairly and squarely on Christie’. Teare denied that this would have been the case. Professor Simpson was scathing in his autobiography about this, and as a professional pathologist as compared to the amateur sleuth, his verdict is worth noting as to Kennedy’s assumptions, ‘I doubt if a more reckless overstatement can be found in all the millions of words written about the Evans-Christie case’. As to this non-evidence providing the missing link, as Simpson stated, ‘It does nothing of the kind’.36
Kennedy’s book was not the only one on to appear that year. A less well-known book, The Two Stranglers of Rillington Place, was published, written by one Rupert Furneaux. He had initially collaborated with Eddowes, but had disagreed with him on the book’s conclusion, so each man wrote his own. His argument was the novel one that Christie and Evans worked in tandem. Evans killed Beryl and then Christie killed Geraldine. There seems little evidence for such a theory, though it was one which the Brabin report later supported. John Newton Chance, a writer of fiction, also brought out in this year (clearly a bumper year for Christie aficionados), an even more forgotten book, The Crimes at Rillington Place: A Novelist’s Reconstruction. Here, Christie suggests that Evans ‘scares’ Beryl by putting a rope around her neck and tightens it, but stopping short of murder. Later Evans kills both his wife and daughter. Christie helps him to dispose of the bodies and gives him suggestions as to what he should do next.
It was in 1965 that a new independent inquiry was set up, to be conducted by Mr Justice Daniel James Brabin, a Judge of the High Court. The terms of reference were as follows:
To examine the evidence given in the case of Rex vs Evans and that of Rex vs Christie relating to the deaths of Mrs Beryl Evans and of Geraldine Evans; to hear any witnesses and to consider any other information which is in his view relevant to these deaths; and to report such concerns as he may find it possible to form as whether Evans did or did not kill either or both.
Not everyone welcomed it. Former police sergeant Trevellian observed, ‘I consider all this a waste of time because in my own mind I have every confidence from what he [Evans] told me that he was guilty’. Likewise Basil Thorley, who said in 1965, ‘Why can’t they leave us alone? . . . I am convinced Evans was involved in my sister’s death’. He based this on Evans’s words to him on the day of the trial, ‘I’m sorry, Baz’.37
The independent review took two months and seventy-nine witnesses were called. These included most of those associated with the case. A million words on 2,000 foolscap pages, in thirty-two bound volumes, were written and after January 1966 Brabin began to write the report, which was published on 12 October 1966. He concluded that Evans probably killed his wife after a quarrel over debts. He was uncertain about Christie’s knowledge of this, writing, ‘It is not possible to know how Christie became aware of the killing of Beryl Evans. Whether he discovered it after hearing yet another row, or whether Evans sought his help after he killed his wife, cannot be known . . . Christie knew everything which went on in that small house’. He concluded that Christie would not have wanted the corpse to have been found in the house, for that would have meant the police, and as there were two skeletons of his victims in the garden, he would want to have avoided their being found. But Evans losing his job, and thus access to the van, made disposal elsewhere impossible.38
As to the other murder, Brabin concluded:
I find the evidence in respect to the death of Geraldine more perplexing. I do not believe that he who killed Beryl Evans must have necessarily killed Geraldine. They were separate killings, done I think for different reasons . . . I think it was more probable than not that Christie did it. It was a killing in cold blood that Christie would be more likely to do.39
Brabin remarked on the coincidence:
But can one accept that to this small house in their turn there came two men, each to become a killer, each a strangler, each strangling women, always by a ligature . . . and neither aware that his housemate was like himself? Some claim that to suggest that this coincidence could come about is to stretch credulity too far.
As to the coincidence, it did not surprise some. Trevellian remarked, ‘that point has never struck me, because Notting Dale, that part of Notting Dale, is the home of many murderers, and in those days I could very seldom find a house which was not the house of a criminal with a record’. Simpson thought likewise, remarking that ‘it never seemed to me very far-fetched. Coincidences are far more common in real life than in fiction’.40
The enquiry had been a difficult one, as Brabin observed:
They [the Evanses and the Christies], or some of them, are the only ones who know for certain what happened in that house . . . The two women have been murdered and the two men executed . . . One fact which is not in dispute and which has hampered all efforts to find the truth is that both Evans and Christie were liars. They lied about each other, they lied about themselves.
Despite this, Brabin gave his verdict: ‘I have come to the conclusion that it is more probable than not that Evans killed Beryl Evans. I have come to the conclusion that it is more probable than not that Evans did not kill Geraldine.41
Therefore, Evans was given a posthumous free pardon (in the previous year his remains had been reburied at the Leytonstone Cemetery). Yet had Evans been tried and hanged for Beryl’s murder, the verdict would have been upheld. The Brabin report, after all, concluded that he was probably guilty of that murder, but suggested that Christie’s grim tally was seven. Yet if Christie did not kill Beryl, there seems little reason for him to have killed Geraldine.