Halifax’s John Christie is probably Britain’s most notorious single serial killer of the twentieth century. This is not just because he murdered at least six women and concealed their corpses in his house and garden–the Wests of 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, did likewise more recently and had more numerous victims–nor because he was the most prolific, as Dr Shipman holds that dubious honour, but because he is alleged to have allowed an innocent man, Timothy Evans, to hang.
Much has been written about Christie’s crimes, so readers may ask why there is a need for this book. Yet very few authors have used any of the voluminous police and judicial archives of the case which are at the National Archives, to say nothing of newspaper accounts and other sources for Christie’s life. Previous writers have repeated old arguments and ‘facts’, and myths have been perpetuated which conflict with the evidence. Also, authors have tended to concentrate on the murders of Geraldine and Beryl Evans in 1949 and so other aspects of Christie’s life and criminal career have been sidelined.
This book aims to correct these oversights, by using evidence from many more sources than have been previously used. These include police, prison and judicial files created at the time of the murders, contemporary newspapers, transcripts of trials and sources well known to the genealogist for tracking down an individual’s history. It gives more weight to Christie’s life and crimes outside the years 1949–1950, and in doing so gives a fuller and more accurate picture of the man and his criminal activities over three decades. It is a more intimate picture, though not necessarily one that makes him any more likeable. We shall see how he was perceived by those who met him, how he justified and explained his actions, and what motivated him. The book also sheds more light on Christie’s family and his victims. This is a biography, not an examination of the police investigation nor of the judicial enquiries, though both will be outlined.
The chapters are arranged chronologically, beginning with Christie’s Yorkshire boyhood and war service. The next chapter examines his career of petty crime. Chapter 3 considers his time as a police officer and his first murders. The following chapters survey what happened when the Evanses began to live in the same house as the Christies, the discovery of the murder of Geraldine and Beryl and the trial of Evans. The later chapters concern Christie’s final murderous spree, his arrest, trial and execution. Finally, the controversies which arose from these murders are explored. The portrayal of Christie in fiction and popular culture is also examined.
I have known about Christie and his crimes since my schooldays in the early 1980s–and have been horrified by them. In later life, I watched the film Ten Rillington Place one night, alone. When I began the first of ten books about true crime, I swore never to touch the Christie case–it was so awful. However, a reading of Colin Wilson’s Written in Blood indicated that there was much more to this case than a miscarriage of justice, if indeed that were the case.
It is important to recall the words of the Attorney General at the outset of Christie’s trial in 1953:
you must try your utmost to shut out of your mind everything you have read or heard, or even thought, about the case or about Christie himself. You must approach the whole matter, so far as you possibly can, with an open mind. As our old English legal phrase puts it, you must hearken to the evidence as it is laid before you. It is no use pretending about these things . . . every one of us . . . almost without exception, must have read something . . . about Rillington Place.2
So, with as open a mind as possible, let us begin at the beginning.