John Reginald Halliday Christie (8 April 189915 July 1953) was an English serial killer and serial rapist active during the 1940s and early 1950s. He murdered at least eight people—including his wife Ethel—by strangling them inside his flat at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London. The bodies of three of his victims were found in a wallpaper-covered kitchen alcove soon after he had moved out of Rillington Place during March 1953. The remains of two more victims were discovered in the garden, and his wife's body was found beneath the floorboards in the front room. Christie was convicted of and hanged for his wife's murder.
Two of Christie's victims were Beryl Evans and her baby daughter Geraldine, who, along with Beryl's husband Timothy Evans, were tenants at 10 Rillington Place during 1948–49. Timothy Evans was charged with both murders, found guilty of the murder of his daughter and hanged in 1950. Christie was a major prosecution witness; when his own crimes were discovered three years later, serious doubts were raised about the integrity of Timothy Evans' conviction. Christie subsequently admitted killing Beryl but not Geraldine. It is now generally accepted that Christie murdered both victims and that police mishandling of the original inquiry allowed Christie to escape detection and commit a further four murders. In 2004 the High Court acknowledged that Timothy Evans did not murder either his wife or his child.. It includes a segment from the Hansard transcript of Jenkins's decision to recommend a pardon in the House of Commons.
Early life John Christie was born on 8 April 1899 in Chester Road, Boothtown, near Halifax in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the sixth of seven children. He had a troubled relationship with his father, carpet designer Ernest John Christie, an austere and uncommunicative man who displayed little emotion towards his children and would punish them for trivial offences. Christie was also alternately coddled and bullied by his mother and older sisters. On 24 March 1911, Christie's grandfather David Halliday died aged 75 in Christie's house after a long illness. Christie later said that seeing his grandfather's body laid out on a trestle table gave him a feeling of power and well-being; a man he had once feared was now only a corpse.
At age 11, Christie won a scholarship to Halifax Secondary School, where his favourite subject was mathematics, particularly algebra. He was also good at history and woodwork.Oates, p. 6Kennedy, p. 22 It was later found that Christie had an IQ of 128.Kennedy, p. 225 He also attended Boothtown Council School (also known as Boothtown Board School) in Northowram. Christie sang in the church choir and was a Scout. After leaving school on 22 April 1913, he entered employment as an assistant projectionist.Kennedy, pp. 23, 26
During his later life, Christie's childhood peers described him as "a queer lad" who "kept himself to himself" and "was not very popular." His problem with impotence began in adolescence; his first attempts at sex were failures, and he was branded "Reggie-No-Dick" and "Can't-Do-It-Christie" by his peers. Christie's sexual difficulties were life-long; most of the time he could only perform with prostitutes. A post-mortem found Christie's genitals were physically normal.Kennedy (p. 34) reports that even with his wife, Christie's sexual activity was sporadic. He says that because prostitutes offered a service, they were undemanding and did not become emotionally involved with their clients, which could appease sexually dysfunctional people such as Christie.
In September 1916, during the First World War, Christie enlisted in the British Army; he was called up on 12 April 1917 to join the 52nd Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment to serve as an infantryman. In April 1918, the regiment was despatched to France, where Christie was seconded to the Duke of Wellington's Regiment as a signalman. During the following June, Christie was injured in a mustard gas attack and spent a month in a military hospital in Calais. He later claimed this attack had rendered him blind and mute for three and a half years, and permanently affected his ability to speak loudly.Kennedy, p. 29 Ludovic Kennedy wrote that no record of Christie's blindness has been traced and that, while he might have lost his voice when he was admitted to hospital, he would not have been discharged as fit for duty had he remained mute. His inability to talk loudly, Kennedy argued, was a psychological reaction rather than a lasting toxic effect of the gas.Kennedy, pp. 30–32. The reaction, and Christie's exaggeration of the effects, stemmed from an underlying histrionic personality disorder causing him to exaggerate or feign illness to get attention and sympathy.Kennedy, p. 33
Christie was demobilised from the army on 22 October 1919.Oates, p. 10 He joined the Royal Air Force on 13 December 1923 and was discharged on 15 August 1924.Oates, p. 17
Marriage Christie married Ethel Simpson, from Bradford, at Halifax register office on 10 May 1920. His impotence remained and he continued to visit prostitutes.Kennedy, p. 35 Early in the marriage, Ethel suffered a miscarriage.Oates, p. 12 The couple separated after four years. Ethel worked at the Garside Engineering Co, and later at the English Electrical Co, in Bradford, until 1928 when she and her siblings moved to Sheffield. In 1923, Christie moved to London; he spent the next decade in and out of prison while Ethel remained in Yorkshire with her relatives. He was released from prison in January 1934,Oates, p. 25 when the couple reunited and moved into 10 Rillington Place.Kennedy, p. 36
Early criminal activity During the first decade of his marriage to Ethel, Christie was convicted of several criminal offences. He began working as a postman on 10 January 1921 in Halifax, and his first conviction was for stealing postal orders on 20 February and 26 March, for which he received three months' imprisonment on 12 April 1921. He served his sentence at HM Prison Manchester and was released on 27 June.Oates, p.14 Christie was then convicted on 15 January 1923 of obtaining money on false pretences and of violent conduct, for which, respectively, he was bound over and placed on probation for twelve months. He committed two further crimes of larceny during 1924, and received consecutive sentences of three and six months' imprisonment on 22 September 1924 in HM Prison Wandsworth.Oates, p. 18 On 13 May 1929, after working for over two years as a lorry driver,Oates, p. 19 Christie was convicted of assaulting Maud Cole, with whom he was living at 6 Almeric Road in Battersea, and was sentenced to six months' hard labour;Oates, p. 20 he had hit Cole over the head with a cricket bat, which the magistrate described as a "murderous attack" for which he was again sent to HM Prison Wandsworth. Finally, Christie was convicted of car theft and was re-imprisoned at Wandsworth for three months on 1 November 1933.Aotes, p. 24Kennedy, pgs. 36–37
Christie and Ethel were reconciled in 1934 after he was released from prison, but he continued to patronise prostitutes. He ended his recourse to petty crime.Marston, p. 12. In 1937, the Christies moved into the top-floor flat of 10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill, then a rather run-down area of London; they later moved into the ground-floor flat in December 1938. The residence was a three-storey brick end-terrace, built in the 1870s during a period of intensive speculative building in the area resulting in much jerry-built property which declined into poorly maintained and unimproved multi-occupancy rentals. Number 10 was of a common design: the ground and first floors each contained a bedroom and living room, with a kitchen/scullery in the adjacent extension, but the second floor flat had two rooms only: a kitchen/living room and a bedroom. Living conditions were "squalid"—the building's occupants shared one outside lavatory, and none of the flats had a bathroom.Eddowes, John, p. 12
Christie spent three years as a foreman at the Commodore Cinema in King Street, Hammersmith,Oates, p. 28 then in summer 1939 successfully applied to become a War Reserve Constable (WRC), since the authorities seem to have been overwhelmed by the substantial influx of new recruits and thus unable to check applicants' backgrounds and criminal records.Kennedy, pp. 40–41 He began as a WRC on 1 September 1939 and was assigned to the Harrow Road police station, where he met a woman named Gladys JonesOates, p. 33 with whom he began an affair. Their relationship lasted until mid-1943, when the woman's husband, a serving soldier, returned from the war. After learning of the affair, Jones' husband went to the house where his wife was living, discovered Christie there and beat him up.Kennedy, p. 42
Murders Christie committed his murders between 1943 and 1953, usually by strangling his victims after he had rendered them unconscious with domestic gas (containing carbon monoxide); some he raped as they lay unconscious.
First murders Christie's first admitted victim was Ruth Fuerst, a 21-year-old Austrian munitions worker who supplemented her income by occasionally engaging in prostitution.Kennedy, pg. 43 Christie claimed to have met Fuerst while she was soliciting clients in a snack bar in Ladbroke Grove. According to his own statements, on 24 August 1943, he invited Fuerst to his home to have sex with her (his wife was visiting relatives at the time). Afterwards, Christie impulsively strangled her on his bed with a length of rope. He initially stowed Fuerst's body beneath the floorboards of his living room, then buried it in the back garden the following evening. On 28 December the same year Christie resigned as a reserve constable;Kennedy, p. 46. his service index card is now in the collection of the Metropolitan Police Museum, whilst evidence from his murders now forms part of the Crime Museum collections.
The following year he found new employment as a clerk at an Acton radio factory. There he met his second victim, colleague Muriel Amelia Eady. On 7 October 1944,Honeycombe, p. 463 Christie invited Eady back to his flat with the promise that he had concocted a "special mixture" that could cure her bronchitis.Kennedy, p. 47 Eady was to inhale the mixture from a jar with a tube inserted in the top. In reality, the mixture was Friar's Balsam, which Christie used to disguise the smell of domestic gas. Once Eady was seated breathing the mixture from the tube with her back turned, Christie inserted a second tube into the jar connected to a gas tap. As Eady continued breathing, she inhaled the domestic gas, which soon rendered her unconscious; domestic gas during the 1940s was coal gas, which had a carbon monoxide content of 15%.Eddowes, John, pp. 8–9 Christie raped and strangled Eady before burying her alongside Fuerst.Kennedy, p. 48
Murders of Beryl and Geraldine Evans