John Christie (serial killer)

John Reginald Halliday Christie (born April 8, 1899 in Yorkshire , † July 15, 1953 in London ) was a British serial killer with necrophilic tendencies who was responsible for several murders of women in the 1940s and 1950s . The number of his acts is controversial. His victims included lovers, prostitutes , tenants of apartments in his house and finally his own wife. Christie was convicted and executed in 1953 .

The case was best known for the fact that Christie's neighbor Timothy Evans had been convicted and hanged a few years earlier for two murders probably committed by Christie due to a miscarriage of justice . Evans was posthumously rehabilitated in 1966.

Life

John Christie had a strict and loveless childhood. As the fifth child with four sisters, he found little affection from his father, but was downright “pampered” by his mother, which presumably initiated a distorted image of women at Christie. He developed chronic hypochondria early on in order to gain attention, but was considered a sissy by other teenagers. The further development of John Christie as an adult was initially inconspicuous. In 1920 he married Ethel Simpson Waddington. Christie led the average, humble, and conservative man's life; always trying to appear as the friendly row house resident next door. In 1934, Christie had a serious accident in which he was seriously injured. He first became suspicious of a criminal offense when, as a postal worker, he evaded a money letter. He was sentenced to seven months in prison.

In 1938 Christie and his wife Ethel moved into the first floor of a row house at 10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill, London . In the following years and in the chaos of war in the 1940s, things seemingly quiet about John Christie. In 1952 he canceled the rental agreement for his apartment and moved out in the spring of 1953. The successor tenant Beresford Brown began to renovate the apartment and discovered a naked woman's corpse walled in behind the kitchenette. Brown notified the police, who on March 24, 1953, found three other female bodies walled in in the kitchen walls, as well as another body under the floor of the living room: John Christie's own wife, Ethel. The three women in the kitchen were the dismembered remains of prostitutes Hectorina MacLennan, Kathleen Maloney and Rita Nelson, who disappeared within a short period of time in the 1950s. In the following days, other human skeletal parts were found in the garden of apartment 10 at Rillington Place and in the surrounding area. The autopsy revealed that it was probably the remains of the Austrian Ruth Fürst, who had been missing since 1943, and her colleague friend Muriel Eady, who had been missing since autumn 1944.

In addition, other body parts and pubic hair were discovered that could not be assigned to any of the identified female corpses. Presumably the rudiments came from other victims of Christie, who could never be identified. All women were anesthetized with luminous gas and then strangled. The bodies were then sexually abused.

John Christie was arrested on March 31, 1953. He made a confession as soon as he was arrested. The defense initially pleaded insanity, but on June 25, 1953 the court in London's Old Bailey found the "strangler of London" and "mass murderer of Notting Hill" guilty and sentenced Christie to death .

John Reginald Christie was on 15 July 1953 at London's Pentonville Prison by England's " Chief Executioner " Albert Pierre Point at the gallows hanged .

Post-history

Truck driver Timothy Evans was convicted and hanged for two murders, probably committed by Christie, in 1950 . Evans lived in the same house as Christie and is believed to have murdered his wife Beryl and daughter Geraldine in November 1949. Christie himself testified as the main witness in Evans' trial. Although both murders could no longer be investigated, Timothy Evans was posthumously rehabilitated by the British government in 1966.

The fact that the murder of pregnant Beryl Evans - allegedly a failed abortion - was initially blamed on her husband, but later attributed to Christie, helped to abolish the death penalty and legalize abortion in Britain in the 1960s.

In the waxworks of Madame Tussaud in London the kitchen of the serial killer John Christie is modeled.

In order to avoid the dubious fame of the address 10 Rillington Place , the residents applied for the street to be renamed as early as May 1953. The application was granted in June 1954 and Rillington Place was renamed Ruston Close . In late 1970 the horror house 10 Rillington Place and the entire street was demolished and the street renamed Bartle Road . There is still a gap between house numbers 9 and 11 today. Shortly before that, the old facades were used for the film adaptation 10 Rillington Place .

Film adaptations

In 1969, ZDF filmed the story of the woman killer with the television play Gnade für Timothy Evans . In the film, in which Friedrich Georg Beckhaus played the role of John Christie, the court hearings were re-enacted, as well as the events surrounding the offenses in flashbacks. The framework plot was the rehabilitation of the innocent hanged Timothy Evans (played by Josef Fröhlich ). The documentary play, broadcast on August 20, 1969, was directed by Korbinian Köberle .

The 1971 film John Christie, the strangler of London (original title 10 Rillington Place ) from 1971 goes back to this criminal case. Directed by Richard Fleischer , Richard Attenborough played the lead role of John Christie. Evans' role was taken on by the then relatively unknown John Hurt . He received a nomination for the British Film Awards for his acting performance .

In 2016 the material was filmed again with Tim Roth as Reginald Christie as the miniseries Rillington Place - The Evil .

literature

• Peter & Julia Murakami: Lexicon of Serial Killers . 10th edition. Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-548-35935-9 , p. 49-51 .

Web links

• 10-rillington-place.co.uk (English)
• 10 Rillington Place in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Copy of John Christie's birth certificate