World of Criminal Justice on John Reginald Halliday Christie
Fifty-five year old John Reginald Halliday Christie seemed normal to neighbors in the working-class neighborhood of Notting Hill Gate. He lived in a dingy flat with his wife, until her disappearance, and had respectably served as a Special Police Constable during World War II. But nobody, including those who trusted him, knew the real Christie--a habitual liar, convicted thief, and sexual psychopath haunted by his physical inadequacies. After Christie was discovered by police, his wife's remains were found under the bedroom floor and the decomposed bodies of prostitutes were found hidden in the garden and the pantry.
The circuitous path to Christie's discovery began with a miscarriage of justice. In November of 1949, twenty-four year old Timothy Evans, who lived upstairs, came home from his van-driving job to find his wife and 14-month old daughter dead. They had been strangled. The semi-literate Evans reported the murders, explaining that Christie had attempted to perform an abortion on his wife. Then began a round of confessions and retractions: Evans accused Christie, then confessed to the crimes himself, and finally retracted the confession and blamed his neighbor again. Christie denied everything. Legally, there was little hope for Evans, whose bizarre on-again, off-again story undermined his defense. At the trial in January of 1950, Evans was convicted and, two months later, went to his death on the gallows at London's Pentonville Prison.
After the trial, Christie moved. In March of 1953, the new tenant at 10 Rilington Place made a shocking discovery: the flat was a morgue. A large cupboard had been papered over, and when the paper was torn away, the remains of three women were found. Underneath the floorboards of another room was a fourth woman's corpse: the late Mrs. Christie. A search of the garden revealed two more bodies.
Christie now confessed to murder but pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. He admitted to having murdered five women--his wife, Mrs. Evans, and three prostitutes. The prostitutes' deaths were carefully planned. Inviting the women to his flat, he plied them with drinks, and when they were already under the influence, he administered domestic coal gas to knock them unconscious. Then he raped and strangled them simultaneously, a vicious symbolic triumph over his sense of sexual inadequacy that, for a fleeting moment, gave him imagined power. The court rejected the insanity plea, and, on July 15, Christie was hanged on the same gallows as Evans.
Following the trial, a legal inquiry was made into Timothy Evans' guilt. Christie had denied killing the infant, and the inquiry concluded that no errors had been made in convicting Evans of that murder. Ultimately, another inquiry concluded that Evans had been wrongly convicted. In 1966, he was pardoned posthumously, the case providing ammunition for reformers who successfully abolished Britain's death penalty.
This is the complete article, containing 461 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
