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Alice
Juliet hi, I'm Juliette Cowley, a retired FBI profiler and host of the true crime podcast the Real FBI Profilers. If you're fascinated with true crime and criminal profiling, then join us as we discuss real cases and examine the behavior exhibited before, during and after the commission of the crime. You can listen to the consult wherever you get your podcasts. It's as close as it gets to being in the room when with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit.
Brett
I'm brett. And I'm alice and we are the prosecutors. Today on the Prosecutors we talk. John Reginald Christie. Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of the Prosecutors. I'm Brett and I'm joined as always by my brilliant co host Alice.
Alice
Brett, it only took five and a half years for you to say the obvious.
Brett
Well, in England they call everything brilliant. So I felt like it was a good time to do that.
Alice
And it is about time that we use. Hey, hey, you know, you try to be nice, I try to be nice. And then that strikes. What I was going to say is it's about time that we gave our English brethren their own case. And boy, is it a crazy case. I don't know if you want to be aligned in country with this case because boy, is this one crazy.
Brett
Yeah. So we talked a lot about Timothy Evans last week and you know, this murder that he committed, which is seems somewhat straightforward, but then his bizarre confessions which draw in this other gentleman, this John Reginald Christie. And then as we said, you know, Timothy, he's convicted, very swift justice. He's executed a couple months later and there the story ends. And yet here we are. Why are we here? What's left to talk about in this case? I think we're kind of done.
Alice
And why are we talking about someone who isn't the one who was convicted?
Brett
We're going to really go into depth about his testimony and how important it was. So. Okay. Yes. So we are going to talk more about the chief witness in the Timothy Evans murder case, John Reginald Christie. And you may recall Christie, he's the downstairs neighbor. He's a former police officer. He's a clerk during World War II. He's a medical guy, he's helping people and he and his wife are downstairs. They hear this weird noise during the midst of this knockdown, drag out fight between the Evans. Then there's no more sound. They never see Barrel again. She ends up dead. They find her body and the body of their year old baby Geraldine in one of the outbuildings behind the apartments. And Christie unwittingly all of a sudden gets drawn into this. Because after the first confession by Evans, from that point forward. Well, the second confession is all about Christy. He says Christy was helping his wife have an abortion. She then died and they had to cover it up. Third confession, Christie's not really in, at all in that confession. It's much more sort of, they got into a fight, he strangled his wife, he strangled his daughter, he put him in the back area and then he left. Fourth confession, he's back to Christie, that Christie killed his wife. He's not really sure what happened to his daughter. You know, she just kind of disappeared.
Alice
It's very strange, but it wasn't a. It wasn't an abortion gone bad. It was a straight up. He murdered. Murdered his wife.
Brett
Yes. So that's the situation. So we're going to take a little bit harder. Look, John Reginald Christie today. And we will start with his birth. He was born April 8, 1899 in Halifax, Yorkshire, England. He was the youngest of five children and the only boy. Despite his father being a strict disciplinarian, he had a seemingly normal childhood. He sang in the local choir, participated in the Boy Scouts. He left school at age 15 and worked as a projectionist in a local movie theater. He served in World War I as a signalman until he was injured by mustard gas and he lost his ability to speak for three years. Interestingly, doctors really couldn't point to a medical reason why. Now, World War I was incredibly traumatic. The gas attacks were incredibly traumatic. Can imagine this is just some sort of shell shock slash trauma. They didn't really understand PTSD and everything else back then, but this was a pretty horrific event. He gets through it. Takes him three years to speak again. In 1920, he married Ethel Waddington. This was shortly after his speech returned. And he was described as quiet and inconspicuous, just sort of a normal guy. And Ethel was described as sentimental and passive. So they have just a very sort of low key relationship. Now, some speculated that Ethel was afraid of her husband and did whatever he said. But the general feeling was that they were just an ordinary, pleasant couple. And frankly, Christy seemed pretty reserved. He doesn't come across as a sort of overbearing husband. He doesn't come across as someone who bossed his wife around. If anything, he seems kind of meek and passive, and that is what everyone thinks who just sees them together. But behind closed doors, things were a little different. And their marriage was described as a difficult one. So Christie had an affinity for hiring sex workers and he had had Several run ins with the law. And just a few years into their marriage, when he was 25 years old, he actually left Ethel and moved to London while she remained in Sheffield.
Alice
Kind of a big one. You know, we've been talking about how he's kind of a mild mannered seeming guy who didn't speak for three years. But like his, I guess his vice is kind of a big one, especially in the 1920s, hiring sex workers. And as you'll see, it's. That's probably the least offensive thing he's going to do. This has nothing to do with the story whatsoever, but did you know that when it came down to my name, my parents were going to name me Alice or Ethel, really? And I only know this.
Brett
They chose wisely. No offense.
Alice
I think so too. I think so too. Although I do love Ethel from I Love Lucy and that's why they liked the name Ethel. I found a baby book from the year I was born and in it were two names highlighted and it was Alice and Ethel. And I was like, are these the two names? And it was indeed. So I could have been an Ethel, could have been my co host, Ethel, Ethel. But instead it's Alice. So we're just talking about an Ethel. So that is kind of the seemingly normal start of John Christie's life now. April 12, 1921, John Reginald Christie, he gets a job as a postman, which is again a pretty regular, respectable job. Not long after though, he was sentenced to three months of prison for stealing hundreds of pounds of postal orders.
Brett
And these are pounds like the money, not the weight.
Alice
Yeah. Either way, if it were like pounds of mail, that's a lot of mail. But it was money. And by the way, this is very annoying. We have like a horrible epidemic across the country. Current day of postal worker. Well, we suspect it's postal workers and many of them are postal workers. But mail being stolen like and we just can't prosecute it enough. That's just a, I don't know if that's a hot tip. Like I guess if you went into that field you, you can go for it. But it's like I will just hear from entire neighborhoods where it's just known that your mail is stolen and they think it's postal workers because it never hits the mailbox, it's kind of taken beforehand. So this is kind of a century old crime, shall we say?
Brett
If you're going to mail anything today in the United States and it's worth anything, put some insurance on it.
Alice
Yeah, unfortunately.
Brett
And a lot of Times. And we see this a lot because of our positions, former and current. But we know that. We know where it got stolen. Can't say who did it, but we know, like for instance, it went to the Atlanta sorting facility and disappeared there. So it wasn't stolen by someone like a porch pirate. It wasn't stolen out of the mailbox. It made it into the mail system, goes to one of the big sorting places and disappears.
Alice
And then you'll see, like all of the checks that get sent to that mail sorting system between the hours of 10 and 12am in other words, during a certain shift, shift, they're gone.
Brett
And you gotta be really careful. Like checks, if you're still doing checks, they can wash checks so easily. So just that's, as Al said, didn't really have anything to do with this case, but been going on for a while, still going on today.
Alice
And that's exactly what John was doing. Got this respectable job, but immediately started abusing. It was just stealing money from the mail. And he only gets three months. I mean, £300 is not small potatoes here, but he gets kind of a slap on the wrist here. So fast forward a couple of years, living his life. Now he gets out of jail, just a regular guy in town. September 1924. So three years after that slap on the wrist for stealing postal orders, John Christie is sentenced to nine months, this time in Uxbridge jail on two charges of theft. So still kind of his, his old thing, still stealing over here, then kind of nothing. Five years later, May 1929, Christy still has this affinity for hiring sex workers, but he doesn't just hire them this time. He hits a prostitute that he had been living with over the head with a cricket bat. And he was sentenced to six months of hard labor for this violent crime. So it's no longer theft. Now we're kind of moving into the physical violent crime. And, and by the way, I don't know if I want to sentence someone who is violent to hard labor to get stronger.
Brett
Especially hitting somebody with a cricket bat. I mean, that's. Cricket bat. That's. That's a deadly attack, you know, I mean, that's. I'm not going to say it's attempted murder because that goes to intent, but that's a serious assault. It just goes to show. I mean, it just always amazes. I mean, we often think of like, oh, we have soft sentences now, and they were so much harder back in the day, and in some ways they were. But the fact that you could whack somebody over the head with a cricket bat and get six months. I don't know. That tells you something. And especially when you have this criminal history that's building up. I mean, this is not his first offense. And it's interesting to see him. You know, the first two offenses are relatively white collar, they're non violent. And now all of a sudden he's whacking people in the head with a cricket bat.
Alice
I'll say. That's a pretty intense jump. It doesn't seem like there was an escalation. It went from like stealing mail that you're handling to serious, serious assault here. So that's in 1929, 1933. Note that there's a good amount of time in between. It's not like he goes back out on the street and immediately reoffends. He continues just to live this kind of regular life, part of society. Several years go in between these different charges that he's hit with. But in 1933, he's sent back to prison for three more months. This time he's back to his old, I guess, habit of stealing. But now it's escalated. No longer is it postal orders. He is actually sent to prison for stealing a car from a priest.
Brett
I mean, I don't know if that makes it worse, but it certainly seems worse. Right?
Alice
I don't think it's better. Certainly not better, yeah. So after he left prison, Christie reached back out to his estranged wife, Ethel. Now, the two reconciled and after 10 years separated, she moved back in with him in London. But despite this reconciliation, Christie's behavior didn't change. He continued to hire sex workers to fulfill his not just sexual urges, but violent sexual urges.
Brett
So that brings us to December 1938. And this is when John and Ethel move into 10 Rillington Place in the Ladbroke Grove neighborhood of Notting Hill. So he is now moved into the apartment where the rest of this story is going to take place. And wouldn't you know it, he's turned over a new leaf. He's turned his life around so completely that he applies to join the police and what? You know what, they hire him. They hire him and he is assigned to the Harrow Road Station after they fail to notice his criminal record during recruitment. I mean, you know, they didn't have computers back then. I guess it was a little bit harder to do a background check.
Alice
It's kind of an extensive one, though. Extensive criminal background.
Brett
Yeah. I mean, now you may remember we mentioned this earlier that Christie, he actually will lose his job after he testifies in that trial. Because all of this does come back to haunt him, all these convictions. Now, at the time of the trial, it had been 17 years since his last conviction. But despite that, when they find out about this history, he is going to lose his job with the police department at least. But anyways, he's got a job with the police department. You know, he's turned his life around. He's about to solve a murder. Everything's going great. But Christie, he just couldn't keep it in his pants. I mean, that's what it comes down to, right? He soon begins an affair with a woman working at the police station. A co worker, which, you know, it's not great to have an affair with a co worker, particularly when her husband is away at war. So she's cheating on her husband, who's off. This is, you know, the forties, fighting the Nazis. He's all fighting the Nazis. His wife's back home having an affair with another married man. And this relationship will actually last until 1943, when husband comes home. Hey, honey, I'm back from the front. It's so good to see you. He walks in, and what does he find? He finds Christy and his wife in bed together. And he reacts how you might expect. He beats crap out of him. And this is actually his first government job. He resigned from the police department. He's gonna get another government job later that he's gonna lose after he testifies. But he does resign from the police department after the fallout from this affair.
Alice
Okay, I don't know if this ride is still the same today, but back in the day. So come back with me a couple decades. The Tower of Terror.
Brett
Oh, yeah.
Alice
You know, where. If you've never gone on it's. I hated it. It was, like, one of the most famous rides. Is it. This is bad. Disney.
Brett
Yeah.
Alice
Okay, so it's at Disney World. I don't know if it's still there or not, because I. MGM Studios, I think MG okay, they still have that. I'm old, but this is 20 years ago. And if you don't know what this ride is, it's basically a tower of terror. You go up a tower, and ultimately the, like, fear factor is that they open up and you look out and you see everyone below you. You're, like, in an elevator shaft or you're in an elevator, and then all of a sudden, you drop all of the floors, and it's terrifying. So it's one of those rides. But before you do the drop, there's actually this whole story right it's like a haunted house. And you ride along on your little elevator shaft and it's like a very calm ride. I mean, it jerks you around a little bit. You see a ghost here and then, you know, you kind of jerk a little. Everyone laughs. You get a little bit of whiplash over here. But it's not like a roller coaster. That's kind of like Christie's story. So far we've jolted you around a little bit. Oh, you got three months here. Oh, hiring sex workers. Oh, my goodness. Having an affair with a married woman whose husband's off at war fighting the Nazis. The window's about to open. You're about to look out at the crowd below, and this story is about to take a whole other different turn that you may not be prepared for. Because while there's been kind of an extensive decade long, petty crime isn't quite the right word. But we're not talking. He's not a cartel leader, right? He's not some like mafia boss over here. He's kind of a low level criminal. He's stealing here and there, stealing from priests, stealing from people who are using the mail, hitting women, you know, people who are weaker than himself. And he's just not a good dude, but not the worst. Then it's August 1943. So John Reginald Christie kills his first victim. Yes, you heard me right. There we are. We're about to start dropping down the tower of terror. So John met a 21 year old Austrian woman named Ruth Furst in a bar one evening. Ruth worked at a nearby munitions factory and lived close to John's Rillington Place apartment. She and John began a sexual relationship and she would often visit him at his apartment when Ethel, you know, his wife was away. Now she's clearly, you know, more than 15 years younger than him. So one day, while Christy and Ruth are in bed together, a telegram arrives to announce that Ethel was on her way home and she wasn't alone. Her brother was also with her. So according to Kristy, Ruth had simply just taken off all her clothes, as I guess women are wants to do, and asked him to have relations with her. Again, none of his fault. This woman just walked into my apartment, threw off all her clothes and said, take me. So that's the story that Christy says, take it for what you will, you know, you decide credibility over there. But that's not all she wanted. In addition to saying, do with me what you will, sir, Ruth also said, run off with me, come away with me. Ethel's coming back. Let's run away together. But Christy being the family man that he said he refused. Instead of running away with this naked 21 year old girl in his apartment, he actually strangled her to death right there on the bed while they were having sex. And after he killed her, he wrapped her in her leopard coat and put her under the floorboards in the front room of his apartment with the rest of her clothes. When Ethel and her brother arrived, everything seemed normal because everything that would raise alarm was now under the floorboards. Now, the brother stayed for the day, they had a nice visit and the brother left the next day and Ethel went to her part time job. Once Christy was alone in the apartment, he buried Ruth's body in his garden. And months later he actually accidentally unearthed her skull. So he burned it along with his trash. Now, Christy used one of Ruth's leg bones to prop up a garden fence because that was cheaper than buying some wood to do the same.
Brett
And you know, the leg bone thing is crazy because you may recall the police searched, they're looking for Beryl and Geraldine. They searched the garden and the shed and everything else. They never noticed the leg bone. So there's literally just this leg bone propping up the fence and nobody notices it for years. I mean, has the bottom dropped out yet?
Alice
No, we're not. We haven't reached the bottom of this ride, y'.
Brett
All. Yeah, it gets worse. So that's August 1943. And remember before it was, he would commit a crime, he might go to prison for a few months and then years would pass and he wouldn't commit another crime. And it, it had been a long time since he'd been arrested for anything. But you see this escalation began. So that's August 1943. October 1944, Christie murdered his second victim, a 32 year old woman named Mural Eddie, whom he worked with at Ultra Radio Works. Now he had struck up a friendship with Mural and even invited her over for tea with his wife several times. But In October of 1944, when Ethel was traveling, Christy devised a plan to murder Eddie. So she had suffered with catara, which I don't, never heard of that before. But it's an excessive discharge or buildup of mucus in the nose or throat associated with inflammation of the mucous membrane. And Christy, remember he had this extensive first aid background and he said, hey, I can help you out. And if you want to read more about Christy, I'm going to go ahead and recommend a couple resources. One of them, Crime Library is great. Like you can find all sorts of cool stuff in Crime Library about this case and many others. But there is an awesome book called Death in the Air. The True Story of a Serial Killer. The Great London Smog and the Strangling of a City. And it tells the story not only of Christie, but it tells it in parallel with the Great Smog. I believe it's 1950, that killed thousands of people in London. So they had this basically this choking fold fog that was so bad that if you had any kind of respiratory problems at all, it would kill you. And thousands of people died. Led to a lot of changes in the way London does a lot of things, but really interesting historical story. And then when told in combination with this, it's also interesting as well. And London had had a number of these smogs. They'd have one every few years. The 1951 was one of the worst. But this in particular, this lady would suffer from these when a smog would come and cause her to have a lot of problems and inflammation. And so he's telling her, hey, I can help you out. You know, I'm a first aid guy. It's the war. I'm working for the War Department. You know, you can trust me. Here's how this is described from Crime Library. So into a jar he had put some inhalant disguised with the odor of friar's balsam. He had made two holes in the top of the jar. This is pretty complex.
Alice
Premeditated much?
Brett
Well, yeah, one of which he used for a small hole that ran to his gas supply. So, like lots of people, he had natural gas that he used for various things. And so he had basically tapped into that with this one hose. So that tube ran into the liquid and another tube came out of the other hole and did not touch the liquid, but was meant to keep the stuff from smelling like gas. So he's got. Essentially the gas is coming in, but he's using the other hose with his friar's balsam to cover it up. According to his own account, after giving her a cup of tea, he had Meryl sit on a kitchen chair with a scarf over her head and inhale this concoction. And essentially what he's doing is he's turning on the gas valve while she's doing that. And so what she's inhaling unknowingly is carbon monoxide. Right. So she's breathing in this carbon monoxide. And it took less than a minute for her. Essentially, she passed out with ever really knowing that this was happening to her. Right. Very effective way and also this speaks to Christy Christie, the coward Christie. Right. And most serial killers are cowards, but he's even more one. I mean, he doesn't even. He doesn't even attack her. Yeah, he doesn't attack. He doesn't give her a chance. Exactly. He doesn't give her a chance. So he knocks her out, and then once she's passed out, he strangles her with a stocking. Now, while he's strangling her, and this goes to his mo, he's having sex with her. So much like he did with the first lady that he killed. He's strangling her. He's having sex with her. He's murdering her. And he does murder her. And then he buries her in the back garden next to where he buried Ruth. So now there are two women buried in the back garden.
Alice
By the way, this is like not just his own backyard either. This is clearly a shared building, which is crazy.
Brett
Yes. So he continues, you know, he's at Ultra Radio Works. He leaves it, he goes to the post office Saving bank where he works for a while. This is where he is when the Evans trial happens. And he ends up getting fired. Getting fired from this. He becomes very depressed and he loses nearly 30 pounds. Now recall, just remind you the timeline here. So in 43, he kills his first victim. Right. In 44, he kills his second victim. So that's in 44. Then nothing happens for a while until 1949. In 1949 is when the Evans incident happens. It's when Beryl and Geraldine are murdered. It's when the police show up. It's when Timothy is arrested. It's when the trial happens. So despite killing two people in very quick succession, he hasn't done anything for a few years. And then all of a sudden this other murder occurs.
Alice
So when you say that at trial, his criminal offenses come to light. Which particular criminal offenses? Because he has like theft and then he has some violent stuff.
Brett
So basically all those prior arrests for the stealing, for the whacking the woman with the bat, for the stealing from the post office, all of that stuff is used on cross examination to attack his credibility. So that's when all of that becomes public. And his employer, who's a government employer, who, once again, you know, he keeps getting these jobs and nobody ever. Including government jobs, including jobs of pretty high trust. Right. He's working at a savings bank. Despite that and despite his violent criminal history, I mean, he's. He's literally. They don't know about the murders, but he's literally struck somebody with a bat. I can't emphasize that enough, how awful that is and how troubling that should be to anyone who's. Who's thinking about hiring him. He gets hired anyway. What all comes out, this story is huge. The Evans trial is a massive media event in Britain. Everybody's paying attention to it. Christie becomes relatively famous. His prior crimes become famous, and he loses his job. And after he loses his job, he falls into this deep depression. He loses a whole bunch of weight, and we move into the next part of this story.
Alice
So apparently, like the 1940s, 50s in the UK was a great place to work, because despite all this, Christie actually finds another job. In August of 1950, he starts working in a clerical position at the British Road Transport Services, also pretty good job there. And then December 6, 1952, Christie suddenly resigns from his job with the transport services. With no notice, he tells his boss that he found a job in Sheffield where his wife had relocated earlier that year. And all of a sudden, he's gone. Later that month, December 11, 1952, Ethel went to her friend Rosie's house to watch TV. The next day, Ethel went to Maxwell Laundries to do her laundry, and she was seen by several witnesses who recalled her appearing, quote, well and cheerful. She did not mention an upcoming trip or anything kind of going wrong in her Life. Then on December 15, John Christie sends a letter that Ethel had previously written to her sister in Sheffield. It was originally dated the 10th, but John changed the date to the 15th. At the same time, Christy began telling his neighbors that Ethel had moved to Sheffield and he would be joining her shortly. Now, this seems strange to these friends because they thought it was unlike Ethel to leave so abruptly without even saying goodbye to them. Now, Christy also began spreading a strong disinfectant around his house and garden around this time.
Brett
And he's spraying this disinfectant everywhere. This is, if you read the book that I was talking about, Death in the Air. He has these neighbors who've moved in and they're. I forget where they're from. I think they're from the West Indies. They're from the West Indies. And Christie's always, like, dropping these racial slurs about him, but he's also. He's always talking about how they. They cook this food and the aroma is just terrible and it's so pungent and he hates it. And he basically says he's using all this disinfectant because they're so dirty and everything they do is so disgusting. And he has to clean and that's why he's having to use all this. And everybody's like, okay. And he also explains, like, why it kind of stinks around the house. Well, that's those folks in the West Indies. He doesn't, he doesn't call them folks. They're cooking. It's all that food they cook stinks. That's what he says. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game, shifting a little money here, a little there, and hoping it all works out well? With the name your price tool from Progressive, you can be a better budgeter and potentially lower your insurance bill too.
Alice
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Brett
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Alice
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Alice
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Brett
So January 8, 1953 Christie suddenly sells all of his furniture and he also sells Ethel's wedding band, which is a very strange thing to do since usually your wife would be wearing that. Eleven days later, on January 19, 1953, despite selling all of his furniture, he kills 25 year old Rita Nelson. Rita was pregnant at the time of her death and she would later be determined that she was raped and strangled. So going back to the M.O. that Christy has, he rapes her and strangles her to death. On February 2, 1953, Christie falsifies Ethel's signature and empties all the money out of her bank account. That same month, Christy murders another sex worker that he had picked up in Notting Hill. 26 year old Kathleen Maloney. Same story. Strangled, raped. That's February 2nd and now. I mean, like I said, talk about accelerating. January 19th murder. February 2nd murder. March 6th, 1953 Christie kills 26 year old Hectorina McLennan. It was McLennan and her boyfriend were looking to sublet Christie's apartment from him. So they he had put out an advertisement to sublet his apartment. Remember he sold all the furniture. He's emptied out his wife's bank account. Basically this lady and her boyfriend they want to sublet. She comes by to see the apartment without her boyfriend. Christy takes advantage of that opportunity Rapes her and murders her.
Alice
What are we up to? Like, five, six at this point in a very compressed time period? I mean, this is getting. This is a frenzy, but it's not over. So now, March 20, 1953, Christie's still looking to rent his apartment, remember? So he agrees to rent his apartment to a woman named Mrs. Riley and her husband. They actually pay him three months rent in advance and lend him a suitcase. Christy moves out of that apartment on March 20, and the next day, the landlord informs the Rileys that Christy does not own the apartment and he actually has no right to lease it to them. So they had paid him three months worth of rent. And the landlord's like, wait a second, I own this apartment, not him. So they don't have actually a right to live in that apartment. So even though the Rileys thought they were supposed to move in, the landlord asks them to leave, which actually they're happy to do because the second they got in, they noticed a really foul odor throughout the entire apartment. So when the landlord was like, look, you got duped. I own this place. You can't belong here. You gotta leave. They're like, you know what? Fine, good riddance, because it smells disgusting in here. Now, around March 25, 1953, considering Christie's apartment was now vacant, because, remember, the Riley's lent him a suitcase, he got out of Dodge, he's now sold his furniture, emptied Ethel's account, and also has three months worth of rent for an apartment that he doesn't own. The landlord lets the the upstairs tenant, Beresford Brown, used the kitchen in Christie's unit. Now, as soon as Brown came down to the apartment, he was immediately struck by a horrific smell. And so he begins to attempt to clean up whatever that smell is. He decided to put up a shelf on the wall for his radio. But he knocked on the wall until he found an area that sounded hollow. After removing some wallpaper, he noticed a door behind it. He couldn't get the door to open, but he shined a light in the crack where he made a gruesome discovery. It looked as if the body of a naked woman was inside of the wall.
Brett
Yeah. So obviously the police are called and the officers, the coroner, they all show up at 10 Rillington Place. They are able to open that door and they are shocked. And what they see first, you know, Beresford Brown, he was completely right. There was a naked young woman in this cupboard. She was very dead and her back was to them, just as he had described. They remove her body from the cupboard. And when they do, they notice there's something else, very large, wrapped in a blanket. They unwrap the blanket, and inside they find another woman wearing only a garter belt and stockings. Her wrists were tied in front of her, and she had clearly been strangled with a ligature. They remove her body, and when they remove her body, they see something else, and in fact, it is another body wrapped in a blanket, propped up on its head and leaning against the wall. This lady's ankles had been tied with electric cord, and cloth was covering her head.
Alice
I'm never going to go to sleep ever again in my life. Not one, but three bodies.
Brett
Trust your nose.
Alice
No kidding. But also, I mean, talk about, like, really trying to kick the can down the road, like it wasn't going to smell less no matter how much disinfectant you poured around this apartment. So even though the police removed three bodies from the cupboard, the cupboard was empty, but the horrors persisted. In the parlor, investigators noticed some loose floorboards. They pulled them up and dug through the rubble, and there they found a fourth female victim, this one much older than the other three. It was Ethel Christie. Poor woman. Man, she was separated from him for 10 years and came back, only to be murdered and stuffed into the floorboards of her own home. Autopsies were performed, and the women were identified as Hectorina McLennan, Kathleen Maloney, Rita Nelson, and Ethel Christie. The investigators continued searching Christie's apartment and decided to dig up the garden. There they found the scattered skeletal remains of Ruth first and Muriel Eddy. Now investigators just had to find the man himself. Christy. So a citywide manhunt ensued, because what they just discovered was one of the most horrific serial killer scenes you can imagine. They didn't have to look far. How did he get away for so long? This must have been reeking from his apartment, but somehow he's been able to get away with a suitcase that doesn't belong to him and a bunch of money that also doesn't belong to him.
Brett
So they launched the citywide manhunt. This becomes the story in London. Everyone's looking for him. Christie is so, like, innocuous, and he just doesn't stand it at all. That despite the fact everyone's looking for him for, like, six days, they think, man, maybe he fled to the continent. Maybe he went to America. You know, maybe he did this. He. No, he's just. He's just wandering around London like, this story's all over London. His pictures all over newspapers. Nobody notices him. He just wanders around London until finally, a police officer spots him near the Putney Bridge in South London. He takes him into custody. At the time of his arrest, he was carrying an identity card, a ration book, his union card, an ambulance badge, and, oddly, an old newspaper clipping about the remand of Timothy Evans, his old neighbor. He was brought down to the Putney police station and interrogated. And he quickly admitted to the murders of the four women found inside his home. At this time, he was not aware that the police had dug up the garden. And in fact, there were six women who were found there. But according to him, none of the deaths were his fault. A lot of accidental deaths.
Alice
Because I was gonna say, just like Ruth, you know, she came in, demanded sex from him, stripped down, and wanted him to run away with her. And the only answer to that was to strangle her while having relations with her and then throwing her into the walls or into the backyard. So this seems all like a likely story. So he starts explaining about his wife, Ethel. He said that she was in their bed, and gosh darn it, she was keeping him up because she kept moving around. She couldn't get comfortable, was moving around and awoke him. And at that time, her face was blue and she was choking. So that's why she was moving. And it seemed to Christy that it was too late. She was about to be gone. He couldn't call for help. He tried so hard to help her, to help her breathe, to save her life, but he just couldn't. And it was so clear. She was just at death's door. And rather than watch her suffer like a lame horse, he decided to end her suffering. He got a stocking. Cause there was no other option at this point. And out of pure humanity, he strangled her. So after he did this for her own good, he found a bottle that had some Phenobarbitone tablets. Now, it was nearly empty, but it did have some pills in it still, and they were for his insomnia. And he realized. Oh, my gosh. Ethel. Ethel. Stupid Ethel. She had taken these pills to kill herself. She wasn't choking. She took the Feno Barbatone tablets on purpose to commit suicide. She was depressed. She'd been depressed for so long. She'd been depressed over these new tenants whom she viewed as persecuting her.
Brett
It's amazing how he keeps coming back to the tenants.
Alice
Those darn tenants. And by the way, none of this comes from Ethel. This all comes from. Because you know what? Ethel's dead. And she never complained about these persecuting, smelly Stinky tenants before. But he realized what she'd done. Ethel. Ethel. Why did you have to do this? So he left her there in the bed for two or three days because he was, I guess, too sad that she was dead.
Brett
I guess it's.
Alice
Whatever it was. But he was walking around with her dead body in their bed, and one day when he walked by, Squeak, he realized, wait, I have some loose boards in the front room. It kind of dips down a little bit, so that's where she should lay. So he wrapped her lovingly in a blanket, and he laid her to rest in that little depression in the ground under the floorboards of the front room so that she could be near him forever. And he said, quote, I thought that was the best way to lay her to rest. How could you blame him?
Brett
Yeah. And if that were the only death, I mean, who knows?
Alice
You know?
Brett
He's just a heartbroken man. He lost his wife. Alice, judging this man. He lost his wife. God can't believe you. The unfortunate thing for Christie, number one, no one believe that story. But he has more dead bodies to account for, so he has to come
Alice
up more stories, quite literally.
Brett
So this was a mercy killing. I mean, honestly, she really killed herself. He just.
Alice
Can we talk about flaming over here?
Brett
Yeah. I mean, seriously, right? Easter, this guy's a real piece of work. So that's Ethel. So regarding Rita Wilson, he claimed that she had demanded 30 shillings from him in the street and said if he refused, she would scream and accuse him of assaulting her. Now, he tried to do the right thing. He tried to walk away, but, darn it, she wouldn't let him go. And she followed him into his home. She then hit him with a frying pan. And when she hit him with the frying pan, you just got to imagine how this happened.
Alice
Okay?
Brett
So she whacks him with a frying pan. She hits him so hard, Christy falls down, knocked out. She falls backwards into a chair that just so happened to have a rope hanging from it. So he's out cold, he wakes up, and there she is in the chair, strangled. She's essentially strangled herself after hitting him with a frying pan. And boom. What's a man to do? You know? These things happen, right?
Alice
She fell into a noose, y'. All. She fell into a noose.
Brett
She fell into the news.
Alice
Exactly. How does that news hang from a chair, anyways?
Brett
Yeah, exactly. Why do you hang a noose from your chair? How do you fall into a chair and get your head in the noose, strangle yourself how does that happen? I don't know. But, I mean, like most people who saw something so horrific that. What does he do? Like a good Englishman? He makes some tea. He makes himself some tea. She's strangled to death in the chair, drinks it, goes to bed. Next day, he wakes up, she's still in the chair. He's got to do something with her, right? I mean, what are you gonna do, right? Who would believe this story? Like, it's not like he can go to the police and tell them this thing happened. He's got. You know, he's had a mercy killing before. He didn't even defend himself. Like, the house rose up to defend him from this woman. So he decides, I'm going to put her in the cupboard because you can't
Alice
lay her with your wife.
Brett
No, that would.
Alice
Different places.
Brett
Yeah, that wouldn't be cool at all. Okay. But the problem is, once again, that's two. We got four more to go, but two more that he knows they found. So then there's Kathleen Maloney. And he says, look, you know, this is rough. This has been a rough time for him. Two people have died in his house. So he decides, I'm gonna go out to the cafe and have some. Something to drink. And you know what? Maybe I need to get out of this apartment. This apartment is cursed. I need to get out of it. So he goes out to this cafe. He runs into this young lady who's looking for an apartment. And wouldn't you know it, he has an apartment. So maybe she should come home with him and look at the house. This one, you know, he's probably still suffering from the blow to the head from the frying pan because he takes her back to the apartment, and then he doesn't know what happened. He has a complete memory loss. All he knows is he wakes up and there she's on the floor, unconscious, apparently dead. Unclear what happened. Maybe she fell in the same chair. Nobody can say. And he's like, well, shoot, you know, here we go. What am I gonna do? I guess I'll put her in the cupboard, too. So that's his first three deaths, of which he is completely innocent. That occur to him? I'm very unlucky. If you guys have ever seen Tucker and Dale vs Evil. Very similar story. It's just he's just around and all these people keep dying on him, and he doesn't know what to do, so he puts them in the cupboard. And I wish I was joking, but these are the stories that. That he is telling the police.
Alice
He has the worst luck in the world because people just keep dropping dead around him. He doesn't even touch them or look at them. They just fall into nooses or, you know, choke on pills that they swallow themselves. Now, when it comes to Hectorina McLennan, though, he had two different stories about how she died. In the first, he seemed to indicate that Hectorina and her boyfriend, they were down on their luck. They needed a place to stay, so he invited them in to share his apartment with him out of the goodness of his heart. And they stayed together in this. Remember, he had sold all his furniture, right? So it's a barely furnished flat, and it's not exactly very comfortable when you don't really have chairs or furniture or beds to share with two other people. The three of them had kind of an uncomfortable stay. So in one version of the story, Christy asked Hectorina and her boyfriend to leave because this wasn't fun. And he said that the girl returned the next night to wait for her boyfriend. And Christy was like, look, lady, you gotta get out. And so they struggled a bit, and some of her clothing just fell off. It got torn off. She has no idea what happened. They were talking, and all of a sudden her clothes started falling off her body. And then, can you believe it? While they're struggling and talking about how she can't stay here, she just falls limp and she sinks to the floor. And Christy was like, oh, no. Did some of that clothing that just fell off of you get wrapped around your neck and it just strangled you, like, right there? He's watching something crazy in front of his eyes. So he pulled her into the kitchen and he sat her on a chair. Now, she seemed to be dead at that point, so he just said, well, I don't have a place to put you all my dead people in this house. So he put her in the cupboard as well, because the clothing that just fell off happened to strangle her, and he had nothing to do with it. So that story changes later because even on the spectrum of Christie's stories, this one's pretty. Pretty outlandish. So in a second story that he told much later, he claimed that while Hectorina and her boyfriend were at the labor exchange, he actually showed up and invited Hectorina to come to his house that morning, but alone. He gave her a drink, and he unfastened a clasp that released a gas. So she tried to leave, but he stopped her in the hallway. He said, quote, I seized hold of her by the neck and applied just sufficient pressure to make her limp. That Makes it seem so calm. Just sufficient pressure for you to go limp, my dear. Then he took her back to the kitchen, where he decided it was, quote, essential to use the gas again. I made love to her and then put her back on the chair. I killed her. He shoved her into the alcove in a sitting position, and he kept her upright by hooking her bra to the blanket around Maloney's legs. So this one, he does claim to have murdered her.
Brett
And he starts to come clean on a lot of these, because, as you're going to see, his trial strategy is a unique one. So initially, everything's an accident. People are just falling into their clothes, getting choked, falling into ropes, killing themselves. It's just like a cavalcade of insanity all around him of dying people. Right? But eventually, he starts telling these stories where he's laying out what actually happened. And this really starts when he is confronted with the evidence from the garden. Because it's one thing these. And I'm saying this as if it makes sense, it's one thing to explain these four murders the way he has. But how are you going to explain the two dead ladies buried in the garden who obviously had been there for years at this point? He says, okay, fine, he murdered them. But now everybody's like, okay, so you killed six people and buried them in the garden or stuffed them in the walls of your house. What about the Evans murders? What about Beryl and Geraldine? Did you murder them? Or did Timothy Evans murder him? And at first, now by this point, he is admitting, I murdered those six people. But when they asked him about the Evans, but he's like, no, I did not kill them. I didn't kill Beryl. I didn't kill Geraldine. But then he gets a lawyer, and so the lawyer is like, okay, so it's 1950s England. You know, we just executed one guy in a month after we convicted him of only two murders. You got six. What are we gonna do? It's obvious he did it. You know, there's no question. And the only thing they can figure is insanity. We need an insanity defense. And this is gonna be the m' Naughton Rule. We've talked about. The m' Naughton Rule many times comes from England, so of course that's what they're going to use, which is basically, you are so out of touch with reality that you don't really know the difference between good and evil. You are delusional. It's more than the sort of the colloquial use of the word crazy. And we call people crazy all the time. I mean, you know, you see Coburger and you say, man, that man's a madman, right? He's crazy. He's a crazed killer, right? Well, that isn't crazy in the legal sense. In the legal sense. You know, I thought I was fighting aliens or demons, and it turned out they were people, right? That kind of thing is what you really need for this insanity defense. So his lawyers are trying to figure out, how are we going to do this? And they decide. And this is questionable strategy, but they decide the only way we're going to prove, Convince a jury this guy's crazy is he needs to have killed as many people as possible. We need to get this murder count really high to such an extent that no sane person would do this. So therefore, he must be crazy. So his lawyers, his own lawyers start putting a lot of pressure on him to say that he killed Beryl and Geraldine. And their whole theory is, look, the more people you killed, the more likely you are to be crazy. So that's what they tell him.
Alice
Well, not a great strategy, y'. All.
Brett
Not a great strategy. But eventually he's like, okay, fine, I killed Beryl. So he says he killed her. But he also says it was a mercy killing. This is kind of along the lines of his wife. He says that essentially she was so distraught about her life and so distraught about the pregnancy and so distraught about being married to a brute like Evans that she begged him to help her kill herself. So not. Not to have an abortion, but to kill herself. And in fact, he found her in the midst of a suicide attempt using gas, which he was good at. But she failed. She couldn't make it work. So he agreed to kill her. He agreed to help her, and he did kill her. But despite his attorney's urgings, he would not say that he killed Geraldine. He was adamant he didn't do that. He did not kill the baby, like, either. He did kill her, but despite the fact he's not admitted to killing seven people, like, that was just too far even for him, or he didn't do it right.
Alice
For what it's worth, it's not his M.O.
Brett
and it's not his M.O. it is a little out of normal. So. Okay, so this is an interesting thing. Now we're setting this up. Well, he's now going to trial. June 22, 1953, he goes to trial. And they do this in much the same way as the Evans trial. They don't charge him with all the murders. They only charge him with the murder of his wife, Ethel Christie, that's the murder they charge him with. And at the Old Bailey, same place that Evans was tried, and he pleads not guilty by reason of insanity. As I said, he's only charged with murdering his wife. But in an interesting twist, all the murders are brought in by the defense. The defense is like, no, bring in the murders. We want that 404B. Bring it in. The more murders, the better. And so they're bringing in all these murders, just piling this in. Crazy strategy, right? But that is their strategy. The trial lasts for four days, and it takes the jury an hour and 20 minutes to announce the verdict. Christie was guilty and he would be sentenced to death.
Alice
And the UK does it quick because July 15, 1953, like a couple weeks later, not even a full month later, Christy is hanged at Pentonville Prison. That same day, after an inquiry and two parliamentary debates regarding whether Timothy Evans did in fact kill his wife and daughter, the findings were released. The investigation found that it was Evans who had been the killer. But despite this finding, the public remained unconvinced that two murderers lived in the same house and called for another inquiry, which was initially denied. Fast forward to 1961. So Christie had been hanged eight years earlier, after Ludovic Kennedy's book 10 Rillington Place came out, which criticized the investigation into Beryl and Geraldine's death. Another parliamentary debate was held, but still a second inquiry was denied.
Brett
By the way, Christie was hanged by the same hangman who hung, hanged Timothy Evans. So, you know, a little bit of continuity there. So we're having all these debates in England and all of this is happening, by the way, and this is important against the backdrop of England's debate over the death penalty. So in the 50s, there had been a death penalty abolishment movement. Now you have this sort of very strange situation where people think, maybe we executed a guy who was innocent. And so this is something that hangs around in the public's mind and becomes used more, more and more by politicians. In 1965, politician Herbert Wolf and editor of the Northern Echo, Harold Evans formed the Timothy Evans Committee, calling for another inquiry into the matter. Their efforts worked, and in 1965, Home Secretary Sir Frank Saskis ordered a new inquiry which was to be led by High Court Judge Sir Daniel Brabin. The inquiry went on from 1965 to 1966, with Braben ultimately concluding something that doesn't make any sense, ultimately concluding that Timothy Evans likely did murder his wife, but did not murder his daughter. And remember, he was only charged with murdering his daughter. Recall, they were afraid that, you know, what gentleman in England would convince the man for murdering his annoying wife. So we're only going to charge him with murdering his daughter. And so now this inquiry has concluded. Well, actually, he did murder his wife, but the one he was convicted of murdering, he did not kill.
Alice
What, like, we'll go into theories later, but, like, much more likely the other way around.
Brett
Much more likely, yeah.
Alice
So In October of 1966, Timothy Evans was granted a posthumous royal pardon for the murder of his daughter. What? He had never been charged with the murder of his wife. So now he's basically exonerated. He's, like, clean as the driven snow, I guess. And his body was exhumed from Pentonville Prison and reburied in St. Patrick's Roman Catholic cemetery in Leytonstone, London. So he's not a murderer at all. Whatever it is. He's completely, you know, exonerated here. January 2003. Now we've just jumped ahead, like, half a century. Timothy Evans, half sister and sister, were awarded compensation for the miscarriage of justice on his behalf. So not only was he exonerated in death, moved from that prison burial ground to a Catholic cemetery, now his family members are actually given, like, a civil settlement for the miscarriage of justice of being hanged.
Brett
Okay, so that brings us to sort of a few things we're going to talk about some which we've already talked about a little bit, we're going to talk about more, because you have a situation where John Reginald Christie is a serial killer, there's no question about it. And he's living in this apartment with this violent couple, the Evans. And there was just this really kind of, I don't know, naive, bizarre belief by the British public that it's just, what are the chances that two murderers could be living in the same apartment? And they just couldn't believe it. It's just not possible that you could have one sort of innocuous murderer living in the same place as a serial killer. So you have this in this froth of political intrigue of what's going to happen death penalty. And what you always see with death penalty debates is people are always looking for the innocent person who was executed, because it's much easier to argue for abolishing the death penalty based on the fact that an innocent person might have been executed than it is on the basis that someone who did something really horrible. Like, nobody was going to say, man, I mean, some of y' all would, because you're Very principled, and that's great, but very few people are going to say that. John Reginald Christie, what a tragedy that he was executed. He murdered those six women in really horrible ways. But, wow, what an injustice. We need to get rid of that body. But if you have somebody who was innocent, he was executed, then you're like, okay, you know, this is something people can get behind. So you have this happen. I think it's interesting that it took in 1966. He's exonerated. There's no compensation or anything paid for another, what, 37 years, not till 2003. Kind of makes you wonder, like, did they really think he didn't do it? And there's also the fact that they did think he murdered his daughter. It's just a very strange. Everything that happened is weird about this.
Alice
Right?
Brett
And as far as a. The legal question goes, he was convicted of murdering his daughter. And we talked about his confessions. We talked about the four confessions. We briefly mentioned another one. People talk about the formal confessions that he made. They talk about how there are things about them. Number one, they're not internally consistent. They're completely all over the place. And some people say, well, you know, he was probably beaten by the police or coerced by the police. They point to the fact that he's not the sharpest tool in the shed. Right. I mean, he. It's unclear. It's not as if we have detailed information on his intellect like we would about a Jesse Misskelley, but most people presume that he had some sort of intellectual disability. And when people talk about these cases with people who have intellectual disabilities, advocates will treat people who have those disabilities as if they are incapable of really even functioning. We know that's not true, but that's the way people are often described in these cases. And you got that a lot with the Timothy Evans. Timothy Evans was able in life to do a whole lot of things, but nevertheless, his problems could have contributed to some sort of false confession. But there's another confession that rarely comes up. So he's been arrested. He's already confessed. He's like in a holding cell. And one of the officers who actually would later arrest Christie was standing watch outside of his cell because there was this fear that he might try and take his own life. It's just like we often have now. We have these suicide watches. And Evans began to confide in him while this is happening. And he tells this officer that after Beryl's death, Geraldine just wouldn't stop crying, and he couldn't figure out how to make her happy. Like he tried to feed her, he tried to rock her, but she just wouldn't stop crying. And it's the middle of the night and he can't sleep and he's so tired and he just couldn't take it anymore. And he strangles the baby. He murders the baby to quiet her. And the officer actually reported this conversation. He immediately goes to his superiors, he reports the conversation. But the position of everybody's like, well that's interesting. But he's already confessed. We got all the evidence. So great. They don't like document it. It's never testified to in trial, but it is something that this person reported. So this is a really interesting confession because it happens outside of the interrogation setting. And it seems to confirm that Evans killed his daughter. And what's interesting about it is when he tells this story, he doesn't actually confess to killing Beryl. He only confesses to this officer in the story, to killing Geraldine. I think that's pretty interesting because it may point to a possibility here where both men are actually guilty of something. Guys, it's hard to believe summer is almost upon us. It's going to be spring before you know it and that means it's going to be heating up and you're going to want to be out at the pool. And let me tell you, my kids love the pool. And what they also love is dressing up in coordinated swimsuits. And that's one reason I love Minnow. Minnow is a family lifestyle brand that embraces clean lines, simple details and crisp seaside breezes. I'm finding something for my six year old daughter, my four year old son and my nearly one year old that all match, that they'll all love and that they can wear out to the pool. Every suit is thoughtfully designed with comfort, performance and protection in mind. All suits have UPF 50 plus protection blocking 98% of UVA and UVB rays.
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Alice
If you remember, when they looked at the autopsy for Geraldine, she did have bruising on her face, which would be consistent with strangling, smothering her here. And I think we never talk about our theories before we do this, but I think it's very interesting that from the very beginning, really, Evans's confessions have included Christy. Now let's talk about Christie's trial strategy. So Christy, as we said, had many stories about all these women he murdered, right? But he never denied killing them. So Beryl and Geraldine were different. Though Christie was adamant he did not kill either the mother or the daughter. However, Christie's lawyers were the one who adopted this very unusual trial strategy. Remember where they said in order to save Christy's life, they have to prove that he was insane, he was mad. And the only way they could do that is that the more people Christy killed, the more likely the jury would buy this defense that he was insane, didn't know what he was doing. And so Christy was encouraged by these attorneys strenuously to admit to killing Beryl. Only at that point did Christy agree to confess to her murder. But of course, we now know, despite the efforts of his attorneys, this strategy didn't work. Christy, you know, wasn't actually found to be insane at all. But even in this world of saying, look, we gotta get the body count high, the higher it is, the more likely you're gonna be found insane. He actually never admits to killing Geraldine. He's adamant he had nothing to do with killing Geraldine. And again, look, he eventually comes around, even with all these women whose clothes just fall off of them, and he still plays a part in it. And ultimately he comes around saying, yeah, I killed him.
Brett
But he eventually admits that's how we know how all of them died, because he tells a crazy story at first. But then when this tra. When this strategy happens, that's when he talks about the gas and the tubes and all that stuff, like he tells that whole story, right? And some people don't even believe that. I think he was lying about that. He did murder him, but maybe the gas stuff was made up.
Alice
I don't know.
Brett
The gas seems pretty effective to me. Geraldine's interesting, too, because of all the. If you're the lawyers and you truly believe, your only hope is to really show this guy was totally Crazy. I would think Geraldine would be very helpful because it's such a different kind of sexually motivated.
Alice
Right. Like, it's just. Like it's just an innocent little baby.
Brett
He can't even control himself. Right. Yeah. He's so mad, he just kills. Can't help it. Which, once again, not the best strategy.
Alice
Strategy? I don't buy it, but I guess
Brett
if that's all you had, I mean, I don't know. Okay, so let's talk about the anomalies about this. So did he do this? So there are a number of anomalies with the murders of Beryl and Geraldine that don't fit Christie's mo. First, there's no evidence that Christie ever murdered a child, so this would automatically be unusual for him to murder Geraldine. But second, Beryl shows no signs of sexual assault. This is unusual for Christie. Everyone he murdered. He raped his wife. It's a little unclear, but he also was married to her, so I don't know how much we can say of that, but certainly the other women, he murdered them, raped them, raped them while he was murdering them. There's no evidence of sexual assault for Beryl, and this was something they did check. They didn't do as good a job as they could have, but it is something they checked. Third, Christie always concealed his victims. You know, he buries them under the floorboards. He put those three women in the cupboard. But remember, he sealed the door and covered it up, right? I mean, yes, there's the smell, but he's trying to cover that up with the various disinfectants and everything else. But Barrel and Geraldine are just left sitting in the shed for quite a long time for anyone to find. Even if he might do that temporarily before he moved to somewhere else. He never moves them. He just leaves them there and eventually they are found. And in fact, you know, the police had come to 10 Rillington Place about these murders, didn't find them and leave. He doesn't say, man, I need to hide those bodies in case they come back. He does nothing with them, so that's a little unusual. Also, Beryl had injuries to her face. She had a swollen right eye and a bloodied lip, which were more consistent with a violent murder than Christie's M.O. of subduing his victims with gas before killing them. And are also consistent with the story that Timothy Evans, in his third confession told. And consistent with what both Christy and his wife. And this is important, his wife also testified at trial about his hearing what happened upstairs. And there's really no indication that if his wife thought that Christie had murdered these two people, that she would lie to get Timothy Evans executed. So that is a big hole in the story that she's telling, the story of hearing this fight, hearing the silence, and then not seeing Beryl anymore.
Alice
Right.
Brett
And then you see on barrel, this evidence of being struck. Now, look, Christy had been violent before he struck the lady with the bat. That happened. But in his murders, he did not tend to be violent. He tended to subdue them. And frankly, it seems like Christy had this bizarre for any normal person, but maybe fairly typical psychosexual thing going on. You know, how does he describe what he did to one lady, that he made love to her? Like he's literally strangling her to death after incapacitating her with gas, he calls it making love to her. And think in his mind this is some bizarre. Consensual is a strong word, but interaction. And so the beating seems not that consistent with that. And then. And if you haven't been disturbed enough by this story, let's just go the final step. There's the hair. So Christy kept trophies of his victims, and in his case, the trophy that he preferred to keep was hair. In particular, pubic hair. So Christie's victims, the ones that we had more than skeletons of, were all missing pubic hair. The police were only able to find 110 with four distinct cuttings, one of which they were able to match to his own wife. So he had taken cuttings of her hair as well after he killed her, as well as the three women who were in the cupboard. But Beryl showed no evidence that pubic hair had been removed from her body, and no hair matching her body was found in his possession. So if Christie did kill her, it was a very different kind of murder than the ones he had committed before.
Alice
And just by the way, his trophy itself makes Geraldine's murder seem so much more unlikely because it seems very sexually motivated and mature sex, not pedophilia. Right. And, well, boy, was that a tower of terror crash. Yeah. I mean, seriously, I mean, literally, the more. Whoo. How does anyone turn out like that?
Brett
Yeah. And, you know, we talked about his background. I mean, there's no real regular, normal background.
Alice
He's the youngest. The only thing was, he's the baby of the family, I guess. Don't spoil the baby of the family, guys.
Brett
Yeah, I was a boy scout. He was a war hero. I mean, you know, he had a lot going for him, who's a police officer, but he had this in him where he turned really violent. Okay, Alice. So that, I think that brings us the ultimate question. You know, I will say this. In England, it is widely accepted that it's now accepted that he killed both of them. That is just. Timothy Evans was completely innocent. It was a miscarriage of justice. He was an innocent man. He was executed. John Reginald Christie killed both Beryl and Geraldine. That's the widely held view. One group of people who does not believe that are actually Beryl and Geraldine's family. So her brother, a few years ago, actually wrote a book about this, saying that this was complete miscarriage of justice, that Timothy Evans was a horrific, violent brood of a man who terrorized his sister and he was the one who killed her. And that this was a very bizarre thing that happened with Christie, but that it was Timothy Evans who did it. He obviously had a lot of personal interactions with Evans. And just because Evans was a violent brood of a man doesn't mean he did it.
Alice
We have a literal serial killer, literal serial killer there. A literal serial killer, proven serial killer living below. So I think both men are involved. I think that they got to talking and Christie taught Evans how to get rid of his wife, which is why there are markings of the same type of murder. She was strangled to death, and so was Geraldine. I think that for sure, 100%, there was a miscarriage of justice, because I think Evans was rightfully convicted for murdering Geraldine. I also think it's highly likely that it was by the hands of Timothy Evans who killed Beryl. It's possible Christy was there coaching him through this. Probably not because of what Ethel heard, but I think that the men had probably talked and whatever it was, maybe, I don't know, you see killers in each other's eyes, and they just understood each other. But Evans hadn't killed before, and this was a way to get rid of his pesky wife. And the disposal of the body very well may have been actually Christy helping Evans as well. But here's what I think happened. This poor woman had no chance. There were absolutely two killers in that building. And I'm not exactly positive, but I think the fact that with all four confessions, why bring in Christy? It is such a bizarre thing to bring him in. There is some interwoven involvement of Evans. Whether it was physically being there. I think that may not actually be the case. Or he is the one who incepted this idea, taught him how to do it, and perhaps even helped him carry out the removal and hiding away of the two kids. I think there's a lot of Truth in what he said. And I think his third confession, and certainly the confession to the guard that was never actually testified to, that Geraldine was not the original intent. Maybe things just got violent out of hand. And maybe he hadn't even planned Beryl's murder, but eventually, because of his violence, it was gonna get there. And he had been talking to a serial killer neighbor and knew kind of his MO and knew how to kill someone. But Geraldine, I think, was probably crying in the middle of the night and Evans couldn't deal with it and smothered her. Maybe it wasn't premeditated. Maybe that actually could have been one of those, like, I lost my mind, I didn't know what I was doing. But I think there is no question that Evans killed his daughter and did have a hand. We say this all the time. Even if your hands didn't kill the person, if you were the reason they're dead because you hired someone or you put it into motion, you're still guilty of it. So I think he was rightfully convicted of Geraldine. If he were charged for his wife's murder, he should have been found guilty as well. But both of them were rightfully hanged, so there wasn't a miscarriage of justice in that sense.
Brett
Yeah. I mean, okay, first of all, I think he absolutely killed Geraldine. I just don't. It's so strange that the government, it's like they decided, we want to exonerate this guy, but the only way to do that is to say he didn't kill his daughter. So we'll say he killed his wife, but not his daughter, who's convicted of his daughter. It's just such a. It's so weird, right? Because it seems much more likely that he killed his daughter now. I think you're right. They have to be involved. And there's a few things here, okay? There has to be some interaction between the two of them. Because in a world where Beryl and Geraldine, without Timothy, he just goes to work one day and he comes home and his wife and daughter are missing. In a world where that happened, anyone who functions in society, and I don't care what his intellectual challenges were, would go try and find him. You know, like even imagine a world in which Tim's had some bad run ins with the police before, doesn't like the bobbies, you know, and he's like, I ain't going coppers. I'm going to go to them. He'd at least look for him. He'd been trying to find him. He'd ask her mom like, hey, did Barrel come home? Did she be jailed in. You know, we've been having issues, something, right? You wouldn't just sell all your furniture and move back to Wales. That is such a bizarre thing to do, right? If you were just completely innocent, had nothing to do with it, but you also wouldn't just so happen to implicate your mild manner neighbor who turns out to be a serial killer if he didn't have something to do with it. He has to be involved somehow. And I think, and I don't think we'll ever know exactly. I mean, I feel very confident he killed Geraldine. What happened to Beryl is much harder to say. It's possible Christie killed her. It's possible it was some weird thing happened. Maybe there even was some sort of abortion type thing and Christy just got a kick out of it. Wasn't sexual in a typical way, but it was the same sort of power dynamic. Even though he didn't rape her, just the idea of her coming to him for help and him murdering her gave him such a thrill that he did that.
Alice
Right?
Brett
That's a possibility. And one reason I think that they both had to be involved is because Evans, not only does he walk into a police station, remember, in a world where he had nothing to do with his daughter and wife being killed, that first confession, he's not being tortured, he's not being coerced, he's not being.
Alice
He's not even on the radar, not
Brett
on the radar at all. He literally walks into the police station and says, I murdered my wife and put her down the drain. That's literally what he says. He's got some involvement.
Alice
And by the way, I think with that, I think this is why, I think at the very least, Christy helped dispose of the body because remember, Evans already got out of Dodge, so there really was that drain in front. And I think that was the plan. But Christy couldn't lift the manhole by himself. And so actually in that first confession, Evans was saying what he actually thought that his wife was down the drain. But in fact, Christy couldn't do it, so he threw her in the shed. Which is why when Ethel went back there previously, she hadn't seen anything because maybe she was under the floorboards and then the drain didn't open. So now she's in the shed.
Brett
I have a theory about this. I'm not sure who killed Beryl. It could have been Christie, it could have been Timothy. You know, maybe that fight did end with a big thump and he hit her and she fell and hit her head and knocked her out. And that's why it ended. And then the next morning, she's, like, threatening to go to the police. Imagine a world in which she's threatened to go to the police. Christie hears that there's. I'll give you my theory, but this is an alternative theory. He hears that, and he thinks, I can't have the police here. I can't have the police messing around in this apartment because I got two bodies buried in the backyard. The last thing I want, the police here. I got to shut that woman up. And he does murder her. He kills her. He gives Tim some cockamamie story about an abortion gone wrong. But then Tim's the one who ends up killing Geraldine. Exactly like he told the officers. Because Tim is a violent man, and he absolutely could do that, particularly if he's sort of broken up. Maybe Christie even tells him that she died as a result of that fight. And there's all sorts of ways it could have gone, right? So that's one possibility.
Alice
Or he could have just said, I killed her for you so that you wouldn't get in trouble. Right? That's maybe why there's this weird, like,
Brett
because the first story, he's protecting Christy, you know, when he tells that story about there's a mystery man, like, why is he protecting Christie? Why is he admitting to the murder. Murder and protecting Christie? It doesn't make any sense unless there is something like that, I think. So whoever killed him. One other possibility, and I actually kind of lean towards this, is that Christie actually wanted the police to find Beryl and Geraldine, because I kind of wonder. So he had them buried in the garden, Remember, he finds the skull, he burns it, he leaves the leg. Well, I think this actually fits in what I'm trying to say. So I think he was really worried about those two bodies buried in the backyard. I think for a long time it bothered him. And he wondered, like, is one day, are they going to be found? Are they going to realize, I did this? Right. Remember, he kills these two people, and then there are no murders for years. Right. I kind of wonder if these two murders fell into his lap. And he told 10, I'll take care of it, like you said. I'll dump him in the grate or whatever. He couldn't lift it. I kind of wonder if he wanted to be found. And that's why he didn't hide them that well, thinking the police will search, they'll find those bodies, and I can push that off on Tim, too, and I can Explain that away. And then I'm free and clear. I don't have to worry about those murders anymore. Like, the police will surely notice the bone propping up the fence. And then I'll say, yeah, that crazy Tim who killed his wife and daughter, he must have killed them too. And he gets away with it, right? I just wonder if there was something like that going on and then it didn't happen that way. They never found the bodies.
Alice
And then I think he starts getting really stressed, which is why he starts killing like crazy, right? He goes in frenzy. Ethel caught on too. Ethel knew something, which is why she probably went, because she lived with him and his violent self for a very long time without getting murdered. But then all of a sudden she gets killed. And everyone else. You're right about this. Everyone else that gets killed afterwards is hidden in the home. And he's getting more and more desperate with the spraying of the disinfectant. Like, if you have a dead body in your house, it's only gonna smell worse over time. It's not gonna smell less unless you do something like remove the body or burn it. But he can't do that because he's freaking out now because his plan didn't work. If that was indeed his plan to be found and blame Evans.
Brett
Yeah, it's just. Cause he's clearly snapped. I mean, there's no out here. There's no end. You know, he's sold everything he has. He's got all the money he's ever going to have, he's quit his job, he's murdered all these people. Like it's inevitable at that point. He's going to be caught before he's trying to hide everything now. It's like completely frenzied. Completely. You know, I hate to say insane, because that was his whole theory, but. Yeah. So something weird happened there. We're never going to know exactly what it was, but I agree with you. Whatever it is. I really feel like both men were
Alice
culpable and both men were rightfully hanged.
Brett
Yeah, I mean, I have no sense of that.
Alice
I do not think there was a miscarriage of justice there.
Brett
I think he absolutely, Timothy Evans absolutely killed his daughter. I just don't.
Alice
100%.
Brett
It doesn't even make sense for Christy to do it. Like it doesn't fit with anything. It doesn't cover anything up.
Alice
Like, she Also, the way his concessions work, point towards it. Right. Like the fourth one is the one that really gets me, that pointed me to his guilt of Geraldine, is if in fact this man just murdered, murdered your wife. You're gonna give your daughter, who you never intended to kill, to the man who killed your wife, the murderer of your wife, to find a safe place for her. That makes no sense. Especially, remember, they have family. Who was the person who was like, something's wrong. It was actually his own mother. And he went to go stay with his aunt, uncle, grandparents. He had lots of family who could care for the child. So this was not a desperate situation where he was going to be the single father with no ability to care. His own mother, who wrote the letter that caused him to walk into that police station, was talking to Beryl every single day. So much so that you would think she was very involved, and she was worried about where Geraldine was, someone who could potentially take care. This happened all the time. This still happens to this day, right? When there's a single parent and maybe a grandparent steps in to try and help out. Especially in, like, a tragic situation where, you know, a very young child loses one of their parents and it's very difficult to hold down a job and care for a young infant. So that wasn't the situation. When he said that he handed her over for safekeeping to the murderer of his wife, that immediately, red bells went off in my mind that he was the one who killed Geraldine. If nothing more than giving Geraldine to a murderer.
Brett
And his first story is very similar. Like, he gave him to random people, you know, like, he's distancing himself so much from Geraldine, it makes it seem more like he killed her than Beryl. Honestly, it makes sense. Right? Like, his descriptions of what happened to Beryl, other than the third one, are very much like, well, something else happened to her. I had to get rid of the body. And then who knows what happened to Geraldine? And it just feels like maybe Christie did kill Beryl. Evans can't come to grips with the fact he killed his daughter, and he's avoiding it.
Alice
The more we talk about this, though, because I do. All along, I've been like, how does this work? But both are culpable in some way with Beryl. I think that may be very well. What you said is that thud, he hurt her really bad, but he may have even almost killed her. Like, she may be completely unconscious and, like, near death. And remember, a lot of Evans's stories are these mercy killings, right? His own wife, Ethel, what was that? A mercy. Mercy killing? Was he actually saying something about Beryl, that that's how they rationalize it to each other, that it was a mercy killing? Maybe that Thud was in fact, he whacked her so hard across the face, we know that there was bruising, there was violence on her face, that she actually was probably near death's door. And if she were to wake up, they're both dead. Right, because he just whopped her so hard that she almost died. And then the police are gonna come and find all these dead bodies in the backyard. So both Evans and Christy are like, we can't let this stand or that she. The reason no one heard from her, she didn't threaten anything that morning because she was near death, if not already dead. So they just finished her off with the both of them because maybe he ran to Christy. Evans was like, what do I do? And Christy was like, I got this. I know what to do.
Brett
And it makes sense because you have sort of her death happens. Then there's some distance with Geraldine. He trusts Christy to take care of both bodies. He flees. When he goes to the police, you know, he only tells them, he protects Christy because Christy knows the truth. So he's got to protect Christy. And he's. He basically says, oh, it was sort of an accident that happened. Wasn't me. It was an accident that happened to Barrel and she died. And then once again, he can't even face what happened to Geraldine. So he distances himself from that with this bizarre story about giving her to some family to take care of her. I mean, that makes sense. I think that is probably as close to what happened as we'll ever know. I mean, we're never gonna know, right? I mean, there's never gonna be some resolution to this story because we know everything we're gonna know. And it's not impossible that Christie killed.
Alice
It just. I just. I mean, I still stand by. Yeah, both of them were rightfully hanged.
Brett
Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. Certainly Christy and I think Evan's certainly Christy. So. All right, well, look, we're interested to know what you guys think, especially if you're in England and you know, this is a story that's often very one sidedly presented to you in. In Britain. So we'd love to hear what you guys think about this. You just email prosecutors pod gmail.com@consolespot for all your social media. Join us on patreon. For only $3, you can get these episodes early and ad free. Or you can go to Apple if you don't want to do Patreon and you have no interest in seeing us record these, you can get yourself an Apple subscription. No ads on that either. So check that out. Read Death in the Air. Great book. Death in the Air. The true story of a serial killer. The great London smog and the strangling of a city. I think it's a very even handed book. Presents both of these sides. Gives you sort of the evidence on both sides, the weaknesses on both sides. I think both. If you want to know about Christie's murder, about the Evans, Christie's murders, the Evans murders, and then also the really interesting story of the smog and the response by the British government. Great book to check out. Let me know what you think about it. Well, Alice, we've gone pretty long today, so I don't know if you want to answer a question and just sign off for now, it's totally up to you.
Alice
We can do a question because it's disturbing and weird. Whoa.
Brett
I don't. Yeah, that was weird.
Alice
That's one of the most bizarre.
Brett
I read that book and I was like, I gotta cover this.
Alice
It is crazy. It's really all I could think about was the ride. The whole time I was like, but when does the bottom come?
Brett
I love that analogy. That's a fantastic analogy.
Alice
Thank you.
Brett
Okay, let's see. This is from Grove Orange. True crime listeners have heard of many crimes perpetrated by individuals posing as law enforcement. Fake arrests leading to abductions, etc. What right does an average Jane have to question a cop pulling her over or wanting to take her in for questioning? How should she verify the law enforcement officer is legit? Don't want to be seen to be resisting arrest. What would each of you do? What are our rights? Well, I mean the simplest answer to that question is if you're getting pulled over, you can always call the police. Like you can. You literally always call the police and say, hey, there's a police officer behind me. They're pulling me over. I'm here, I'm going to pull over. I just want to confirm that this is a police officer. If you do that, you're not going to get in any trouble. I mean, that's one thing you can do. Now, practically speaking, how often are you going to do that? Probably not that often. I mean, obviously look for all the insignia of the police. A police vehicle with lights and sirens,
Alice
and by the way, a car that is very well kept. So I have seen in one of our interviews, I have seen a car before that looked like it had a sheriff's sticker on it. But it was like the hood was a different color. It was rusted through.
Brett
Police cars you can buy old police cars, Correct?
Alice
Correct. Police vehicles would be very well maintained. Like, you have to keep it washed like a fire truck, honestly, at all times. So if you see it rusted, scratched through in any way, not looking like a brand new car, and it's gonna look very rough. It's gonna look like it has a different hood. It has scratches and rust and paint coming off of it. And the sheriff's sign is like half peeled off. Right. That's not legit. Because I think all jurisdictions, it's kind of part of how you maintain your gear. Like, your uniform has to look clean and maintained as well as your vehicle.
Brett
Yeah. So, you know, look for all that. But once again, you can always, while you're being pulled over, call the local police. Call 911 if it's a really weird situation. I mean, that would be the ultimate. That you can always do the other thing. You know, it gets a little shaky here. Police, obviously, when they put the lights on, the sirens, they want you to pull over immediately. People will occasionally drive until they get to a public place and then pull into the public place and the place will be like, why didn't you pull over?
Alice
As long as you put your flashers on.
Brett
Yeah, to acknowledge.
Alice
To acknowledge that you're not running. And don't hit the gas. I mean. Yeah, don't hit the gas when you do it.
Brett
And I would say this. You know, if you're on a deserted road and the police pull up behind you and turn on the lights, and I'll say this, a lot of these stories, number one, they're very rare. Now, occasionally police officers are murderers. Nothing you can do about that. That's very rare. But that does happen. Usually when you hear these stories, it's like somebody's in a plane car and they're flashing their lights, or they approach somebody and just tell them their police officer in plain clothes and just that you should always be very skeptical of and just say, like, I would like to verify who you are. You know, I mean, because remember, if someone's doing that, the whole reason they're doing it is to get you to leave with them without causing a scene. So they're not likely. If you say, I would like to call someone and verify this, they're not likely to cause a scene. You know, they. They'll be in a situation where they're probably just going to have to move on to the next person. Right. So, you know, I think you'd be careful without being overly paranoid. And most likely this is not something you're going to.
Alice
I was gonna say, because the premise of the question was that this happens all the time. I will say the impersonation actually doesn't happen all the time and good impersonation happens even less often. But with all that said, I will admit, especially being like a woman who drives alone in dark country roads where there's like no lights or gas stations for miles, I think about it all the time. I'm like, okay, I'm driving right now and I know the next gas station is like 30, 40 miles away. What would I do if someone put on their lights behind me? I don't know that I would pull over on the side of like a two lane highway by myself. I would probably put. I, this is just me, this is what I. Because I think about these things all the time. Especially when we were doing all those interviews in rural, really rural areas where there was nobody. I would probably put on my flashers immediately so that they knew I was acknowledging I would go the speed limit or go whatever the regular was. Maybe even like drive half on the shoulder. Just acknowledge that. I acknowledge you. I'm driving on the shoulder, but I'm not stopping. And I thought about, I may just go the whole 30 miles until driving on the shoulder. So they totally recognize. Maybe even drive very slowly. If it's a 70, maybe I'd go 45 and wait until the gas station to pull up.
Brett
I do think if you're gonna do that, it's wise to call.
Alice
Oh, I would probably call along as well. Hey, well, here's the thing. If someone were impersonating, they'd probably peel off and just leave. That's true at that point. Cause like I'm causing a scene by flashing my lights and driving on the bumpy, you know, when they like do the whole wake up rubber. So like I'm, I'm actually causing a lot of a scene just doing that. But you can't accuse me of trying to flee.
Brett
I am curious. These impersonation stories, if there is one of an officer who actually had a police car with the lights inside.
Alice
Yeah, I have not heard that. I have heard of like walking up to someone in an unmarked vehicle and then like being. When they're saying like, can I see your stop sign? Yeah, can I see your badge? Like you don't get to ask that. You know, that's resisting arrest. Like I can. But someone with an actual badge and an actual police vehicle with actual lights. I don't think I've heard of a real instance of that.
Brett
An officer who refuses to show you their badge is not a real officer, period. You don't have to worry about resisting arrest if they won't show you a badge because they're not a real officer.
Alice
Including, like, FBI agents. Like, not. Not your, like, beat cops who are in, like, the uniforms. If anyone comes up to you and says that there's some sort of an officer, they should have a badge and there's a unique number on it, and they should be. You're allowed to look at it.
Brett
And usually when we are in interviews with the FBI, that's the first thing they do.
Alice
They put their badge and slide it across the table, and you can pick it up and look at it, and it has their picture and it has some sort of, like, holographic seal on top that makes it difficult to copy. Right.
Brett
All right, well, great question. Keep them coming. Leave five star review. You can do that. All right, guys. Well, this has been fun. And I mean, has it?
Alice
I don't know. I don't know. This. This Christie guy.
Brett
That's what y' all come for, right?
Alice
Well, the whole, like, everyone's clothes just fell off and their clothes strangled themselves. It's just wild.
Brett
If it weren't so tragic, it would be hilarious. Like, his story is hilarious in a twisted, dark way. Well, next week we'll have a less gruesome.
Alice
Well.
Brett
Well, a less gruesome case in some ways equally tragic. But I think you guys will enjoy it quite a bit. That's all we have for tonight. We'll be back next week with that story. But until then, I'm Brett.
Alice
And I'm Alice.
Brett
And we are the prosecutors.
Alice
Let me check my. Sounds pretty good. Let me prop this pillow up a little better. It works. I can hear you.
Brett
Yep. Okay. I'm gonna go live.
Alice
I feel so much better today, having not just gotten off a plane.
Brett
That's great. You look so much better, too. You look terrible yesterday.
Alice
Thanks.
Brett
No, you looked great. You always look great.
Alice
That was mean.
Brett
I was just kidding. You looked great yesterday. You look great today.
Alice
It's always, you look great. You always look great. It's actually wonderful when. Oh, wait, I forgot my earrings up. So, you know, I think we've talked about this. These are my travel earrings. I've been wearing them ever since I got hit by high methyl lady after CrimeCon 2023. 4. Sam. Pluto tv has thousands of free movies and tv shows.
Brett
If I'm lying, I'm dying.
Alice
This is with movies like interstellar, dreamgirls and gladiator. Are you not entertained? And tv shows like survivor, spongebob squarepants, the fairly odd parents and ghosts. Pluto tv is always free. Huzzah.
Brett
Pluto tv.
Alice
Stream now. Payo.
Date: March 16, 2026
Hosts: Brett & Alice
PodcastOne
In this gripping second part, Brett and Alice continue their deep-dive into the infamous case involving Timothy Evans and serial killer John Reginald Christie. They unravel Christie's dark criminal history, examine the controversial Evans conviction and execution, and challenge commonly-held assumptions about one of the UK's most notorious miscarriages of justice. Their discussion combines true crime detail with prosecutorial analysis, with the goal of understanding who truly murdered Beryl and Geraldine Evans—and whether anyone can ever know for sure.
Early Life:
Early Criminal Offenses:
Arrival at 10 Rillington Place:
A "Tower of Terror" Escalation
Alice introduces a vivid metaphor for Christie's crime spree: the crimes start as petty larceny and jump drastically to sexual violence and gruesome murder. [16:10]
On Christie's Bizarre Justifications:
On the Absurdity of Christie's Claims:
On Christie's Frenzy:
Legal and Investigative Context:
Key Forensic and Behavioral Anomalies:
"I think both men are involved. I think that they got to talking and Christie taught Evans how to get rid of his wife, which is why there are markings of the same type of murder. [...] There is some interwoven involvement of Evans..."
– Alice [81:38]
Alice uses the Disney ride to illustrate the wild escalation in Christie's criminality, from mild-mannered to monstrous in shocking leaps rather than gradual escalation. [16:10]
Throughout the police investigation, Christie cycles through stories of accidental deaths ("she fell into a noose"), mercy killings, and elaborate rationalizations. These are recounted with incredulity and dark wit by the hosts. [48:49][51:10]
Both hosts reflect on the broader societal impact:
“That's kind of like Christie's story. So far we've jolted you around a little bit...you got three months here. Oh, hiring sex workers. Oh, my goodness. Having an affair with a married woman…The window's about to open. You're about to look out at the crowd below, and this story is about to take a whole other different turn that you may not be prepared for.”
— Alice [16:10]
"She fell into the news. Exactly. Why do you hang a noose from your chair? How do you fall into a chair and get your head in the noose, strangle yourself how does that happen?"
— Brett [48:49]
"If you have a dead body in your house, it's only gonna smell worse over time..."
— Alice [91:13]
"It's not impossible that Christie killed [the Evanses], it just...I just. I mean, I still stand by. Yeah, both of them were rightfully hanged."
— Alice [96:14]
This episode masterfully blends legal insight, forensic analysis, and dark humor to reconstruct one of the UK’s most perplexing true crime sagas. Brett and Alice challenge “received wisdom,” arguing for a nuanced understanding of shared culpability, and spotlighting the dangers of simplistic narratives in both the courts and the court of public opinion.