John Christie

Birthday: April 8, 1899 in Halifax, Yorkshire, England, UK

Birth Name: John Reginald Halliday Christie

Christie had a difficult childhood growing up with stern and unaffectionate parents. He left school at 15. Christie initially worked as a police clerk but was fired for petty theft. He was disowned by ...Show More

Christie had a difficult childhood growing up with stern and unaffectionate parents. He left school at 15. Christie initially worked as a police clerk but was fired for petty theft. He was disowned by his family when he was caught stealing from his father's carpet factory. During World War One he was wounded and gassed and blinded for 5 months with hysterical aphonia for about 3 years. In 1934 he was involved in an automobile accident and suffered some head injuries. He worked briefly in a post office but was sent to jail for stealing money orders. In 1938 Christie and his wife moved to 10 Rillington Place in London. In 1939 he joined the War Reserve Police. It was during the early part of the war that he began his serial homicides at 10 Rillington Place. Christie was a necrophiliac. His modus operandi was to gas his female victims (with carbon monoxide) claiming it had some health benefits and then have sex with the dead corpse. In November 1949 his tenant Timothy Evans an illiterate and mentally challenged truck driver confessed to police that he had 'disposed of' his wife Beryl Evans. Her body was found in a shed behind 10 Rillington along with the body of Evan's daughter Geraldine. Evans claimed that Beryl had died while Christie was giving her an abortion. Christie denied the accusations and Evans was charged with the murder of his wife and hanged. It would be later proven that this was a gross miscarriage of justice. In 1952 Christie killed his own wife and hid her body beneath the floorboards of his house. His victims tally reached 8 by the time he left Rillington on March 20, 1953. On 24 March 1953, the new tenants who were renovating the place found 3 bodies in a secret 'cupboard' hidden behind the wallpaper. On March 31, 1953 Christie, by this time a vagrant, was arrested after a vigilant police constable recognised him from a metropolitan police wanted poster. He confessed to the crimes including that of Beryl Evans although he never admitted to the murder of Geraldine, claiming that Evans himself had strangled the child with a tie. In 1953 the court rejected his plea of insanity and sentenced him to hang in Pentonville prison. It was always believed that Christie must have murdered the baby because the authorities thought it inconcievable that there could be two killers living at the same address. Because Evans had been convicted and hung for murdering his wife he was given a posthumous pardon. Hide