322 - Tenfold More Murder: Part 2

[0] This is exactly right.

[1] Hello.

[2] And welcome to my favorite murder.

[3] That's Georgia Hardstark.

[4] That's Karen Kilgariff.

[5] And I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, and this is Tenfold More Wicked.

[6] The Cliffhanger.

[7] We're back.

[8] We're back, baby.

[9] Yes.

[10] That story was wild and exciting, and there's more.

[11] When we last left off at 10 Rillington Place.

[12] bodies are piling up thigh bones are being leaned against fences Can I change my mind and say that I think the husband didn't do it?

[13] Nope, it's too late No!

[14] You picked your horse now you've got to write it to the finish line I'm sorry Georgie I don't like I don't ride horses and I don't want to and it's the tough love of horseback riding vis -vis podcasting this is just how it is no I want to get bucked off and change my mind well there's more info to come So don't wish you wash, flip -flop just yet.

[15] There's still more time.

[16] Okay.

[17] I do want to have a disclaimer in that I have picked up some sort of plague within the last two days.

[18] Not a COVID plague, but a plague that has wreaked havoc on my nose and my throat.

[19] So if I have a little gulp or if I feel too lazy.

[20] Yeah, I think she's not good.

[21] Yeah.

[22] Oh, not that.

[23] And we can, the magic of editing, we've got Andrew, Ethan.

[24] Oh, she's back.

[25] She actually, to prove her own point, is now going into fits of coughing to be like, how dare you?

[26] No, you sound great.

[27] We love that coughs.

[28] That's great for podcasting.

[29] And it actually kind of fits the story because it's written in the middle of this.

[30] That's crazy fog.

[31] This was the sound that was plaguing London in 1952.

[32] Don't make me laugh.

[33] Can we get some course -clopping noises on cobblestone?

[34] The 50s.

[35] Not helping.

[36] Nobody's helping in this situation.

[37] Oh, right.

[38] There's cars.

[39] Shut up.

[40] There's cars.

[41] Everyone knows there's cars.

[42] Shut up.

[43] You're going to make me gag now.

[44] I have that effect on people.

[45] Why don't you all catch up.

[46] Let me mute myself and then I'll come back.

[47] I mean, we've got nothing to talk about.

[48] It's all about you.

[49] You need some hot lemon honey water or something.

[50] Is that what that is?

[51] Oh, it's missing.

[52] A little splash of whiskey, baby.

[53] Yeah, just to calm it all down.

[54] I usually don't get bad allergies.

[55] I don't know what happened, but I don't know.

[56] So much energy coming from.

[57] some of you guys.

[58] I think I just took something on.

[59] Is it bad juju or something?

[60] Does somebody do something wrong and you put it on me?

[61] Maybe seeing my cat right here is like suddenly allergy attack.

[62] Well, I think making this a two -parter sprung us into something.

[63] Yes.

[64] Some other.

[65] Yeah.

[66] We agreed to something we could have never known.

[67] That we, George and I entirely benefit from because that means that's one show we don't have to do.

[68] That's right.

[69] The homework for ourselves.

[70] So we're like, yeah.

[71] Love it.

[72] Yep.

[73] I hate homework too.

[74] Ooh.

[75] Okay.

[76] I think I'm ready.

[77] All right.

[78] So let's go over what we already know about what happened at Ten Rillington Place in the late 1840s, early 1950s.

[79] So Timothy Evans and his wife, Burle Evans, move in.

[80] She's pregnant.

[81] She has a little girl named Geraldine.

[82] And Geraldine and Burle go missing about a year after they move in.

[83] Timothy Evans has a drinking problem.

[84] He's kind of a violent husband, a lot of domestic violence, a lot of fighting between the two of them.

[85] And yet he seems to be a really good father.

[86] He confesses to murdering them and hiding their bodies.

[87] So when Timothy Evans returns to Wales where he's from, he goes to the police and he confesses.

[88] He shows up and he says, I've killed my wife and my child in London.

[89] The police phone Notting Hill, which is where they lived in London at the time.

[90] And the Notting Hill police go down and search, and finally, after a few days, they find Burrell and the little girl Geraldine and they're wrapped up sort of mummy style in an outdoor washhouse.

[91] That has not been used for quite a while.

[92] So there's a washhouse and a lavatory and the washhouse is really where people do laundry and it's been sort of shut down by one of the tenants, John Christie, who has said, you know, there's some problems with it and the water doesn't work.

[93] And so he's discouraged people from using this washhouse.

[94] So Timothy Evans confesses and then he recants and he says that his neighbor, John Christie, is the one who did it and who's killed these two people.

[95] So John Christie says he was a wife -beater.

[96] He was a terrible person.

[97] Timothy Evans goes on trial.

[98] He's convicted much of it based on eyewitness testimony just in general and character witnesses, but also primarily on John Christie and his wife.

[99] They babysat for Geraldine.

[100] They liked Burle.

[101] Burle seemed like she was a nice woman.

[102] Timothy was not a nice man. And so, you know, we think this is what happened.

[103] He is hanged and the story is forgotten.

[104] We do know going backwards.

[105] that John Christie, who people call Reg, John Christie, would go and he picked up a couple of different women in the early 1940s when he was a war reserve police officer.

[106] He picked up two women separately and killed them and put them in the backyard.

[107] So he buried them in the backyards, and he planted things over them and worked in the backyard all the time.

[108] So he was obviously wanting to keep people close, whomever he was, you know, killing.

[109] So there is a large gap between 1944, which is when he killed his last victim, and Burrell.

[110] There's about five years, four years.

[111] And when Burl goes missing, John Christie doesn't seem to do anything.

[112] He's visiting sex workers.

[113] He's opened up a little photography shop that is mostly sex work, it sounds like.

[114] He's hiring women who are part -time sex workers, but also women who just need money to do sexy photos with him.

[115] So he's a creep.

[116] but he doesn't appear to be killing.

[117] If we believe the MO that he is someone who kills people a certain type of woman and puts him around him, the backyard or wherever.

[118] So in 1952, he gets tired of it all.

[119] I think he just gets tired in general.

[120] He was 54.

[121] And he quits his job in December, and then he strangles his wife, Ethel, who was continually getting on his nerves.

[122] He pulls up the floorboards in the parlor.

[123] He puts her under the floorboards.

[124] He gets several keepsakes.

[125] And it seems like he is ready to transition into something in his life.

[126] So I told you the story of the police officer who was invited inside and this horrible smell that was happening in the parlor.

[127] And he found out later on that it was because he was standing above Ethel Christi's body.

[128] So this is all, of course, really terrible.

[129] We're in December of 1952.

[130] Let's pretend that we're not even thinking about Burl and Geraldine being two of his victims.

[131] So you've got two women in the garden and you've got his wife under the floorboards in the parlor.

[132] Then you've got a woman coming up in January whose name was Kathleen Maloney.

[133] And she was a sex worker, full -time sex worker from Ladbroke Grove area, which is close by Notting Hill.

[134] And she was a woman who drank an awful lot.

[135] and she was someone who was very popular, not popular as in a sex worker would be popular with clients.

[136] She just was a friendly person.

[137] She was a really nice person.

[138] And, you know, she met John Christie one night.

[139] And again, in the grand scheme of post -war London, where you have a lot of really angry men who have just served in World War II and their home.

[140] And John Christie is not such a bad person as someone who's soliciting you.

[141] for sex work.

[142] So he gets her pretty drunk.

[143] He gets her home to 10 Rillington Place.

[144] Of course, now Ethel is dead.

[145] So he is totally unrestrained as far as who he brings home and when.

[146] We have a lot of different people living in the building at this point, a lot of people coming and going.

[147] So no one is noticing people coming in and out of this building because it's just happening all the time.

[148] So he employs the way of killing that he did previously, which was now, about 10 years old.

[149] So he's got the menthol concoction that he has in a jar, and he's got one piece of rubber that leads to a mouthpiece for the woman to breathe in, and another piece of rubber that leads to the gas tap at the back of his stove.

[150] And he has a bull clip now.

[151] So this is where he really starts to employ the bull clip, which doesn't seem like a big deal, but it's fast for him.

[152] He turns on the gas.

[153] It's already been on.

[154] He can release the bull clip, and it's just very quick.

[155] Kathleen Maloney is knocked out, he sexually salts her, and then he strangles her.

[156] So this is a method that he's sort of perfected.

[157] Again, John Christie is a physically weak person.

[158] So Kathleen Maloney is dead.

[159] He has no room in the parlor because his wife is there.

[160] He doesn't have room in the garden any longer because there's two women there.

[161] So he does something that is really interesting and really gross as far as I'm concerned.

[162] He goes to the kitchen and he removes part of the kitchen an alcove.

[163] That's sort of where a coal storage unit used to be.

[164] And he removed it and he placed her body inside of it.

[165] And then he put a false wall in and wallpapered over it.

[166] So he has a body now in the open.

[167] And Lynn Trevelyan, the police officer, had smelled his wife, you know, who was in the floorboards, which is, the wood was pretty thick.

[168] So I'm not sure what he was thinking.

[169] He started using a lot of lie, according to his neighbors, inside and outside and all around to hopefully cover up the smell.

[170] Also, this is happening in January in London, which is very cold and very dry.

[171] There's not a lot of precipitation.

[172] So she sort of mummifies all of the people around them, you know, that he's buried around him have mummified.

[173] So you go a few weeks later, and he meets a woman named Rita Nelson, who was from Belfast, and she was also visiting her sister and she meets Christy.

[174] She is six months pregnant at the time, and she has a family back in Belfast, who are looking out for her.

[175] So very similar situation as Kathleen Maloney.

[176] He meets her at a pub.

[177] He gets her really, really drunk because he has the money.

[178] Now, he's also running out of money.

[179] He has sold Ethel's jewelry.

[180] He kept her wedding ring, but then he later sold it.

[181] He sold her clothes.

[182] He actually offers Kathleen Maloney some clothes.

[183] That's one of the ways he got her back to the flat, was saying, I've got all these great clothes, and it was his wife's clothes.

[184] He's selling furniture.

[185] he's really scraping the bottom of the barrel because he has no money because he's quit his job and it's two months later so he meets Rita Nelson she comes back the same thing happens she breathes in this these fumes these carbon monoxide fumes and she dies now one key forensic thing when you breathe in carbon monoxide you are poisoned and it gives you this sort of pinkish hue which stays for a very very long time which is why they've been able to exhume bodies and many times still see that you can see that there's evidence of carbon monoxide poisoning.

[186] That actually becomes key later on.

[187] So Rita Nelson dies.

[188] He puts her in the same alcove.

[189] He takes down the wall, takes down the wallpaper, puts now there's two women back in this alcove, and he wallpapers them back in.

[190] Nobody's suspicious.

[191] Now, Ethel's family, remember what I told you, she goes to visit her family a lot.

[192] Ethel's family is curious about how come she hasn't come to visit, because I think she went in early, early December right before she was killed, right before the fog started.

[193] And they hadn't seen her since.

[194] And it was unusual to not see her around the holidays.

[195] So he had bought some postcards, and he had written in his hand, this was smart.

[196] He had written in his hand, and he said, Ethel's arthritis is so bad that she asked me to write this postcard for you.

[197] And they didn't think anything of it.

[198] Her family was never suspicious until all of this starts to come out.

[199] Because he was good at covering things up.

[200] Yeah, but now he's like tying himself directly to it by name, right, which is really bad.

[201] It's totally reminding me of the H .H. Holmes story in Chicago.

[202] Yeah.

[203] Also just the idea that you could put someone behind a wall, but it's in your kitchen.

[204] Yeah.

[205] He's keeping them so close.

[206] Yeah.

[207] Extra creepy.

[208] What do you think that means, in y 'all's experience, hearing, I mean, more stories than I've probably ever heard.

[209] Is that some sort of sadistic, weird thing for him?

[210] Or is it a practical thing?

[211] I think practical.

[212] Like, you're in a crowded city, and I'm sure there's police patrolling the streets at night, especially if you're in a bad neighborhood like that.

[213] I don't think it'd be easy to secret a body out of there.

[214] I totally agree.

[215] And then also, I think there's that, like, it's ownership and control.

[216] Right.

[217] It's essentially, it's totally more convenient, but it's also, like, it's the ultimate trophy to keep.

[218] Yeah.

[219] You know what I mean?

[220] It's just, like, I did this.

[221] that creepy, creepy serial killer thing.

[222] But just behind the wall is horrifying.

[223] It is in thin walls and you can smell it.

[224] And maybe this was something he enjoyed, I don't know.

[225] But it's pretty gruesome.

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[248] So the last person is a woman named Hectorina McLellan, and she went by Enon.

[249] So she was living in London with her boyfriend and he met both of them at this cafe and befriended both of these people and he invited them both back because he was saying that he was going to have a room to rent and so they both went back and they checked out the room and he actually said they could spend the night and he said he preferred that they slept separately because they weren't married and so Alex Baker agreed I mean, I did too, I guess.

[250] And this was, I think, the first time he was really trying to draw someone in who was not, someone who was not easily drawn back to his house.

[251] So he asked Ina to come back and to have a discussion with him without Alex about the price of the rent.

[252] She comes in.

[253] He offers her a drink.

[254] She has some drinks.

[255] Finally, she becomes inebriated.

[256] And she dies and he sexually assaults her.

[257] And now there's three people in the alcove.

[258] So to recap.

[259] two in the garden, one in the parlor, and then three in the alcove.

[260] So, you know, now we're up to six.

[261] And he's running out of room, and I think he realizes he's running out of room.

[262] Now, again, Ina has someone who cares a lot for her, and Alex comes back and starts harassing John Christie and says, where's my wife or where's my girlfriend?

[263] I don't understand what's happening.

[264] And he said maybe she ran off, and he was really trying to put him off.

[265] But I think that John Christie was really becoming aware that things were going to be falling apart.

[266] He was running out of money.

[267] He was running out of space.

[268] People could be suspicious.

[269] And he was getting a little sloppy about who he was picking.

[270] Also, he has all these bodies buried in his house.

[271] And then now he's inviting people to the house.

[272] I don't really understand that.

[273] And maybe you guys have some input too.

[274] I don't, I don't understand inviting a police officer to come in.

[275] And he was very brazen about it.

[276] And he had a quick response.

[277] He was a smart guy.

[278] Everybody knew he liked to take things apart like watches and put him back together.

[279] He was very bright.

[280] He sounds cocky.

[281] And he sounds like he's getting cockier because taking in a sex worker, you know, who no one in her life can connect that specific guy to her is one thing.

[282] And it's like, well, you know, why sex workers get preyed on is because of the anonymity.

[283] But then you're ringing home a couple.

[284] The boyfriend could just go to the cops and be like, we spent the night at this creep's house and now he's being shady or.

[285] He can be ID.

[286] Yeah.

[287] Or like, yeah, this guy sent us postcards supposedly in our missing daughter's name.

[288] he's getting cocky or he wants to get caught.

[289] Or it's just the classic psychopath thing.

[290] They think they're the smartest person in the room always.

[291] They think they're like he has gotten away with it.

[292] So he's right to think it in a way.

[293] But at the same time, they're always about pushing the boundaries.

[294] You're standing here in basically a morgue.

[295] And I'm the only one that knows it.

[296] And I'm the one responsible for it.

[297] Like he's this creepy little God in his world.

[298] Yeah.

[299] He needs people to be there to up that feeling.

[300] Like once you do it once, then it needs to be that plus, right, every time.

[301] I think you're both right.

[302] And as the story goes on, you'll see a lot more evidence of all of that stuff.

[303] So in 1953, he is officially out of room.

[304] It's March.

[305] And he decides it's time to go.

[306] He has had enough of all this.

[307] He needs a different life.

[308] It's unclear what his plan was, but his plan was to leave.

[309] And so, again, I need a comment about this.

[310] he sublets out his apartment.

[311] No. He does.

[312] He brings a couple back, and he gets, I think it's about seven pounds, which is a great price back in the 50s.

[313] He has the couple look around, and they make an agreement.

[314] And he says, you need to be careful because I'm doing this illegally, and they say fine.

[315] And he takes a few things and puts them in a suitcase, and he bounces.

[316] He doesn't give a fuck at this point.

[317] He leaves them in this cemetery, basically, of an apartment.

[318] Well, it's like short -term gain.

[319] He wanted a little bit of money for, I mean, obviously, this is going to not end.

[320] Well, I don't understand this.

[321] He is one of the more confusing killers I have ever, ever read about, for sure.

[322] I think you're right, Karen.

[323] Either he is really getting off on the idea that he's this all -powerful person or he's just a megalomaniac and doesn't think he'll ever get caught or, you know, all of it.

[324] Yeah, all of it.

[325] So much time has passed that this guy's actually.

[326] perfecting.

[327] I mean, like, he has gone on caught to the point where he is able to perfect his M .O. So some of these things seem highly risky and stupid, but he's getting away with it.

[328] So it's not stupid, actually.

[329] Not for much longer, though, luckily.

[330] Okay.

[331] Okay.

[332] So he leaves.

[333] This couple moves in.

[334] The landlord spots a couple pretty immediately and boots them out after 24 hours.

[335] So his secret is actually safe for a little while.

[336] Now, he checks in to what I would call as a senior citizen hostel, like pensioners living in London.

[337] And he uses his real name.

[338] So he signs up under his real name and he gets a room and he stays in London.

[339] So he could have left.

[340] But he stays in London.

[341] He goes to cafes.

[342] He hangs out.

[343] So there is a tenant who, in his building, who is interested in cooking, his flat while the flat is being kind of primbed eventually to be rented out.

[344] And the tenant tells the landlord, can I install a radio down there to be able to listen to the radio?

[345] And he says, sure.

[346] So he goes down there and he starts pounding into that wall and it starts cracking.

[347] And he pulls it down, because it's basically sheetrock, it's like a thin sheet rock.

[348] He pulls it down and he has it in the UK they call him torches.

[349] So he had a torch, which is a flashlight.

[350] And he stuck it into the hole and he saw three backs of bodies.

[351] Women are just wearing bras.

[352] And he said it was just the most terrifying thing he had ever seen.

[353] Oh my God, the horror.

[354] It's a horror movie.

[355] It's a horror movie.

[356] It is.

[357] And this is where it all falls apart for John Christie, but not for a really long time.

[358] And this is where in my book, the intersection between the fog and John Christie come together because, you know, the fog is this systemic issue of air pollution.

[359] And we know another fog's coming that's killed 12 ,000 people.

[360] And yet, as soon as the press hears about John Reginald Christie, no one has ever cared about the fog.

[361] No one cares that thousands of more people are going to die next year because it happens every year.

[362] Instead, there is this clear and present danger of this John Christie, who is a serial killer and who's on the run.

[363] And so when I'm looking through the archive of newspapers, you could see every day three people found an alcove.

[364] The next day, wife found under floorboards.

[365] And then, of course, they started calling it the House of Horror, and then they start digging in the garden and all this stuff comes up.

[366] So I had yesterday, I promised you, there was a story about the police officer who unfortunately has a lot of encounters with John Christie.

[367] The first is, you know, he's standing over his wife in the parlor.

[368] The second is when John Christie finally gets caught because he does, thankfully.

[369] But this other instance, before Christy is caught, Lynch -Revillian as a young officer, is sent over to Ten Rillington Place, which again has been dubbed House of Horrors.

[370] he walks into the backyard and he has a lot of younger officers than he he's supposed to supervise and they're excavating right this would probably not be done now they would have a whole expert team coming in but you've got all these young officers with shovels trying to dig through the trash that has been in this backyard because it's actually even worse now than it was when burle and geraldine were in the wash house three years earlier because there's more tenants there's more junk.

[371] So he's digging and he's digging and he's watching finally this dirt fly and he sees this copper tin and it's a tobacco tin and I looked up, you know, what kind of tobacco was and everything.

[372] So he's telling me this story.

[373] And again, this man is in his 100s.

[374] He's 102.

[375] Wow.

[376] So I said, what was it?

[377] And he said, I could just see it glinting.

[378] He really knew how to tell a story of this guy.

[379] So he's like, I could see it glinting.

[380] And I walked over and I picked it up and it's a small tobacco tin and he said, I opened it up.

[381] And there were more pubic hairs inside than you could ever imagine.

[382] I was going with teeth.

[383] That is way...

[384] I would probably have rather had teeth in some ways.

[385] Yeah.

[386] I would absolutely have preferred teeth 100%.

[387] And the problem was, was that they weren't particularly motivated to figure out whose hairs were whose, but we don't know if this was a request from him and none of these were people who had died.

[388] It probably was Ethel's for sure, his wife.

[389] and he had buried it.

[390] What the question was was whether or not there were there more bodies based on the pubic hair, and there was just no way to tell.

[391] But it was an interesting story because it really did show he was pretty stunned by that as a young officer.

[392] Yes.

[393] At this point are they putting together that a couple years ago we found the body of a one young child?

[394] Okay, so at this point they're like, uh -oh.

[395] Yeah, and then they start, it's a real oh shit moment for the Metropolitan Police as well as the Crown prosecutor.

[396] That someone else has hanged for this crime.

[397] Yep, three years earlier.

[398] Let me tell you what ends up happening with him.

[399] He doesn't leave.

[400] He could have left.

[401] So if we thought the Gabby Petito and Lacey Peterson case brought a lot of tips and clues from the public, this is 20th century type of clues.

[402] They were sending in snail mail by the hundreds and then thousands of clues to where John Christy was, because now you have the serial killer who's on the run for one week and then two weeks in London.

[403] People are spotting him all over the place.

[404] Someone said, he's my crossing guard.

[405] He's my kid's crossing guard.

[406] I can tell by his hands.

[407] But, you know, it's hard as a police officer as an investigator because you're going to blow these off.

[408] And what are you going to do?

[409] You have to follow all these.

[410] And he was in the city.

[411] And he sat in cafes, wearing sort of a disguise, but not really.

[412] But that's how nondescript this man was.

[413] People didn't notice him.

[414] He was in a cafe.

[415] And there was someone sitting right next to him, reading.

[416] an article about him.

[417] And so now, what do you think that means?

[418] I mean, why would he not just leave?

[419] He could have been Scotland.

[420] He could have gone a million different places, Wales, anywhere, where maybe people wouldn't have noticed him.

[421] Why would he stay?

[422] Yeah, because back then you could just disappear.

[423] You didn't really need identification.

[424] He could have been gone forever.

[425] So he had to want to get notoriety and get caught and stuff, right?

[426] And to see the world kind of freak out about his taking a lot.

[427] lives repeatedly and getting away with it repeatedly.

[428] I mean, like, that's a real debacle and a circus that he caused, which you know he loves.

[429] Also, did he, I wonder if he still had the photography studio.

[430] Did he get rid of that?

[431] No, I think he had it.

[432] Well, you know what?

[433] That's a good question.

[434] It was rented.

[435] And I assume he had to let it go when he quit his job.

[436] You know, that was the heart thing was that there, I don't know what he was thinking when he quit his job.

[437] He didn't tell Ethel because she had just written a postcard to her, to her sister, and she didn't say anything about quitting a job, and I think she would have freaked out on him.

[438] So I don't know what the master plan was if he was just giving up, but he absolutely had to have known that he would have been hanged if he got caught.

[439] So here you go.

[440] It's three weeks, and then, you know, it is all points bulletin.

[441] It is the craziest list of tips to come in from psychics.

[442] And everybody on the planet was writing in.

[443] It was like, where's Waldo trying to find John Christie?

[444] And finally, he has spotted early in the morning below a bridge by a young police officer, and he doesn't deny it.

[445] He's looking pretty rough, and he's in London, and he's taken in, and he's arrested.

[446] And at this point, they have found all the bodies.

[447] They have made identifications.

[448] So then we get a little bit into the forensics, so they can tell from the bodies what happened.

[449] So everybody was strangled.

[450] So the three women who are in the alcove all have carbon monoxide.

[451] poisoning, which we expect because that's what he did.

[452] No carbon monoxide poisoning with ethyl.

[453] And of course, we can't tell from the women in the garden because they were skeletonized by the time that the coroner got hold of them.

[454] So he's arrested and he's not really saying anything right now.

[455] He has a public defender.

[456] And the Crown prosecutor is, you know, assessing the case and trying to figure it all out.

[457] And the prosecutor is really nervous because this seems like someone who's a lunatic and he is afraid that Christy is going to try to have an insanity defense and that was a very real possibility because it could a sane man ever do this and of course the answer is yes of course same men do this so Christy is interrogated about Burrell and Geraldine so here's the thing about Burrell and Geraldine they do not have carbon monoxide poisoning so that would be a checkmark in the Christie did not do it.

[458] Evans did do it category, I think.

[459] Because that was generally his MO.

[460] I mean, I think that Ethel was a little bit of a spur of the moment.

[461] Maybe they got into a fight.

[462] She didn't have carbon monoxide, but everybody else had been.

[463] And of course, you remember they didn't do a sexual assault test because it was a domestic violence issue, so we don't know anything about that.

[464] So they start saying, the Crown Prosecutor says, you killed Burrell and Geraldine.

[465] And he denies it at first, and then he confesses.

[466] And this is the problem with the theory of whether or not John Christie, which everybody on the planet has believed for years that John Christie was the one who killed Geraldine and Burrell, because no one believes that there could be a serial killer and another killer living under the same house at the same time.

[467] So Christy confesses.

[468] That's the big evidence.

[469] One, it's inexplicable.

[470] Two killers are living in the house and don't know it at the same time.

[471] And number two, that this man would confess he said he did it.

[472] I'm wondering, okay, here's my theory.

[473] Can I quickly say?

[474] Here we go.

[475] No, let's do it.

[476] He was an alcoholic, right?

[477] And so he probably would get lockout drunk.

[478] Maybe he woke up one morning, went out to the washroom, saw the body of the bodies of his daughter and wife and was like, I must have done this in a blackout.

[479] I am so guilt -ridden because it's so out of character because he actually didn't do it and wouldn't do it.

[480] that he confesses to it because he's so horrified by it.

[481] When in actuality, he just put those pieces together based on, you know.

[482] Seeing the bodies?

[483] Yeah.

[484] What do you think, Karen?

[485] That sounds very logical to me. Also, I think that idea, like, just from learning based on what you've told us, but like the idea of basically a whole generation of men that are suffering basically from PTSD and all the kind of after effects of that.

[486] So this, maybe this, like, the drinking and the violence were a thing that he was constantly struggling with, that the fact that it escalated like that, and that both he and his wife were fighting, like, the idea that the wife fights back, that that's just, it's like the progression of that kind of domestic violence sickness in the household that it would make sense to him once he saw those bodies, like, this is what this has progressed to.

[487] And I'm sure.

[488] there's plenty of blackouts before maybe that night.

[489] I'm completely in that.

[490] I like that theory a lot.

[491] Okay.

[492] We can put that.

[493] We can make a, we can make a column for that.

[494] No, I just have more stuff to tell you.

[495] Okay, great.

[496] No, I like guessing along the way.

[497] No, but I love this theory because I had not thought of that theory before.

[498] Really, I haven't.

[499] So the pathologist, let's talk about Burrell, and this is a little bit where you have to speculate.

[500] And I know that, you know, you guys are not good at speculating at all.

[501] So I'll just, I'll just, I'll just, leads you through it.

[502] You don't have to say anything during this section.

[503] We're great at that.

[504] So I looked at the coroner's reports and as well as the photos, Burles' photos.

[505] And whomever killed her hit her so hard that her upper lip touched the top of her nose.

[506] So I sent that report because I read what the pathologist said about when he thought that happened.

[507] And he said 45 minutes to an hour before death.

[508] So I sent that to two modern pathologists, both in Chicago, and they agreed.

[509] They said, yeah, you could kind of tell by how big it is and like the amount of blood and how it would have called blah, blah, blah.

[510] Now, I'm trying to think this through, and you guys can tell me what you think.

[511] My thought was that John Christie has never hit anybody before.

[512] He whacked a woman with a bat, but that's just not part of his thing.

[513] He's never really hit a woman before.

[514] Now, Timothy Evans has.

[515] I am thinking that if John Christie does hit Burrell Evans in the face an hour before he kills her.

[516] How has nobody heard screaming or, you know, I just, I don't know.

[517] It just seems odd because I could see Timothy Evans and Burrell getting into a physical fight because they did that often.

[518] And nobody really hearing it or people dismissing it.

[519] But I can't see Burl taking a hit from John Christie and not reacting in some way that people could hear or something.

[520] It's just out of character for him and kind of for out of her too.

[521] So what do you guys think about that?

[522] What about the possibility that Timothy Evans does hit his wife in the face and she goes down to the neighbors?

[523] Is that what you were thinking?

[524] I'm probably thinking that like, she may get in a normal fight but he hits her really hard this time.

[525] And she's like, fuck this, takes the child, goes downstairs to the very respectable downstairs neighbors who babysit for her sometimes and he's a cop and I'm finally done with this shit and this is they she actually is going right into the spider's web and Timothy gets drunk and blacks out and doesn't really know what happens next except for that he knows his child and wife are dead which would be such a horrifying if that is something he actually witnessed I mean he wouldn't you just freak out well you got to imagine that he wakes up the next morning let's say he didn't do it he wakes up the he's wearing.

[526] He's like, where are my wife and kids?

[527] He looks everywhere for them, can't find them, like looks in the backyard, looks in the washroom that no one ever uses.

[528] Like, is frantically looking for them.

[529] And so would find them because he's looking harder than what he normally would for in the backyard.

[530] You guys are smart.

[531] I know, right?

[532] Really?

[533] It's excellent.

[534] It's excellent speculating.

[535] And that's a professor saying that, everybody.

[536] That's not just another armchair quarterback in true crime.

[537] I didn't say I was a good professor.

[538] I didn't say I was a good professor.

[539] Okay, let's continue because there's more evidence.

[540] So then we talk about the confession.

[541] So Christy confessed.

[542] Now, he never confessed to Geraldine.

[543] So he said he went up in his confession.

[544] He went up, he saw Burrell.

[545] He tried to gas her, but he said he turned on the gas tap and the room filled with gas.

[546] And everyone, even the most naive police officers on the force said there's no way that happened.

[547] It wouldn't have killed her the way that he was describing it.

[548] And he would have died too, and it was just, it was clearly kind of a made -up story.

[549] And he said, I did not kill Geraldine, and he said, I don't kill kids.

[550] So here's where the confession is a problem.

[551] Neither of these men is reliable in any way.

[552] They both confessed and recanted and confessed and recanted.

[553] They're both liars.

[554] They were both violent.

[555] So it's hard to figure out who to believe.

[556] what I do know is that Christy confessed to a murder in Windsor when he wasn't even there.

[557] And his defense attorney said, we're going to throw the whole kitchen sink at him and see if we can get an insanity defense or insanity plea to save his life.

[558] So I don't buy the confession at all.

[559] And of course you guys know, I'm sure at this point that the Innocence Project says a very large majority of people who are wrongfully convicted are convicted because they have a false confession.

[560] and it's not necessarily because the police have done anything to get that out of them.

[561] They're scared, and innocent people do hire attorneys.

[562] They just do.

[563] Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.

[564] They hire attorneys.

[565] So, you know, the confession thing for me is meaningless because I just don't believe it.

[566] Burrell doesn't show signs of any kind of a sexual assault.

[567] The other women did.

[568] So there's that.

[569] What's weird about it is, is that I can see Christy, killing a woman in his building, even though that's not something he had done.

[570] It's really hard to think that he's going to be able to drag her down four flights of stairs only because they were very narrow and he was really, really wimpy.

[571] I mean, he really could barely make do just getting out the front door and the back door.

[572] And he was able to get women, obviously, in the backyard.

[573] But also remember that those two women were buried in the backyard 10 years earlier when he was in better held.

[574] Which is, I think, another reason why he didn't, throw someone over his shoulder and go take them somewhere else.

[575] I think he really didn't have much of a choice.

[576] So I think if he were confronted with Geraldine crying, I'm not sure Christie's first instinct would be to kill her.

[577] But regardless, the Crown Prosecutor went forward with murder charges against, I think, three of the women now.

[578] Of course, I can't remember.

[579] And Christy becomes the darling of the media, which is disgusting.

[580] Everybody's vying for his exclusive, and there's something called checkbook journalism.

[581] The newspapers in London would essentially bid on a defendant, and they would then pay for the exclusive rights.

[582] They would pay for their defense completely and pay for the exclusive rights to their story.

[583] So Christy did that.

[584] He had a full confession with the reporter.

[585] And in prison, the egotism was incredible.

[586] He had pictures of himself.

[587] Oh, God.

[588] Like, in his cell, which is just not who I would choose to look at, I guess.

[589] Oh, what a creep.

[590] So he had pictures of himself.

[591] All these women were lined up outside in the courtroom and also, you know, around the gel.

[592] And he told one of the jailers there, he pointed at his crotch and he said they're here because of this.

[593] Oh, hard pass.

[594] No, thank you.

[595] Honey.

[596] No, honey.

[597] So he, you know, he was finally getting the attention that he thought he deserved, which I think, I mean, is that surprising to either of you?

[598] Probably not.

[599] And I think it, yeah, lines up perfectly with not leaving, with basically just kind of, being in the mix here and in feeling the renown and the fame of evil doing.

[600] And he was kind of right in that way where it's like, and then once you're known, then you're the name on everyone's lips.

[601] People like that don't know the difference between positive attention and negative attention, and they don't care.

[602] So it's just like it's attention, it's all that matters, like feed the beast.

[603] Yeah, that's pretty gross.

[604] And so he was getting all of this attention.

[605] He is, of course, quickly convicted.

[606] He has not gotten the insanity plea at all.

[607] Everybody thinks he's sane.

[608] His lawyer is trying to argue otherwise and is having him confess to more and more people.

[609] But even Christy draws a line.

[610] And I've talked to forensic psychologists who I say, oh, these serial killers have no morals.

[611] And they say, they do.

[612] They're just not our morals.

[613] They have their own code of honor.

[614] Yeah.

[615] That's what I was going to say about him not killing Geraldine.

[616] It's like, well, of course he'd kill Geraldine.

[617] He's a murderer.

[618] But it's like, because we want to just think of these devils and we'd be able to spot them.

[619] But it's like, yeah, they have rules to their, you know, awfulness.

[620] And it's so surprising.

[621] And I think his, he has a real problem with women.

[622] He doesn't have a problem with children.

[623] That's a different category, kind of.

[624] And his problem is with grown, sexually mature, independent thinking women.

[625] and women who, like men maybe, or women who have a good time in life, it's a whole different acts to grind that he has.

[626] So it is that kind of thing where, like, yeah, I'm bad, but I don't touch children, which is a completely different level of hell in his mind.

[627] Right, and that would have really gotten him pretty close to the insanity defense, and he just said, I'm not going to do that.

[628] He also liked animals.

[629] You know, I don't really buy into the whole checklist of what serial killers do.

[630] He loved animals, and he loved his old, old, decrepit dog so much that he actually put him down before he went on the run.

[631] He spent money to put the dog down, which was for him the most humane thing to do rather than let this dog fend for itself on the streets.

[632] So yeah, a different set of rules.

[633] He's convicted.

[634] He's sentenced to death, which is, you know, no big surprise.

[635] And when he finally goes to the gallows, he faces the man who most people have faced was an executioner by the last name of Pierpont.

[636] And Christy, the last thing that happens, I'm smiling, even though I'm not supposed to be smiling at this, but the last thing that happens is before Pierpont pulls the lever, Christy says that, he says, my nose itches, and Pierpont says, it won't bother you for long, and then he flips it.

[637] Wow, that's like straight out of a movie.

[638] That might be only funny to me, but I just think.

[639] Oh, my God.

[640] It's dark, but it's like, yeah.

[641] So this causes all hell to break loose in Parliament because of, Timothy Evans, because, oh, my gosh, did we convict the wrong man and hang the wrong man?

[642] Because no one could believe two killers were living in the same house at the same time.

[643] They do a quick little retry and still find him guilty.

[644] Now, he was found guilty of killing his wife only, Timothy Evans, not Geraldine.

[645] They had to choose one, so they picked Burrell.

[646] I think because they thought, for some reason, it was going to be easier to prove.

[647] So they still find him guilty.

[648] and about 12 years passes when there is another re -examination of the case by a guy named Judge Daniel Braben and this is called the Braben Report which is pretty interesting if you're into super old crime depositions and such so he retries the whole thing and he comes up with to me the most bizarre theory and I'm just going to say it and you guys can just tell me what you think he thinks that Timothy and Christy were working together No. And that Timothy killed his wife and Christy killed the little girl.

[649] Why?

[650] Oh, like a stranger's on the train exchange of you kill my relative and I kill your relative?

[651] I think that he believed that something happened between Tim and Burrell and he killed her and Christy was trying to be helpful because the men were sort of friendly.

[652] And he knew that the little girl was going to cry and cry without her mom because she was still breastfeeding.

[653] And, you know, and also, Burl was pregnant at the time.

[654] And so Christy was trying to be helpful and killed Geraldine, which makes zero sense.

[655] Whoever killed one, killed the other?

[656] No. I think it's way, I don't believe this theory, but I think it's more likely that there were two murderers in a building than it is that they were working together.

[657] Right.

[658] I do still think Christy killed little Geraldine, not because he wanted to kill kids and because he was into that, but because that was the, like, a necessary thing to do after he killed her mother.

[659] Yeah.

[660] It's interesting to hear so many different points of view, because you guys have brought up a couple of things I hadn't thought of about him being a professor.

[661] Oh, my God.

[662] A plus for us, the dropouts get an A plus.

[663] Again, maybe not a good professor, but yes, you could say that.

[664] It only took us six years to get a theory, right ,ish maybe.

[665] Now, now let me tell you what happens.

[666] When Braben makes this decision, Timothy Evans is exonerated.

[667] He was exonerated for killing his daughter, but not his wife.

[668] So it's all.

[669] very confusing.

[670] This has been gone over and gone over about a million times in the UK.

[671] Timothy Evans' family has been given money by the UK government because of a wrongful conviction.

[672] And, you know, they have maintained his innocence.

[673] I'm not sure if his sisters are still alive, but probably about 10 years ago, they were.

[674] And there was a big push for them to fully investigate this.

[675] I don't know how they would be able to do that 70 years later.

[676] But his half -sister was given compensation because of the posthumous pardon.

[677] Wow.

[678] Lots of books and movies, Timothy Roth, who I love so much, plays Christia in the latest kind of BBC iteration of it.

[679] So I will tell you, I feel fairly certain that Tim Evans killed his wife and child.

[680] That's how I feel.

[681] Okay.

[682] And I was pretty much the only one, I think, until I read Burrell Evans' younger brother, who was 13 when she and Tim were married.

[683] And he wrote a book, and he said in the book that he would go and visit when he was 13 and that Timothy was so violent with Burrell that he would have to put his hands over Geraldine's ears just to cover it up.

[684] And this is like a month before she was killed.

[685] He said that Timothy was so incredibly violent and just a horrible person.

[686] He said there is nobody in my family who believes John Christie was the one who killed her.

[687] He had no motive.

[688] And he said, and I think he was so drunk and so mad that he strangled Geraldine.

[689] There's a church right around the corner, you guys.

[690] If it were Christy, I think he would have taken her and just left her at the church.

[691] I mean, there's no motivation for Christy to kill this little girl.

[692] I understand Burrell, but Burrell's brother just said, Timothy Evans was a terrible person, and we had been afraid that this was going to happen, and it happened, you know, and it was not John Christie.

[693] So it's a big mystery.

[694] It's a mystery.

[695] I mean, we don't, I don't know.

[696] I believe it too.

[697] I changed my mind.

[698] Well, because that's inside information, right?

[699] That's a person who has to sit there at the table where Evan's family is like he could never.

[700] But then there's the witness from barrel's side of the family that's like this guy was a monster and an alcoholic where like I believe it in a second.

[701] I think that kind of witness is so credible because you're in the day to day.

[702] So if this guy was a true monster in the day to day, then, you know, know, if one thing happens or one thing goes off, like we've seen that lots of times, the family annihilators that are like, I'm depressed, this is always hard.

[703] There's the solution.

[704] Let's pack this in.

[705] Yeah.

[706] And it's also interesting to be like, well, there's not usually two killers in one place, but it's like, okay, one person was an outlier and that was a serial killer.

[707] But a abusive, violent, alcoholic man abusing his family is not rare.

[708] Post -war love me. That's not, unfortunately, still not rare.

[709] What's also really weird is there was three killers, because then there's the fog happening at the same time.

[710] I know.

[711] Having read your book, no joke, though, like that I thought your book was about the fog.

[712] So I was like, wow, this is fascinating.

[713] I can't believe it.

[714] And then, and it goes into this, it's just like, oh, oh, like, how did anybody deal with anything?

[715] Like, the fog was bad enough.

[716] So I'm sure, like, reality was kind of defying reality for people.

[717] at the time.

[718] So it's just like, you know, it's three steps away.

[719] It's into the fantastic.

[720] But so is the air killing you and not being able to see one foot in front of you when you're walking down the street during the day.

[721] Right, right.

[722] Yeah.

[723] It's again, it's a systemic issue that we have a problem with now, air pollution, dealing with.

[724] How do we even figure this out now?

[725] I can't imagine, may we say in these interviews that in the 50s, the Minister of Health had just declared that cigarettes were connected to, you know, cancer and an addiction.

[726] And he's sitting there chain smoking through the whole news conference.

[727] So that is that it, 85 % of the city smokes.

[728] In 85%, I mean, they were like little kids smoking.

[729] For real.

[730] I mean, so, you know, I think the bottom line with this case is, of course, we're never going to know.

[731] And that's maddening to me. I am not a big unsolved case fan.

[732] I really like a tidy conclusion.

[733] No one ever wants to think that a moment.

[734] mother or a father could kill their child.

[735] And that's what I think it made it really hard, was he did seem like a good father.

[736] But you just, you never know.

[737] And after reading her brother's book, I just thought, man, this is, I mean, when I read he was violent, that was one thing.

[738] But when there's a 13 -year -old kid sitting there frightened for his sister and then she ends up dead, it just seems.

[739] And people just couldn't believe it.

[740] And I totally understand that.

[741] It's self -prey.

[742] I think in a way to think that this is not going to happen in our society.

[743] It must be the serial killer.

[744] But as you said, this is not Bundy and Gacy living together in a condo.

[745] This is a serial killer who is living in a building just like with someone who is an abuser, just like probably two buildings down there was somebody who was abusing his wife.

[746] It kind of does point to that because when you were just saying the thing about air pollution, it's a systemic issue.

[747] It's like as is domestic violence, like that that kind of thing where if there are no services, if there's no one to call, if there's nowhere to go, then you have to stay in that apartment and keep on going to work coming home, people drinking, people fighting, like the pressure just keeps building and it happens a lot.

[748] And I think because families learn to keep secrets, it's actually probably much more common than most people know or think.

[749] So that idea that yes, what was happening in this house, how could it be?

[750] And it's like, if people got real about the prevalence of domestic violence and substance abuse and how those things are tied together and how many people actually live with it, it wouldn't be as surprising maybe.

[751] Well, I think, and also this really does come down to somebody like John Christie who picked victims who were not represented well.

[752] Now, there were some of the women, the part -time sex workers he was targeting, had friends who were looking for them, but the police didn't give a shit.

[753] I mean, you know that.

[754] It's the same story.

[755] They did not care.

[756] So they were dealing with gambling and, oh, man, and Timothy Evans was a gambler, too.

[757] I mean, there was just, there was a lot of check marks for him that I think got suppressed a little bit at trial, because they were really trying to make him come off a little bit like a dullard, little bit like someone who was naive, who had been manipulated by Christy into thinking something.

[758] And so it's an enduring mystery that will always be talked about, I'm sure.

[759] I mean, it was one of the worst things to happen, certainly in that area.

[760] And Ten Rillington Place, of course, is no longer there.

[761] The whole street's no longer there.

[762] They bulldozed the entire thing.

[763] It's called Rustin Close.

[764] Now, don't everybody go there, please.

[765] I'm sure those people need their privacy.

[766] but it's it's a it's they had to mow down that whole area there was a movie that was made in the 70s that was really well known about Rillington place and after that movie it was shot there and after that movie that was it they just there was too much publicity so there's so much that comes up into this you know racism from the Christie's and poverty in that area post -war poverty women who have lost loved ones in the war and now have to do things that they didn't particularly to do in order to raise their children who then become victims and, you know, people who are fighting for them to be found and the police don't pay attention and then the police are undermanned to begin with.

[767] And there they are walking past thigh bones.

[768] It's just, it's a nightmare.

[769] So there's so much to me to learn from this story and it is such a sad story to see it in different forms repeated over and over again.

[770] The only thing I can hope is that we just continue to pick up lessons here and there from these kinds of stories.

[771] For sure.

[772] So if you haven't read Death in the Air, the True Story of a Serial Killer, the Great London Smog, and The Strangling of a City by Kate Winkler Dawson, you simply must.

[773] And we should plug the new season of Tenfold More Wicked, which is coming up very quickly.

[774] Do you want to talk about that for one second, Kate?

[775] Sure.

[776] So this will be season six.

[777] I just can't even believe it.

[778] It's like having a secure.

[779] I just get gray hairs.

[780] with every season, and I get more and more gray hairs.

[781] So season six of Tenfold More Wicked is very, very close to my heart.

[782] They all are, but this one especially, it's about a young woman who is found dead in Aransas Pass, Texas, which is next to a small town where I go to visit a lot with my family, Puerto Ranzas.

[783] This is a story about a town during prohibition, a very small town, about a wealthy family, and we're trying to figure out if someone got away with murder.

[784] and what happened to this young woman who her family believed was perfect and it was so much pressure for her that just something was bound to happen and then it did.

[785] Wow.

[786] Amazing.

[787] And that comes out on the 25th of April so make sure you, rate, review, subscribe, all of those things.

[788] Kate, thank you so much for doing this with us.

[789] You are an amazing story.

[790] That was just a delight to listen to you.

[791] Thank you.

[792] So I'll see you guys in like a couple weeks maybe.

[793] Start all over again.

[794] Yes, exactly.

[795] Thank you, Kate.

[796] Thank you for having me. Thanks for being here.

[797] That was awesome.

[798] Bye.

[799] Elvis, do you want a cookie?

[800] This has been an exactly right production.

[801] Our senior producers are Hannah, Kyle Crichton, and Natalie Rinn.

[802] Our producer is Alejandra Keck.

[803] This episode was engineered and mixed by Andrew Eepin.

[804] Email your hometowns and fucking hoorays to My Favorite Murder at gmail .com.

[805] Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at My Favorite Murder and on Twitter at My Favorite.

[806] murder.

[807] Listen, follow, and leave us a review on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[808] And don't forget, you can listen to new episodes one week early on Amazon Music or early and ad -free by subscribing to Wondery Plus in the Wondery app.

[809] Goodbye.

[810] Follow My Favorite Murder on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen so you don't miss an episode.

[811] If you like what you hear, rate and review the show.

[812] Visit exactly right store .com to purchase my favorite murder merch.