The Secret Room

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[2] In 1953, a man had just moved into a new apartment in London, and as soon as he went inside, he decided he wanted to renovate.

[3] And so he started by pulling down all the wallpaper in the kitchen.

[4] And as he's doing it, he makes his way into the kitchen pantry, and he pulls off one particular strip of wallpaper, and he sees behind the wallpaper towards the bottom of the wall is a door.

[5] There is a secret door behind the wallpaper.

[6] So he gets down and he rips off more of the wallpaper, and then he grabs the little handle, and he pulls the door open.

[7] And what he sees inside of this little room was not only horrifying and would scar him for life, but the contents of this secret room would change the legal system in the United Kingdom forever.

[8] But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, dark and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.

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[10] Okay, let's get into today's story.

[11] I'm Dan Tiberski.

[12] In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York, A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast.

[13] What's the answer?

[14] And what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

[15] Hysterical.

[16] A new podcast from Wondry and Pineapple Street Studios.

[17] Binge all episodes of hysterical early and ad -free on Wondery Plus.

[18] The crime that would eventually put Timothy Evans on death row was horrific.

[19] But when you take a look at Timothy Evans' past, it's not really a shocker that his life played out the way that it did.

[20] Before Timothy was even born, in 1924 in the southern end of Wales, his father had abandoned him and his siblings and his mother.

[21] And because Timothy's mother made almost no money, when Timothy was born, he was effectively born into poverty.

[22] As a young child, Timothy really struggled to learn how to speak properly, and then in school, he just really struggled to keep up with his peers.

[23] To make matters worse, when Timothy was eight years old, he contracted tuberculosis of the skin on the underside of his right foot.

[24] This condition is not necessarily fatal, but it causes these large, painful blisters that take a really long time to go away, even with treatment.

[25] And because Timothy's outbreak was on the underside of his foot, it made walking nearly impossible.

[26] And so for a few years, starting when he was eight years old and he was diagnosed with tuberculosis of the skin, Timothy had to miss huge chunks of his schooling to get medical treatment.

[27] And then other times he was missing school simply because he couldn't walk.

[28] And considering how poorly Timothy was already doing in school, these huge extended absences were totally catastrophic for his education.

[29] In fact, later in life, it would be determined that Timothy's IQ, which is a way to measure people's intelligence, was somewhere between 60 and 70, which is very low and put him in the range of having an intellectual, disability.

[30] Not long after his tuberculosis of the skin diagnosis, Timothy would remain in school despite all of these absences and despite how difficult it was for him, but his real focus would shift from getting an education to trying to find work in order to help provide for his family who were very poor.

[31] And Timothy was willing to do just about anything for money.

[32] For example, when he was only 13 years old, he became a coal miner, one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet at the time and still today.

[33] But despite Timothy's willingness to do these really challenging jobs that often paid very little, he would always eventually get fired or he just would not get the job in the first place.

[34] He would be rejected.

[35] And always, it was because either one, he had a flare -up of his tuberculosis on his foot, which made it impossible to walk, and so he couldn't go to and from his job, and so he'd be let go.

[36] Or it would be because of his illiteracy and the job just could not take someone in that could not read, write, or really even speak very well.

[37] Or in some cases, like when Timothy tried to join the military when he was 18 years old and World War II was raging and all of his peers are going off to fight the war, well, when he tried to enlist, the military said, you know, we can't take you because you are illiterate and because of your foot.

[38] This constant cycle of rejection and embarrassment really made Timothy quite cynical.

[39] He felt like he just didn't belong anywhere.

[40] And so at some point, perhaps as a coping mechanism, Timothy began to lie.

[41] He'd make up tall tales about the adventures he'd been on and all the influential people he knew and the superhuman skills he possessed.

[42] Now, most people who knew Timothy didn't believe any of the stories he told, but every now and again, some people actually did.

[43] And for Timothy, that little sliver of respect he would get in that moment, even though it was built on a lie, on an illusion.

[44] It was incredible for him.

[45] He didn't get that anywhere else in his life.

[46] And so he kind of became addicted to telling these lies.

[47] Fast forward to 1947, Timothy was 23 years old, and he was still living with his family who had left Wales and had moved to London, and they were living in a very, very poor and dangerous neighborhood.

[48] At the time, Timothy had managed to get a job as a delivery driver and had yet to be fired from it, and on one of his daily routes around the city, he wound up meeting an 18 -year -old girl named Beryl Thorley, who he really took a liking to.

[49] Now, according to people who knew Beryl, she apparently, like Timothy, had a very low IQ.

[50] And so Beryl and Timothy, they meet on one of Timothy's routes, and they immediately hit it off and they start dating, and by the end of that year, they were married.

[51] They initially lived inside of Timothy's family's apartment, but when Beryl became pregnant in early 1948, she and Timothy pooled what little money they had and they got an apartment of their own.

[52] Their new apartment was terrible.

[53] It was tiny, it was dirty, it was located in an even more dangerous neighborhood than where Timothy's family lived, but it was good enough for them, at least at first.

[54] Once Beryl gave birth to their daughter, Geraldine, suddenly their cramped living quarters seemed impossibly small for a family of three.

[55] And they were already extremely tight on money and now adding a baby to the mix.

[56] They really just did not have enough money to survive.

[57] Timothy immediately tried picking up extra work wherever he could, but once again, his illiteracy and his foot or a combination of the two held him back.

[58] And so it wasn't long before the couple was forced to start taking out these awful high -interest loans that they knew they would never be able to pay back.

[59] So they are permanently saddled with debt.

[60] They know it.

[61] And these loans are only enough to barely get by.

[62] This is not enough to move out.

[63] This is only enough to stay in their squalid and awful conditions.

[64] And so as their debt piled up in conjunction with all the stresses of being new parents and living in this really cramped space, it wasn't long before Beryl and Timothy's marriage just totally started to erode.

[65] It started with daily arguing over one of their many hardships, but it quickly escalated to full -blown physical confrontation that often was so loud that passerby outside in the very busy street would hear coming from the third floor Timothy and Beryl screaming and yelling and punching each other to the point where people outside literally stopped and just looked up wondering what was going on up there.

[66] As Timothy's world seemed to just kind of crumble all around him, he at first turned to a coping mechanism he had used for most of his life, and that was just to lie about his current situation.

[67] He would tell people who would listen that he and his wife and his kid were doing great and everything was fine.

[68] But, you know, behind closed doors, that wasn't true at all.

[69] And so that coping mechanism really didn't do a lot for him.

[70] And so Timothy eventually turned to alcohol to cope with his misery.

[71] But the alcohol would only make the situation worse because it was yet another thing for his wife to be mad at him about and he was depressed all the time and it was eating away at their non -existent budget to pay for all this alcohol.

[72] And so Timothy would turn to yet another source for comfort, but it would be a very unlikely source of comfort.

[73] It would be his downstairs neighbor, John Christy.

[74] And the reason his downstairs neighbor was so unlikely was because John could not have been more different from Timothy.

[75] John was nearly double Timothy's age.

[76] He was incredibly smart, and he was respected not only by his peers, but really by the community.

[77] And that respect came from the fact that John had served during World War I and been right on the front lines and had nearly been killed during a mustard gas attack when he was fighting in the trenches.

[78] And then after the war was over, John would come back to London and he would become a police constable for quite a while.

[79] And then after retiring from the force, he became a post office clerk.

[80] But despite John and Timothy's vast differences, there was one thing they had in common.

[81] Marital problems.

[82] John and his wife Ethel had gotten married back in 1920, so four years before Timothy had even been born.

[83] But at some point early on in their marriage, the couple had split up.

[84] They didn't get divorced, but they separated and they lived totally apart for a while.

[85] But in 1934, the couple would finally reconcile, and that's when they moved into the ground floor apartment of the apartment building that Timothy and Beryl would move into years later.

[86] So years later, when John is sitting in his apartment, and he can hear coming from the third floor, like everybody else in the general vicinity, the sound of Timothy and Beryl fighting like crazy up in their apartment, John decided, you know, with his experience, with reconciling with his wife, that he ought to reach out to that young man, Timothy, and offer him some advice, or at the very least, be a friendly sounding board.

[87] And so John would eventually strike up a conversation with Timothy one day when they were passing each other, and Timothy was at a place in his life where he was looking for, for friends.

[88] He didn't have any friends.

[89] And so John to come into his life at this point was really good for Timothy.

[90] And so very quickly, those two struck up a friendship.

[91] But this friendship was not really peer to peer.

[92] It was more like father to son or mentor to mentee where Timothy really looked up to John.

[93] I mean, Timothy had never had a father in his life.

[94] And so John kind of became that.

[95] And John looked at Timothy with a lot of empathy.

[96] He could tell this was a man who was not very bright and He was in way over his head with debt, with this marriage, with parenthood, everything.

[97] And so John tried hard to kind of coach and guide Timothy as he navigated this very rough time in his life.

[98] And their relationship likely could have had a really positive effect, not only on just Timothy's mental health, but also perhaps on the state of Timothy and Beryl's marriage, but it was not long after John met Timothy that Timothy found out Beryl was pregnant with a second child.

[99] This was terrible news for Timothy.

[100] He knew they absolutely could not afford another child.

[101] As it was, they couldn't afford the current child they had.

[102] They couldn't afford anything.

[103] And in the United Kingdom, abortions were illegal.

[104] So there was no way to terminate this pregnancy.

[105] And so totally desperate and terrified, Timothy turned to John for guidance.

[106] And John would later recall on the witness stand during Timothy's trial that, you know, John did his best to try to consult.

[107] and comfort and tell Timothy that everything was going to be okay.

[108] You'll get another job.

[109] You'll take out another loan.

[110] It'll all work out.

[111] But, as John would say on the witness stand, his words didn't have any effect on Timothy.

[112] Timothy, by the time he came to John, was totally inconsolable, he was desperate, and he was unhinged.

[113] And so John started to suspect that Timothy might do something really drastic to make his troubles go away.

[114] And John would be correct.

[115] If you're listening to this podcast, then chances are good, you are a fan of the Strange Dark and Mysterious.

[116] And if that's the case, then I've got some good news.

[117] We just launched a brand new Strange Dark and Mysterious podcast called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[118] And as the name suggests, it's a show about medical mysteries, a genre that many fans have been asking us to dive into for years, and we finally decided to take the plunge and the show is awesome.

[119] In this free, weekly show, we explore bizarre, unheard of disease.

[120] diseases, strange medical mishaps, unexplainable deaths, and everything in between.

[121] Each story is totally true and totally terrifying.

[122] Go follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're a prime member, you can listen early and ad -free on Amazon Music.

[123] Hey, all you fans of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious.

[124] It's me, Mr. Ballin, and today I have some big news.

[125] It's something I'm holding in my hands right now, and so obviously you can't see it, but this is something you're really going to want to see.

[126] It's the first ever official Mr. Ballin publication.

[127] It's a graphic novel, and it's called Mr. Ballin Presents, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, The Graphic Stories.

[128] It's an anthology of both classic and brand new, terrifying stories that we've never covered on any of my other platforms, because we created them specifically for this first book.

[129] Each of these stories in the book are feature -length, Mr. Ballin's stories that really needed to be told visually.

[130] And the artwork in this book is, I mean, I'm looking at it, and it's just absolutely.

[131] stunning.

[132] So the book is not actually coming out until my birthday this year, October 1st, but you can pre -order it right now at book .ballin studios .com.

[133] Again, that's book .bollin studios .com.

[134] A few weeks later, on November 30th, 1949, a very dishebbled -looking Timothy wandered into a local police station in Wales not far from where he had grown up, and he would confess to the police that he had killed his wife.

[135] He would tell the police that he had given Beryl a poison that was apparently designed to abort her fetus, but this poison was too strong and it had killed Beryl.

[136] And then after she was dead, Timothy said he panicked, and so he took her body and he dumped her down the sewer that was outside of their apartment building.

[137] And then he arranged for his daughter, Geraldine, to go stay with some people in London while Timothy fled to Wales.

[138] But after getting to Wales, Timothy said his guilty conscience was just too much, and so he turned himself in.

[139] The police immediately arrested Timothy and they brought him back to London and then once he was in a cell in London, London detectives went out to Timothy's apartment building and they went to the manhole cover that led down into the sewer that was right outside of the apartment building and right away they noticed something odd.

[140] They were not able to get the lid off of the sewer.

[141] It was just too heavy.

[142] It would move, but one man couldn't do it.

[143] And so after three police officers, they all got down, they were barely able to get this lid up and off of the top of the sewer.

[144] And then when they went down into the sewer, there was no body.

[145] There was nothing down there.

[146] And so when detectives went back to Timothy in the London jail cell, and they confronted him with this revelation that, no, she's not in there.

[147] Timothy would kind of squirm a little bit.

[148] And then he would totally change his story.

[149] He would tell police that it was not he who gave Beryl this poison that ended up killing her.

[150] It was his first.

[151] and mentor and father -like figure in his life, John Christie.

[152] Timothy also told police that he left his daughter, Geraldine, in the care of John.

[153] Police are skeptical of Timothy, but because there's a child involved, they just immediately take his story at face value, and they rush back to the apartment building and they knock on John's door, and John opens the door, and he's standing there with his wife, Ethel, and he's totally shocked at these accusations that have been lodged against him by who he thought was a very close friend of his.

[154] And John and Ethel would tell police that not only did they have no clue what happened to Beryl, but Geraldine had never been in their care.

[155] And so the police are immediately very concerned for Geraldine's well -being.

[156] You know, who has Geraldine?

[157] Where is she?

[158] But while they were there, they just did a thorough search of John and Ethel's property to make sure they weren't lying.

[159] And then after searching their property, there was nothing inside.

[160] But When police left John and Ethel's apartment and began searching the outside of the property, an area that they had briefly searched when they were there earlier looking in the sewer, but now they're doing a much more thorough search.

[161] And during this thorough search, they find this shed that was located in the backyard of this big apartment building, and inside of this shed, wrapped in blankets, are the bodies of Beryl and her 13 -month -old daughter, Geraldine.

[162] They had both been strangled to death.

[163] After processing the crime scene, the police went back to the jail where Timothy was being held and they would tell him what they discovered at the property and Timothy had a very muted response to it.

[164] And then when one of the detectives asked Timothy point blank, are you responsible for both your wife and your daughter's deaths?

[165] Timothy would say yes.

[166] And then during a follow -on interrogation, Timothy would confess that he had been in a heated argument with his wife over money And at some point during this fight, which got very physical, he strangled Meryl to death.

[167] And then two days later, he strangled his daughter to death.

[168] And then after dumping their bodies in that shed outside, he fled to Wales.

[169] Timothy would actually recant that final confession.

[170] But it really didn't matter because when he went to trial a little over a month later, the jury just did not believe that Timothy did not do it.

[171] And so very quickly, they convicted him of murder and they sentenced him to death.

[172] Just three months after his conviction, so on March 9th, 1950, Timothy would find himself sitting inside of the so -called condemned suite at Pentonville Prison in London.

[173] He was shackled to this table with guards sitting on either side of him in this very small cell, and then right next to him was this wall that kind of ran down the side of the cell, and on the other side of that wall was the execution chamber.

[174] And so as Timothy would have been sitting at this table, suddenly the cell door that led into the holding area would have flung open.

[175] The execution team would have rushed in and grabbed Timothy and stood him up before he could run or fight back.

[176] And then before he knew it, he'd be pushed over to the door that went through that wall into the execution chamber.

[177] Once that door was open, Timothy only would have had maybe a couple of seconds to take in what he saw.

[178] And it would have been this pale green square room with a noose dangling down from the ceiling and right below it was an obvious mechanical trap door.

[179] and off to the side of the room was a lever that the executioner would actually pull to open up that floor and send the prisoner falling down into the pit below.

[180] So Timothy, he would have taken this in just for a second.

[181] His heart would have been racing and before long he would have been standing on this trap door.

[182] The noose would have come down.

[183] They would have tightened it to his neck.

[184] A bag would have been placed over his head.

[185] All the guards would have pushed to the walls.

[186] And then before Timothy could even say or do anything, the lever was pulled.

[187] And he dropped down into a 12 -foot -deep brick -lined pit where he would dangle by his neck until he died.

[188] This gruesome ending should have been the end of an already very gruesome story.

[189] But it wasn't.

[190] Not even close.

[191] Three years after Timothy's execution, a man named Barrisford Brown moved into the same ground floor apartment that John Christie and Ethel had shared.

[192] John had moved out just a couple of days earlier.

[193] And so Barrisford, he moves into this apartment.

[194] It's totally dirty.

[195] It's not well kept.

[196] And so Barrisford decides that he's going to fix the place up.

[197] And the first thing he's going to do is he's going to tear down all of the old wallpaper in the kitchen and replace it.

[198] And so he goes into the kitchen, he starts tearing down the wallpaper, he makes his way into the kitchen pantry, he starts pulling the wallpaper down in there.

[199] And at some point, when he pulls one strip of paper all the way to the ground, he sees towards the bottom of this wall inside of his pantry where there are no shelves over it behind the wallpaper.

[200] There is obviously a door, just a small door.

[201] it almost looks like the entrance to a crawl space.

[202] And so Beresford is totally intrigued, you know, why would there be this door behind the wallpaper in the pantry?

[203] And so he rips off the remaining wallpaper over this little door, he finds the handle and he forces it open, and what he sees inside of that little room would haunt him for the rest of his life.

[204] Three years and four months earlier, when Timothy discovered that his wife Beryl was pregnant with their second child, Timothy really did go to his friend John for guidance.

[205] However, this is where the story takes a turn.

[206] When Tim came to John, John, who was medically trained from his time in the military, he would tell Tim, hey, I can perform an abortion on Beryl if you want me to.

[207] Timothy immediately thought this was a great idea, and so totally relieved, thinking his problems are now all solved, he left John's apartment and ran upstairs to his own, he told Beryl about how John could perform this procedure for them, did she want to do it, and Beryl said, yeah, let's do it.

[208] Now, we don't know exactly what happened next, but the running theory is that sometime in November of 1949, Beryl and Geraldine left their apartment on the third floor and went down to the first floor, John's apartment, and when they got there, it was just John.

[209] John's wife Ethel, she was gone for the day.

[210] As for Timothy, he also was not present for this procedure, but he likely knew it was happening.

[211] So Beryl and Geraldine, they walk inside of John's apartment, and pretty quickly barrel finds a place or maybe john finds a place to put geraldine in the apartment where she's safe and then john usher's barrel over to this chair it's like his makeshift medical chair and he tells her to have a seat so she sits down and john goes over and gets this device and now this device it looks like a glass jar filled with clear liquid and then poking out of either side of it are these black thin hollow tubes that come out and connect at this kind of makeshift mouthpiece and so john he would walks over with this device and he hands the mouthpiece portion of this device to Beryl and he says here put this on your mouth and start breathing it in there's a gas I produce that kind of numbs the pain as I do this procedure to you and so Beryl did as she was told she took this mouthpiece and she put it over her mouth and her nose and she began breathing deeply and as she did that John grabbed a chemical and he began slowly pouring it into the glass jar where these tubes were coming out of And as he did that, a white gas began to form above the liquid inside of the jar, and there was a cover over the top of this jar.

[212] So the gas was trapped inside of this jar.

[213] And as Beryl is taking these big breaths through those tubes, she's sucking that gas into her lungs.

[214] And very quickly, as she's breathing on this apparatus, she didn't start feeling numb.

[215] She just passed out completely.

[216] However, this was John's plan all along.

[217] That device he made her put on her face that was only designed to make people pass out.

[218] It was not to numb any pain.

[219] John was not medically trained.

[220] He was not performing abortions out of his apartment.

[221] He was a serial killer.

[222] So with Beryl, now unconscious in front of him, John did the same thing he did to the other two women.

[223] He had lured into his trap and whose bodies were now buried in his backyard.

[224] He began having his way with Beryl.

[225] And at some point during this assault, Beryl woke up and began trying to fight off John, but he overpowered her and he strangled her to death.

[226] And then after she was dead, John just walked into the other room where Geraldine was and he used a shirt tie and he wrapped it around Geraldine's neck and he strangled her to death.

[227] And then after that, he put the mother and daughter together in some sheets and he put them out in the shed in the backyard.

[228] Later, when Timothy came to John's apartment to see how the procedure had gone on his wife, John would tell Timothy that, sorry, it didn't work out and your wife is dead.

[229] Don't worry, I'll look after your daughter.

[230] and make sure she's taken care of, you need to flee London and go to Wales now.

[231] And so Timothy, without really asking any questions, would do as he was told and he would flee to Wales.

[232] But a little while later, when he tried to check in with John about how his daughter was doing because he had no idea where she was or who she was with, John would just not let Timothy see her.

[233] And so Timothy eventually, just feeling wracked with guilt about this whole situation, he went to police.

[234] And critically, when he spoke to police, he lied about what happened.

[235] He wanted to protect his friend John, who he looked at as a father figure, as a mentor, as a close friend.

[236] And so he said, I killed my wife.

[237] And so this is why Timothy got the location of his wife's body wrong, because he didn't know.

[238] He just guessed the sewer.

[239] And so that explains why when they got over to the sewer, not only was it empty, but it seemed totally impossible that anybody could have lifted this manhole cover on their own.

[240] It was too heavy.

[241] Then, after police discovered Beryl and Geraldine's body, and they went back to the London jail and told Timothy, that was the first time he found out what had happened to his daughter.

[242] Because to that point, Tim really did believe that John had just been taking care of Geraldine or John had handed off his child to somebody else who was taking care of Geraldine.

[243] But either way, Geraldine was okay.

[244] So he's just been told, she's not okay, she's dead as well, his whole family is gone.

[245] And so Tim was almost certainly in shock.

[246] And so he's sitting there with that sort of muted response.

[247] As detectives are asking him, are you responsible for your wife and your child's death?

[248] And so Tim would say yes.

[249] But it's unclear if Tim actually understood their question or if he understood the implications of their question.

[250] He might have just been saying, I feel guilty about the fact that my family is dead.

[251] Not that he literally killed both his wife and daughter.

[252] But when Tim finally kind of snapped out of it, and really began trying to tell the truth that John was responsible, nobody believed him.

[253] Because his credibility was totally destroyed because the first thing he did when he went to police was lie about what happened.

[254] And when police dug in to Timothy's history a little bit, they saw he was a compulsive liar.

[255] Everybody said, oh, Timothy tells tall tales, that's just what he does.

[256] And making things even worse for Timothy was the fact that he had a very clear motive for why he might harm his family.

[257] He was under crippling debt, and his relationship with his wife was incredibly toxic and often became physical, and there were lots of witnesses to that.

[258] During Timothy's trial, despite the fact that Timothy and his lawyers tried everything they could to point the finger at John Christie saying, no, he's the guy responsible because John was constantly on the witness stand and had this impeccable resume as this war hero and this police constable, and he was well respected and he was well spoken and he was smart, the jury completely believed him.

[259] He was the epitome of credible, whereas Timothy was the opposite.

[260] And so it was largely John, the real killer's testimony that actually put Timothy, the innocent man, on death row.

[261] Also, the police totally botched the investigation from the beginning because the police went into the investigation already completely convinced that Timothy was guilty.

[262] This was an open and shut case, and us gathering evidence and doing all this, didn't really matter because Timothy was the guy.

[263] And so because the police were so focused on Timothy, they were blind to really obvious things all around them.

[264] For example, during their several searches of the apartment complex, both inside and out, a dog ran into the backyard and actually dug up one of the skeletons from one of those two women that John had killed years earlier and buried out there.

[265] and so a human skull and a human leg bone were visible outside as police are walking around.

[266] John was able to grab the skull and chuck it next door into a burned out building, but the leg bone was literally propped up against the side of the backyard in plain view.

[267] Nobody caught it.

[268] The police are also believed to have coerced Timothy into signing his final confession where he says, I not only killed my wife, but I also killed my daughter.

[269] There's even some speculation that the police literally saw, signed it for him, that they've forged the entire document.

[270] And so Timothy gets hauled off and executed.

[271] Meanwhile, John, the real killer, just keeps on killing.

[272] He would murder at least four more women, including his wife, Ethel, using the same technique, the gas machine followed by strangulation.

[273] And it was during the time that he killed these last four victims that we know about, that John became increasingly turned on by death itself.

[274] And so that was why he stuffed his wife's body right underneath the floorboards in his kitchen, and he stuffed those other three women inside of that tiny little room behind that secret door in the pantry.

[275] So that all day long as he was in his apartment, it constantly smelled of decomposing flesh.

[276] After Beresford Brown opened that secret door in the kitchen pantry and discovered those three women's bodies smashed inside of there, he would tell the police, and then 10 days later, on March 31st, 1953, John Christie would be found and arrested.

[277] He would confess to killing all eight victims, but the police only had enough evidence to charge him with one murder, and that was the murder of his wife, Ethel.

[278] But he was found guilty of that, and it was enough to warrant a death sentence.

[279] On July 15th of that year, at about 9 a .m., John Christie found himself sitting in the same condemned suite at Pentonville Prison that Timothy Evans had been sitting in three and a half years earlier.

[280] Then, moments later, the door behind John opened up.

[281] The same execution team that killed Timothy Evans, came inside, they grabbed John, they hoisted him up, they moved him over to the door that led into the execution chamber, the door flung open and John got his first look at the gallows, they rushed him over to the middle of the room, they pulled the noose down, tied it tight around his neck, They put the bag down over his head, all the guards stepped to the side, and then right as the executioner is about to pull down the lever, John, out of the blue, says, wait, my nose isches, to which the executioner just said, it won't bother you for long, and then he pulled the switch.

[282] Due in large part to the massive injustice in this case, where an obviously innocent man was carted off and executed, the UK would suspend the death penalty in 1965, and then in 1969, they would abolish it entirely.

[283] Between those two dates, in 1966, Timothy would receive a posthumous pardon for the murder of his family, meaning he is officially an innocent man. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast.

[284] If you got something out of today's episode and you haven't done this already, please ask the Amazon Music Follow button if you can borrow their car and then return it with the gas gauge on empty.

[285] This podcast airs every Monday and Thursday morning, but in the meantime, you can always watch one of the hundreds of stories we have posted on our main YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin.

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[291] me please follow me on any major social media platform and then send me a direct message my username is just at mr ballon and i really do read the majority of my dms lastly we have some really cool merchandise so head on over to shop mr ballon .com to have a look so that's going to do it i really appreciate your support until next time see you hey prime members you can binge eight new episodes of the mr ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad -free on Amazon Music.

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[293] And before you go, please tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry .com slash survey.

[294] I'm Dan Taberski.

[295] In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York.

[296] I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad.

[297] I'm like, stop fucking around.

[298] She's like, I can't.

[299] A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast.

[300] It's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls.

[301] With a diagnosis, the state tried to keep on the download.

[302] Everybody thought I was holding something back.

[303] Well, you were holding something back.

[304] Intentionally.

[305] Yeah, well, yeah.

[306] No, it's hysteria.

[307] It's all in your head.

[308] It's not physical.

[309] Oh, my gosh, you're exaggerating.

[310] Is this the largest mass hysteria since the Witches of Salem?

[311] Or is it something else entirely?

[312] Something's wrong here.

[313] Something's not right.

[314] Leroy was the new date line and everyone was trying to solve the murder.

[315] A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, Hysterical.

[316] Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[317] You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad -free right now by joining Wondry Plus.