An incredibly engrossing read, this was a book I only recently discovered but it is a subject I have been interested in for a long time, since I saw the movie as a teenager. The book follows the trial of the British serial killer John Christie, a man who murdered several women and kept their bodies at his home and garden at 10 Rillington Place. A double whammy being that his upstairs neighbour Timothy Evans was three years earlier tried and hanged for the murder of his wife and daughter. Was Christie guilty of those murders too? That is what this book discusses via the word of writers and journalists of the time, most notably Harry Proctor who was one of the great figures of his day.
The book follows Harry through the Christie trial as feeling misled in 1949 he tries to get Christie to admit to the murders of Beryl and Geraldine Evans, and as a journalist feeling responsible for the potential wrongful conviction of Timothy Evans.
It is very harrowing read and no details left out in the examination of the facts and evidence. I truly believe that Christie did indeed kill the Evans mother and daughter. A botched abortion or excuse to satisfy his fetish of gassing, strangling and necrophiliac rape. The baby being collateral and to silence rumours. Timothy Evans being a naive uneducated man confessed in the moment led on by assurances from Christie.
Christie was rotten from the start and a serial molester and depraved man. A murderer already before the Evans murders. All the facts are clear to see that a massive miscarriage of justice one that was led to stand with evidence and facts withheld until 1992 when the files were made public.
It is a fascinating study in British history and I have no doubts Christie is one of the biggest villians in British history and deservedly so alongside Jack The Ripper. The death penalty existed for animals like him. A man who took advantage of the weak and vulnerable women he befriended.
The book is excellent and one I would highly recommend and afterwards take a deep dive into the case. It is an eye-opening thing and how he got away with it for so long. The facts were there to be found like a human thigh bone propping up a fence, the stench of decay with the bodies hidden under the floor and in alcoves, the fact he was an illegal abortionist.
The case also has spawned an excellent movie from the 1970s 10 Rillington Place starring Richard Attenborough, John Hurt and Judith Geeson. As well as a 2016 television series Rillington Place starring Tim Roth.
This book is a superb study of not just the case but a social history of Britain and London in the early 1950s.
Valley Reviews 