The Two Killers of Rillington Place
John Reginald Halliday Christie was already the murderer of at least
two victims when Timothy John Evans, much younger and with an IQ of 65, came to
live with his wife at 10 Rillington Place. Christie is supposed to have framed
Evans over the killing of his wife and baby daughter, and was even the principal
Crown witness against Evans. Refuting claims that Evans was innocent of the
crimes for which he was hanged but years later granted a free pardon, this book
sets out to show that it was in fact Evans who killed both his wife and child,
and then tried to blame Christie, who at that time had the bodies of two women
buried in his garden. The book also argues that Beryl Evans was not even present
at 10 Rillington Place when Christie was supposed to have been strangling her
there; that, to accept Evans as innocent, we should have to believe in far
greater improbabilities and absurdities than the presence of two stranglers in
one house; that Evans tried to kill his wife more than once, just before the
murder itself; that evidence showing Evans to be guilty was available at the
time; and that commentators both then and since have altered the evidence to
proclaim Evans's innocence.
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company (23 Jun 1994)
ISBN-10: 0316909467
ISBN-13: 978-0316909464
ISBN-10: 0316909467
ISBN-13: 978-0316909464
John Eddowes, an independent investigator, has done his
homework and discovered that Evans was an extremely violent character who tried
to kill his wife not long before the murder. He cites medical evidence to show
that Evans was, technically speaking, a psychopath who was always losing
control.
But, above all, he performs a ruthless dissection of Ludovic
Kennedy’s book, highlighting its ‘errors, omissions and alterations’ and
producing a brilliant and totally damning account of Kennedy’s arguments. He
points out that when Kennedy was asked, at the Brabin inquiry of 1968, about
some particularly misleading attack on the police, he admitted: “Yes, that is
wrong.” Yet in a paperback edition of 10 Rillington Place, 20 years later, the
same incorrect statement has been left unchanged.
But there is one enormous obstacle to believing that Evans was innocent:
at Notting Hill police station, he confessed to the murder of his wife and baby,
not once but three times. It
was only after talking to the murderer Donald Hume in jail — who advised him to
change his story then stick to it — that Evans accused Christie of the
murders. If Evans was innocent,
why did he confess in such circumstantial detail to the murders? According to
Kennedy, because he was virtually ‘brainwashed’ by shock, and said whatever the
police wanted to hear. But anyone who reads Evans’s confessions can see that
this is just not on. No one could sound so precise and circumstantial if he was
innocent. Christie had no reason whatever
to kill the baby even if he had murdered Beryl Evans. And if he hadn’t killed
her then it would have been sheer madness to kill the baby.
But the case he presents is nevertheless,
quite overwhelming. After this book, it should be impossible for any sensible
person to believe in the innocence of Timothy
Evans.
Colin Wilson
Evening Standard.
Evening Standard.
