Search

John Christie: The 10 Rillington Place Murders and a Fatal Miscarriage of Justice

Jun 16
3 min read

Updated: Jun 25

To his neighbours, John Reginald Halliday Christie was a softly spoken, respectable man — a former police reserve constable who lived quietly with his wife at 10 Rillington Place in London's Notting Hill. Behind that ordinary front door, over the course of a decade, he strangled at least eight people and hid their bodies in the walls, the garden and beneath the floorboards. His case is remembered not only for its horror but for a catastrophic miscarriage of justice that helped end capital punishment in Britain.

This article sets out who Christie was, the timeline of his murders, the wrongful execution of a neighbour for his crimes, and the legal earthquake the case ultimately triggered.

John Christie: The 10 Rillington Place Murders and a Fatal Miscarriage of Justice

Key Facts at a Glance

Full name: John Reginald Halliday Christie
Born: 8 April 1899, Yorkshire, England
Known as: The Rillington Place Strangler
Victims: At least eight, including his wife Ethel
Span of crimes: 1943–1953
Executed: 15 July 1953, by hanging, HM Prison Pentonville

The Man at Number 10

Born in Yorkshire in 1899, Christie had served as a wartime police reserve constable, a role that lent him an air of authority and respectability. He and his wife Ethel occupied the ground-floor flat of a shabby terraced house at 10 Rillington Place. His unremarkable manner masked a predatory pattern: he typically lured vulnerable women into the flat, often rendering them unconscious before strangling them.

A Decade of Murder, 1943–1953

Christie's first known victims, Ruth Fuerst (1943) and Muriel Eady (1944), were buried in the back garden. After a long pause, the killing resumed and accelerated. In December 1952 he murdered his wife Ethel and concealed her body beneath the floorboards. In the first months of 1953 he killed three more women — Kathleen Maloney, Rita Nelson and Hectorina MacLennan — and hid their bodies in a wallpapered alcove in the kitchen.

His method grew more deliberate over time. Christie would offer women a supposed remedy — sometimes posing as someone with medical knowledge — and render them unconscious with domestic gas before strangling and sexually assaulting them. The veneer of the helpful, respectable ex-constable was central to how he gained their trust and then their lives.

The Wrongful Hanging of Timothy Evans

The most notorious chapter concerns the family who lived in the flat above. In 1949, Timothy Evans's wife Beryl and their baby daughter Geraldine were murdered. Suspicion fell on Evans, and Christie — still seen as a trustworthy ex-constable — was the prosecution's key witness against him. Evans was convicted and hanged at Pentonville on 9 March 1950, still protesting his innocence.

Only after Christie's own crimes came to light did it become clear that Evans had almost certainly been executed for murders Christie committed. The failures ran deep: as early as 1949, children playing on a nearby bombed-out site had found a human skull — later identified as one of Christie’s garden victims — and a human bone had even been used to prop up the garden fence, yet none of it was connected to him at the time. Evans was granted a posthumous pardon in 1966.

Discovery, March 1953

In March 1953 Christie moved out of 10 Rillington Place and sublet the flat. Within days a new tenant, given permission to use the kitchen, probed the wallpapered alcove and discovered the hidden bodies. Police searches uncovered the remaining victims in the house and garden. Christie was arrested on 31 March 1953.

Trial and Execution

At his trial Christie attempted to blame others and pleaded insanity, but the evidence was overwhelming. He was convicted of the murder of his wife and sentenced to death. On 15 July 1953 he was hanged at Pentonville by the executioner Albert Pierrepoint — the same hangman who had executed Timothy Evans three years earlier.

A Catalyst for Abolishing the Death Penalty

The realisation that the state had hanged an innocent man became a cornerstone of the campaign against capital punishment in the United Kingdom. Ludovic Kennedy's investigative book “Ten Rillington Place” (1961) and the 1971 film it inspired kept the injustice in the public eye, and the Evans case is widely cited among the factors that led Britain to abolish the death penalty for murder in 1965.