Timothy Evans
Timothy John Evans was a Welsh lorry driver who was wrongfully accused of murdering his wife Beryl and infant daughter Geraldine at their residence in Notting Hill, London. In January 1950, Evans was tried and convicted of the murder of his daughter, and on 9 March he was executed by hanging.
During his trial, Evans accused his downstairs neighbour, John Christie, who was the chief prosecution witness in the case against him, of committing the murders.
Three years after Evans's execution, Christie was found to be a serial killer who had murdered several other women in the same house, including his own wife Ethel. Christie was himself sentenced to death, and while awaiting execution, he confessed to having murdered Mrs. Evans. An official inquiry concluded in 1966 that Christie had murdered Evans's daughter Geraldine, and Evans was granted a posthumous pardon. The High Court dismissed proceedings to officially quash Evans's murder conviction in 2004 on the grounds of the cost and resources that would be involved, but acknowledged that Evans did not murder his wife or his daughter, 54 years after his wrongful execution.
The case generated much controversy and is acknowledged to be a miscarriage of justice. Along with those of Derek Bentley and Ruth Ellis, the case played a major part in the restriction of capital punishment in 1957, the introduction of diminished responsibility into English law and, eventually, the abolition of hanging for murder in 1965.
Early life
Evans was a native of Merthyr Tydfil in Glamorgan, Wales. His father Daniel abandoned the family in April 1924 before Evans's birth. Evans had an older sister, Eileen, born in 1921 and a younger half-sister, Maureen, who was born in September 1929. Evans's mother remarried in September 1933. As a child, Evans had difficulty learning to speak and struggled at school. Following an accident when he was eight, Evans developed a tubercular verruca on his right foot that never completely healed and caused him to miss considerable amounts of time from school for treatments, further setting back his education. As a result, when he reached adulthood Evans possessed low literacy skills, often needing others to read lengthy documents to him, although he did possess some ability to read simple passages such as in comics, newspaper football reports and on his wages and receipts. He liked boxing and football, supporting Queens Park Rangers, as did Christie. He was also prone to inventing stories about himself to boost his self-esteem, a trait that continued into adulthood and interfered with his efforts to establish credibility when dealing with the police and courts.In 1935, his mother and her second husband moved to London, and Evans worked as a painter and decorator while attending school. He returned to Merthyr Tydfil in 1937 and briefly worked in the coal mines but had to resign because of continuing problems with his foot. In 1939, he returned to London to live again with his mother, and in 1946 they moved to St Mark's Road, Notting Hill. This was just over two minutes' walk from 10 Rillington Place, his future residence after he married. Evans was fined 60 shillings at West London Magistrates' Court on 25 April 1946 for stealing a car, and driving without insurance or a licence.
Married life
On 20 September 1947, Evans married Beryl Susanna Thorley, whom he had met in January 1947 on a blind date. The couple initially lived with Evans's family at St Mark's Road but after Beryl discovered she was pregnant in 1948 they moved into the top-floor flat at 10 Rillington Place in the Ladbroke Grove area of Notting Hill. Their neighbours in the ground-floor flat were the serial killer John Christie, then working as a post office clerk, and his wife, Ethel Christie. Timothy's and Beryl's daughter Geraldine was born on 10 October 1948.The marriage was characterised by angry quarrels. Beryl was alleged to be a poor housekeeper and incapable of managing the family's finances, while Timothy misspent his wages on alcohol, and his heavy drinking at the time exacerbated his already short temper. The arguments between Timothy and Beryl were loud enough to be heard by the neighbours. The arguments were about Timothy lying to his wife, associating with other women, and the family's financial troubles. Multiple witnesses later testified that Timothy had a violent temper and beat his wife on multiple occasions. Lucy Endicott, a friend of Beryl, described how she once witnessed Timothy "‘set about her and began hitting her with his hand across the face and body." Timothy was also accused of having at least two affairs with other women.
In 1949, Beryl revealed to Timothy that she was pregnant with their second child. Since the family was already struggling financially, Beryl decided to have an abortion. After some initial reluctance, Evans agreed to this course of action.
Events leading to Evans's arrest
Several weeks later, on 30 November 1949, Evans informed police at Merthyr Tydfil that his wife had died in unusual circumstances. His first confession was that he had accidentally killed her by giving her something in a bottle that a man had given him to abort the foetus; he had then disposed of her body in a sewer drain outside 10 Rillington Place. He told the police that after arranging for Geraldine to be looked after, he had gone to Wales. When police examined the drain outside the front of the building, however, they found nothing and, furthermore, discovered that the manhole cover required the combined strength of three officers to remove it.When re-questioned, Evans changed his story and said that Christie had offered to perform an abortion on Beryl. Evans stated that he had left Christie out of his first statement in order to protect him. After some deliberation between Evans and his wife, they had both agreed to take up Christie's offer. On 8 November, Evans had returned home from work to be informed by Christie that the abortion had not worked and that Beryl was dead. Christie had said that he would dispose of the body and would make arrangements for a couple from East Acton to look after Geraldine. He said that Evans should leave London for the meantime. On 14 November, Evans left for Wales to stay with relatives. Evans said he later returned to 10 Rillington Place to ask about Geraldine, but Christie had refused to let him see her.
In response to Evans's second statement, the police performed a preliminary search of 10 Rillington Place but did not uncover anything incriminating, despite the presence of a human thigh bone supporting a fence post in the tiny garden. On a more thorough search on 2 December, the police found the body of Beryl Evans, wrapped in a tablecloth in the wash-house in the back garden. Access to the locked wash-house was only possible by using a knife kept by Mrs. Christie. Significantly, the body of Geraldine was also found alongside Beryl's body – Evans had not mentioned he had killed his daughter in either of his statements. Beryl and Geraldine had both been strangled.
Although they examined the garden, the police did not find traces of the skeletal remains of two prior victims of Christie, despite their shallow burial. Christie actually removed the skull of Miss Eady when his dog dug it up from the garden around this time, and he disposed of it in a bombed-out building nearby. This vital clue was ignored when the skull was then discovered by children playing in the ruins and handed in to police.
When Evans was shown the clothing taken from the bodies of his wife and child, he was also informed that both had been strangled. This was, according to Evans's statement, the first occasion in which he was informed that his baby daughter had been killed. He was asked whether he was responsible for their deaths. To this, Evans apparently responded, "Yes." He then apparently confessed to having strangled Beryl during an argument over debts and strangling Geraldine two days later, after which he left for Wales.
This confession, along with other contradictory statements Evans made during the police interrogation, has been cited as proof of his guilt. Several authors who have written about the case have argued that the police provided Evans with all the necessary details for him to make a plausible confession, which they may have in turn edited further while transcribing it. Furthermore, the police interrogated Evans over the course of late evening and early morning hours to his physical and emotional detriment, a man already in a highly emotional state. Evans later stated in court that he thought he would be subjected to violence by the police if he did not confess, and this fear along with the shock of discovering that both his wife and daughter had been strangled, likely induced him to make a false confession. The police investigation was marred by a lack of forensic expertise, with significant evidence overlooked.
The Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions states that some of the phraseology of the confession seemed more in line with language a police officer might use, rather than that used by an illiterate man, as Evans was. Evans was kept in solitary confinement for two days before being handed over to the London police. He did not know what was happening other than his wife's body had not been found in the drain as expected. At Notting Hill police station, he was shown his wife's and daughter's clothing, and the ligature which had been used to strangle his daughter. This book cites Ludovic Kennedy as a source for the conclusion that Evans felt tremendous guilt over not doing more to prevent the deaths of his wife and daughter, and particularly that his daughter's murder must have been a tremendous shock.
Trial and execution
Evans was put on trial for the murder of his daughter on 11 January 1950 before Mr Justice Lewis and a jury. In accordance with legal practice at the time, the prosecution proceeded only with the single charge of murder, that concerning Geraldine. Beryl's murder, with which Evans was still formally charged, was not formally before the court, though evidence that he had murdered Beryl was used with the aim of establishing Evans's guilt of the murder of Geraldine. Evans, who was represented by Malcolm Morris, withdrew his confession during consultations with his solicitor and alleged that Christie was responsible for the murders in accordance with his second statement given to the police at Merthyr Tydfil. Although this allegation was dismissed by the court as "fantastic" and Evans's solicitors had also warned him that it was difficult to prove, Evans maintained this defence until his execution. It was subsequently found that his allegation was true.Christie and his wife, Ethel, were key witnesses for the prosecution. Christie denied that he had offered to abort Beryl's unborn child and gave detailed evidence about the quarrels between Evans and his wife. The defence sought to show that Christie was the murderer, highlighting his past criminal record. Christie had previous convictions for several thefts and for malicious wounding. The latter case involved Christie striking a woman on the head with a cricket bat. But his apparent reform, and his service with the police as a special constable, may have impressed the jury. The defence also could not find a motive for which a respected person like Christie would murder two people, whereas the prosecution could use the explanation in Evans's confessions as Evans's motive. Unlike Christie, Evans had no previous convictions for violence, though he had been fined for theft and motoring offences. His conflicting statements undermined his credibility. Had the police conducted a thorough search of the garden and found the bones of two previous victims of Christie, the trial of Evans might not have occurred at all.
The case largely came down to Christie's word against Evans's and the course of the trial turned against Evans. The trial lasted only three days and much key evidence was omitted, or never shown to the jury. Evans was found guilty – the jury taking just 40 minutes to come to its decision. After a failed appeal held before the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard; Mr Justice Sellers and Mr Justice Humphreys on 20 February, Evans was hanged on 9 March 1950 by Albert Pierrepoint, assisted by Syd Dernley at Pentonville Prison.
The safety of Evans's conviction was severely criticised when Christie's murders were discovered three years later. During interviews with police and psychiatrists prior to his execution, Christie admitted several times that he had been responsible for the murder of Beryl Evans. If these confessions were true, Evans's second statement detailing Christie's offer to abort Beryl's baby is likely to be the true version of events that took place at Rillington Place on 8 November 1949. Ludovic Kennedy provided one possible reconstruction of how the murder took place, surmising that an unsuspecting Beryl let Christie into her flat, expecting the abortion to be carried out, but was instead attacked and then strangled. Christie claimed to have possibly engaged in sexual intercourse with Beryl's body after her death but her post-mortem had failed to uncover evidence of sexual intercourse. In his confessions to Beryl's death, Christie denied he had agreed to carry out an abortion on Beryl. He instead claimed to have strangled her while being intimate with her, or that she had wanted to commit suicide and he helped her do so.
One important fact was not brought up in Evans's trial: two workmen were willing to testify that there were no bodies in the wash-house when they worked there several days after Evans supposedly hid them. They stored their tools in the wash-room and cleaned it out completely when they finished their work on 11 November. Their evidence in itself would have raised doubts about the veracity of Evans's alleged confessions, but the workmen were not called to give evidence. Indeed, the police re-interviewed the workmen and forced them to change their evidence to fit the preconceived idea that Evans was the sole murderer. The murderer, Christie, would have hidden the bodies of Beryl and Geraldine in the temporarily vacant first-floor flat, and then moved them to the wash-house four days later when the workmen had finished.