John Christie (murderer) - Serial Killers Profiles and News - Criminal Motives Serial Killers Profiles and News Halifax, West Riding of Yorkshire, England Died: 15 July 1953 (aged 55) Pentonville Prison, London, England August 1943–6 March 1953 Country: Date apprehended: 31 March 1953 John Reginald Halliday Christie (8 April 1898 – 15 July 1953), born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, was an English serial killer active in the 1940s and 1950s. He murdered at least six women—including his wife, Ethel—by strangling them in his flat at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London. He was arrested, tried, and hanged in 1953 for his wife’s murder, after his victims’ bodies were found in the flat by a new tenant. Christie had served in World War I, and was injured in a gas attack in 1918.

After his return to civilian life he took to crime, and was convicted and imprisoned several times for offences including theft and assault. He moved to Rillington Place in 1938, and on the outbreak of war in 1939 was accepted for service as a Special Constable without revealing his criminal record. He committed his murders between 1943 and 1953, his general modus operandi being to strangle his victims after he had rendered them unconscious with domestic gas. While they were unconscious, Christie also raped his victims and continued to do so as they died, ensuring his reputation as a necrophiliac. [2] Substantial controversy exists as to whether Christie was responsible for the murders of two additional victims, Beryl Evans and her daughter Geraldine. They, along with Beryl’s husband Timothy, were tenants at 10 Rillington Place during 1948–49. Timothy Evans was charged with both murders, was found guilty of the murder of his daughter and was hanged in 1950. Christie gave evidence that helped secure Evans’s conviction.

When Christie’s own crimes were uncovered three years later, serious doubts were raised over the safety of Evans’s conviction, many people believing that Christie had been responsible for their deaths. In an official inquiry conducted in 1965–66, Mr Justice Brabin stated that it was “more probable than not” that Evans killed his wife and that he did not kill his daughter Geraldine. [3] This finding, challenged in subsequent legal processes, nevertheless enabled the then Home Secretary to grant Evans a posthumous pardon because it was for the murder of his daughter that Evans had been convicted in 1950. The question of Christie’s involvement in the Evans murders, and the possible miscarriage of justice, contributed to the suspension of capital punishment for murder in the United Kingdom in 1965. [4] Contents <![CDATA[ // ]]> Early life Christie was brought up in Halifax, West Yorkshire. He was abused by his father, a strict disciplinarian, and dominated by his sisters. His mother in turn overprotected him, which further undermined his self-confidence.

In 1907, at the age of eight, he was witness to the open coffin of his maternal grandfather; in later years, Christie spoke of how profound this experience was to him, seeing the dead body of a man who had previously frightened him. [5] Christie won a scholarship to Halifax Secondary School when he was 11. His favourite subject was mathematics, particularly algebra. [6] It was later found he had an IQ of 128. [7] Christie sang in the church choir and was a Boy Scout as a child; upon leaving school at the age of 15 he worked as an assistant film projectionist. [8] Christie had a lifelong problem with impotence; his first attempts at sex were failures, branding him throughout adolescence as “Reggie-No-Dick” and “Can’t-D o-It-Christie”. [9] His difficulties with sex remained throughout his life, and most of the time he could only perform with prostitutes. [10] In September 1916, Christie enlisted as a signalman in World War I. In June 1918, he was hospitalised after a mustard gas attack while serving in France.

He spent a month in a military hospital in Calais. Later on in his life, Christie claimed to have been both blinded and rendered mute for three and a half years from the attack. [11] Christie’s period of muteness was the alleged reason for his inability to talk much louder than a whisper for the rest of his life. Author Ludovic Kennedy points out that no record of his blindness has been traced and that while Christie may have lost his voice when he was admitted to hospital, he would not have been discharged as fit for duty had he remained a mute. [11] His inability to talk much louder than a whisper, Kennedy argues, was a psychological reaction to the gassing rather than from any physiological effects of the gas itself. [12] This reaction, together with Christie’s exaggeration of the effects of the attack, stemmed from underlying hysteria in Christie; such a condition encouraged him to exaggerate or feign illness as a ploy to get attention and sympathy. [13] Christie married Ethel Simpson Waddington from Sheffield, on 10 May 1920 at Halifax Register Office. It was a dysfunctional union, as Christie was mostly impotent with her and frequented prostitutes.

[14] They separated after four years, when Christie moved to London and Ethel stayed to live with relatives in Sheffield, to where they had moved after Halifax. [15] Early criminal career After his marriage to Ethel, Christie was convicted of many petty criminal offences over the course of more than a decade. His first conviction was for stealing postal orders while working as a postman, for which he received three months’ imprisonment on 12 April 1921. [16] In January 1923, Christie was convicted of both obtaining money on false pretenses and violent conduct, for which he was bound over and put on 12 months’ probation respectively. [17] He committed two further instances of larceny in 1924 and received consecutive sentences of three and six months’ imprisonment from September 1924. [18] In May 1929, he was convicted of assaulting a prostitute with whom he was living in Battersea and was sentenced to six months’ hard labour; Christie had hit her over the head with a cricket bat, which the magistrate described as a “murderous attack”.

[15] Finally, he was convicted of stealing a car from a priest who had befriended him, and received three months’ imprisonment in late 1933. [19] Christie and Ethel reconciled after his release from prison in late 1933. While Christie was able to end his cycle of petty crime, he did not reform; he continued to seek out prostitutes in his wife’s absence. [20] In December 1938, Christie and his wife moved into the ground floor flat of 10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill. On the outbreak of World War II, he applied to join the Special Constabulary and was accepted in spite of having an extensive criminal record (the police did not check his background). [21] He was assigned to Harrow Road police station. Christie began an affair with a woman working at the police station whose husband was a serving soldier. The relationship lasted until mid-1943, when the woman’s husband returned from the war and found out about the affair. He went to the house where she was living, discovered Christie there and assaulted him.

[22] Murders First murders The first person Christie admitted to killing was Ruth Fuerst, an Austrian-born munitions worker who also engaged part time in prostitution. [23] Christie claimed to have met Fuerst either while she was on the beat or in a snack bar in Ladbroke Grove. Christie impulsively strangled her during sex at Rillington Place in August 1943, not long after he had been assaulted by the husband of the woman with whom he had been having the affair. Christie buried Fuerst’s body in the building’s communal garden, after having initially hidden it beneath the floorboards of the front living room. Remaining in the police force after having committed a murder may have proved too much of a strain for Christie, and he resigned as a Special Constable at the end of 1943. [24] In 1944 he found new employment, as a clerk at a radio factory. It was here that he met his second victim, Muriel Amelia Eady, a co-worker.

In October 1944, he invited Eady back to his flat with the promise that he had concocted a “special mixture” that could cure her bronchitis. [25] Eady was to inhale the mixture from a jar with a tube inserted in the top. The mixture in fact was Friar’s Balsam, which Christie used to disguise the smell of domestic gas. Once Eady was seated breathing the mixture from the tube with her back turned, Christie inserted a second tube into the jar connected to a gas tap. [25] As Eady continued breathing, she inhaled the domestic gas, which soon rendered her unconscious from the carbon monoxide. Once Eady was unconscious, Christie raped and then strangled her. He buried her alongside Fuerst’s body in the back garden. [26] Later murders Rear view of 10 Rillington Place, showing the backyard where Christie buried the bodies of Ruth Fuerst and Muriel Eady. The wash-house where the bodies of Beryl and Geraldine Evans were found is the building with the light-coloured tin roof situated farthest from the main house.

In Easter 1948, Timothy Evans and his wife, Beryl, moved into the top floor flat at Rillington Place. Beryl gave birth to their daughter, Geraldine, in October 1948. In late 1949, Evans informed police that his wife was dead. [27] A police search of 10 Rillington Place revealed the dead bodies of Beryl and Geraldine Evans, both of whom were found in an outside wash-house with Beryl’s body additionally parcelled up. They had both been strangled. [28] After initially alleging that Christie had killed his wife in a botched abortion operation, Evans then confessed to murdering his wife and daughter himself. [29] After he was charged with their deaths, Evans recanted his confession and again accused Christie of being the murderer, this time of both his wife and daughter. On 11 January 1950, Evans was put on trial for the murder of his daughter, the prosecution declining to pursue a second charge of murdering his wife. [30] Christie was a principal witness for the Crown and gave evidence denying Evans’s accusations.

[31] Evans was found guilty of the murder by the jury and was hanged on 9 March. [32] Following Evans’s trial, nearly three years passed without major incident for Christie. Christie lost his job at the Post Office Savings Bank because his criminal past had been disclosed in Evans’s trial, and he later found new employment as a clerk with the British Road Services at their Shepherd’s Bush depot. [33] At the same time, new tenants arrived to fill the vacant first and second-floor apartments in 10 Rillington Place. The tenants were black immigrants from the West Indies with whom the Christies despised living because of racial prejudices. [34] Tensions between the new tenants and the Christies came to a head when Ethel Christie took one of her neighbours to court for assault. [35] Christie successfully negotiated with the Poor Man’s Lawyer Centre to continue to have exclusive use of the back garden, ostensibly to have space between him and his neighbours but more probably to prevent anyone from stumbling upon the buried remains. [36] [37] On the morning of 14 December 1952, Christie strangled Ethel in bed.

She had last been seen alive two days earlier. [38] To prevent people from making inquiries into what had happened to her, Christie told a number of lies to explain her disappearance. He replied to a letter sent from relatives in Sheffield that Ethel had rheumatism and could not write herself; to one neighbour he explained that she was visiting her relatives in Sheffield; to another he said that she had gone to Birmingham. [39] Christie had resigned from his job on 6 December and had been unemployed since then. To support himself, Christie sold Ethel’s wedding ring and watch and then most of the furniture in his flat. Not long after he forged his wife’s signature and emptied her bank account of its savings. [40] Between 19 January and 6 March 1953, Christie murdered three more women whom he had invited back to 10 Rillington Place: Kathleen Maloney, Rita Nelson and Hectorina Maclennan. Maloney was a prostitute from the Ladbroke Grove area; Nelson was from Belfast and was visiting her sister in Ladbroke Grove when she met Christie.

[41] Christie first met Maclennan, who was living in London with her boyfriend, Alex Baker, in a cafe. All three met on a number of occasions after this, and Christie let Maclennan and Baker stay at Rillington Place while they were looking for accommodation. [42] On another occasion, Christie met Maclennan on her own and persuaded her to come back to his flat where he murdered her. He convinced Baker, who came to Rillington Place looking for her, that he had not seen Maclennan. Christie kept up this pretence for several days, meeting Baker regularly to see if he had news of her whereabouts and to help him search for her. [43] When Christie murdered his final three victims, he modified the gassing technique he had first used on Muriel Eady: he simply used a rubber tube connected to the gas pipe in the kitchen, which he kept closed off with a bulldog clip. [44] He seated his victims in the kitchen, released the clip on the tube and let gas leak into the room. [45] The gas made his victims drowsy and therefore vulnerable to assault.

Christie then used a rope that he kept in the kitchen to strangle them. [44] He hid the bodies in a small alcove behind the back kitchen wall, which was covered over with wallpaper. [46] Arrest Christie moved out of 10 Rillington Place on 20 March 1953. [47] He defrauded a couple who took up residence by taking £7.13s.0d (£7.65p or about £154 in today’s money) from them—he was not authorised by the landlord to sub-let the property. The landlord visited the property that same evening and, finding the couple there instead of Christie, stipulated they leave first thing next morning. [43] Once they had left, the landlord allowed the tenant of the top floor flat, Beresford Brown, to use Christie’s kitchen. On 24 March, Brown discovered the kitchen alcove when he attempted to insert brackets into the wall to hold a wireless set. Peeling back the wallpaper, Brown saw the bodies of Maloney, Nelson and Maclennan.

After getting confirmation from another tenant in 10 Rillington Place that they were dead bodies, Brown informed the police an d a citywide search for Christie began. After he left Rillington Place, Christie had booked a room at the King’s Cross Rowton Houses under his real name and address. He asked for seven nights, but stayed only for four, leaving on 24 March when news of the discoveries at 10 Rillington Place became widespread. [48] After he left Rowton House, Christie wandered all over London, spending a lot of time in cafes. [48] The search for him ended on the morning of 31 March when he was arrested on the Embankment by Putney Bridge after being challenged about his identity by a policeman. When arrested, all he had with him were some coins and an old newspaper clipping about the remand of Timothy Evans. [49] Conviction and execution While in custody, Christie confessed to six murders: the three women found in the kitchen alcove, Ethel Christie, and the two women buried in the back garden. He also admitted to killing Beryl Evans, with which Timothy Evans had originally been charged during the police investigation in 1949.

He never admitted to killing Geraldine Evans. [50] Christie’s trial, solely for the murder of his wife, began on 22 June 1953 in the same court where Evans had been tried. [51] Christie pleaded insanity and claimed to have a poor memory of the events. [52] The jury rejected the plea and, after 85 minutes’ deliberation, found him guilty. [53] Christie did not appeal his conviction, and on 15 July 1953 he was hanged at Pentonville Prison by Albert Pierrepoint, who had also hanged Evans. [54] Controversy and the pardon of Timothy Evans Main article: Timothy Evans After Christie’s conviction, there was substantial controversy concerning the earlier trial of Evans. Not only had Evans been convicted mainly on the evidence of a serial killer, but the very fact that a serial killer had been living in the same property where Evans supposedly carried out his crimes raised doubts as to whether he was really responsible for the murders.

[55] Christie confessed to Beryl Evans’s murder and although he neither confessed to, nor was charged with, Geraldine Evans’s murder, he was held guilty of both by many at the time. [56] This in turn cast doubt on the fairness of Evans’s trial and raised the possibility that an innocent person had been hanged. [56] The controversy prompted the then Home Secretary, David Maxwell-Fyfe, to commission an inquiry led by John Scott Henderson, QC, the Recorder of Portsmouth, to determine whether Evans had been innocent of his crimes and if a miscarriage of justice had occurred. Scott Henderson interviewed Christie prior to his execution, as well as another twenty witnesses who had been involved in either of the police investigations. He concluded that Evans was in fact guilty of both murders and that Christie’s confessions to the murder of Beryl Evans were unreliable and made in the context of furthering his own defence that he was insane. [57] This did not end the matter, as questions continued to be raised in Parliament concerning Evans’s innocence, [58] along with newspaper campaigns and books being published making similar claims.

[59] The Scott Henderson Inquiry was criticised for being held over too short a time period (one week) and for being prejudiced against the possibility that Evans was innocent. [60] [61] This controversy, along with the unusual coincidence that two stranglers would have been living in the same property at the same time if Evans and Christie had both been guilty, kept alive the issue that a miscarriage of justice had taken place in Evans’s trial. [62] This uncertainty led to a second inquiry, chaired by High Court judge, Sir Daniel Brabin, and conducted over the winter of 1965–66. Brabin re-examined much of the evidence from both cases and evaluated some of the arguments for Evans’s innocence. His report’s conclusions were that it was “more probable than not” that Evans had killed his wife, and that he had not killed his daughter, for whose death Christie had been responsible. Christie’s likely motive was that her continued presence would have alerted people to Beryl’s disappearance. [63] Brabin also noted, however, that the uncertainty involved in the case would have prevented a jury from being satisfied beyond reasonable doubt of Evans’s guilt had he been re-tried.

[64] These conclusions were used by the Home Secretary of the time, Roy Jenkins, to recommend a posthumous pardon (in turn granted) for Timothy Evans, since Evans had been tried on and executed for the murder of his daughter. [65] [66] The pardon allowed authorities to return Evans’s remains to his family, who had him reburied in a private grave. [67] Even so, Evans remained implicated in the murder of his wife according to Mr. Justice Brabin’s findings. At this time, there was already debate in the United Kingdom over the continued use of the death penalty in the legal system. The controversy generated by Evans’s case, along with a number of other controversial cases from the same time, is considered to have contributed to the suspension in 1965, and later abolition, of capital punishment. [68] Later developments In January 2003, the Home Office awarded Timothy Evans’s half-sister, Mary Westlake, and his sister, Eileen Ashby, ex-gratia payments as compensation for the miscarriage of justice in Timothy Evans’s trial.

The independent assessor for the H ome Office, Lord Brennan QC, accepted that “the conviction and execution of Timothy Evans for the murder of his child was wrongful and a miscarriage of justice” and that “there is no evidence to implicate Timothy Evans in the murder of his wife. She was most probably murdered by Christie.” [69] Lord Brennan believed that the Brabin Report’s conclusion that Evans probably murdered his wife should be rejected given Christie’s confessions and conviction. [69] However, a legal appeal by Mrs Westlake to the Criminal Cases Review Commission to have Evans’s convictions formally quashed in the Court of Appeal was rejected in March 2004. The Commission ruled that even though there was a real possibility that Evans’s conviction for the murder of his daughter would be overturned, the cost in resources to do so could not be justified since it would not lead to any tangible benefits (Evans had already been pardoned and his family awarded compensation). [69] Furthermore, the Court of Appeal could not address the question of Evans’s guilt in the murder of his wife if he had not been formally convicted of that charge.

[69] Mrs Westlake subsequently appealed against the Commission’s decision in the High Court on 16 November 2004. Her appeal was turned down, with the High Court justices agreeing with the Criminal Cases Review Commission that the cost of overturning Evans’s conviction could not be justified. Both justices nevertheless considered Evans to be innocent in the murder of his daughter and held that no jury could have convicted him of the murder of his wife had he been tried on that charge. [69] Supporters of Evans’s innocence have often, as justification for their case, pointed to the unlikelihood of two people living in the same property who were guilty of murdering people in the same way, [70] that Evans’s sub-normal intelligence made him easily manipulable by Christie [71] and that there may have been police impropriety in securing Evans’s confessions.

[72] Critics of this view point out that Evans continued to confess to the crimes—to the prison medical officer—even after his police interrogation, [73] that the evidence that Evans could have been either manipulated or influenced by shock to confess to a crime he did not commit is unconvincing [74] and that the pathologists and medical officer who were involved in both cases believed that Evans was guilty of the crimes. [75] Other murders It has been speculated that Christie was responsible for the murders of other victims besides those at 10 Rillington Place. The basis for this is in a collection of pubic hair that Christie took from his victims. Christie claimed that the four different clumps of hair in the collection came from Mrs Christie and the three bodies in the kitchen alcove. [76] However, only one of the clumps was of the same hair type as those on the bodies—that of Mrs Christie. [77] Two could have come from the bodies of Fuerst and Eady, which had by then decomposed into skeletons. [78] That still left one clump of hair unaccounted for.

(The clump also could not have come from Beryl Evans, as no pubic hair had been removed from her body.) [79] Professor Keith Simpson, one of the pathologists who worked on the case, considered it “odd” that “Christie should have said hair came from the bodies in the alcove if in fact it had come from those now reduced to skeletons; not very likely that in his last four murders the only trophy he took was from the one woman with whom he did not have peri-mortal sexual intercourse; and even more odd that one of his trophies had definitely not come from any of the unfortunate women known to have been involved.” [80] In popular culture Christie and Timothy Evans’s story was turned into a film, 10 Rillington Place, directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Richard Attenborough as Christie. A reconstruction of Christie’s execution at Pentonville Prison can be seen in the Chamber Of Horrors at Madame Tussauds in London. [81] The protagonist of Thirteen Steps Down, a psychological thriller novel by Ruth Rendell, is obsessed with John Christie.

[82] A fictional play based around the resurrection of John Christie, Christie in Love, was written by Howard Brenton. While based in London, Australian artist Brett Whiteley produced a series of paintings of Christie in the 1960s. [83] References ^ Eddowes, John (1995). The Two Killers of Rillington Place. London: Warner Books. p. 4. ISBN 0751512850. ^ Marston, Edward (2007). John Christie. Surrey: The National Archives. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-905615-16-2. Eddowes, The Two Killers of Rillington Place, p. 9 cautions against overuse of this description since Christie’s sexual assaults were peri-mortem—they took place around the time of death—and not exclusively post-mortem. ^ Brabin, Daniel (1999). Rillington Place. London: The Stationery Office. p. 269. ISBN 0-11-702417-1. ^ Marston, John Christie, p.

108 ^ Kennedy, Ludovic (1961). Ten Rillington Place. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd. p. 24. ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, p. 22 ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, p. 225 ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, p. 23 and p. 26 ^ Marston, John Christie, p. 7 ^ Kennedy (p. 34) reports that even with his wife, Christie’s sexual activity was sporadic. He says that because prostitutes offered a service, they were undemanding and did not become emotionally involved with their clients, which could appease sexually dysfunctional people such as Christie. ^ a b Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, p. 29 ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, pp. 30–32 ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, p. 33 ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, p. 35 ^ a b Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, p. 36 ^ Kennedy,Ten Rillington Place, p. 35 ^ Eddowes, The Two Killers of Rillington Place, p.

5 ^ Kennedy,Ten Rillington Place, p. 36 ^ Kennedy,Ten Rillington Place, pp. 36–37 ^ Marston, John Christie, p. 12 ^ Kennedy,Ten Rillington Place, pp. 40–41; the police were apparently unable to check applicants’ backgrounds due to the substantial influx of new recruits during the war. ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, p. 42 ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, p. 43 ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, p. 46 ^ a b Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, p. 47 ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, p. 48 ^ Brabin, Rillington Place, p. 2 ^ Brabin, Rillington Place, pp. 56–60 ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, pp. 90–103 ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, pp. 138–139 ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, pp. 143–156 ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, pp.

198–208 ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, p. 210 ^ Marston, John Christie, p. 69 ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, p. 211 ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, pp. 210–211 ^ Marston, John Christie, p. 69 ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, p. 213 ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, pp. 214–215 ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, p. 215 ^ Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, pp. 215–217 ^ Marston, John Christie, pp. 76–77 ^ a b Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, p. 221 ^ a b Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, p. 216 ^ The Brabin Report pointed out that this was not a satisfactory explanation from Christie as to how he gassed his final victims as he would have been overpowered by the gas as well. Nevertheless, it was established that all three victims had been exposed to carbon monoxide. See Brabin, Rillington Place, pp.

220–221 ^ “Plan of 10 Rillington Place showing position of the bodies”, Brabin, Rillington Place, p. x ^ Brabin, Rillington Place, p. 188 ^ a b Kennedy, Ten Rillington Place, p. 222 ^ Eddowes, The Two Killers of Rilling ton Place, p. 90 Wrongful execution Privacy & Advertising Wrongful execution Wrongful Execution is a miscarriage of justice occurring when an innocent person is put to death by capital punishment , the “death penalty”. Cases of wrongful execution are cited as an argument by opponents of capital punishment, while proponents suggest that the argument of innocence concerns the credibility of the justice system as a whole and does not solely undermine the use of death penalty. [1] [2] A number of people are claimed to have been innocent victims of the death penalty. [3] [4] Newly available DNA evidence has allowed the exoneration and release of more than 20 death row inmates since 1992 in the United States, [5] but DNA evidence is available in only a fraction of capital cases.

Others have been released on the basis of weak cases against them, sometimes involving prosecutorial misconduct; resulting in acquittal at retrial, charges dropped, or innocence-based pardons. The Death Penalty Information Center (U.S.) has published a list of 10 inmates “executed but possibly innocent”. [6] At least 39 executions are claimed to have been carried out in the U.S. in the face of evidence of innocence or serious doubt about guilt. [7] In the UK, reviews prompted by the Criminal Cases Review Commission have resulted in one pardon and three exonerations for people executed between 1950 and 1953 (when the execution rate in England and Wales averaged 17 per year), with compensation being paid. Contents Specific examples Australia Colin Campbell Ross was hanged in Melbourne in 1922 for the murder of 12-year-old Alma Tirtschke the previous year in what became known as the Gun Alley Murder . The case was re-examined in the 1990s using modern techniques and Ross was eventually pardoned in 2008. Capital punishment in Australia was abolished in all jurisdictions, with the last execution taking place in 1967.

People’s Republic of China Weiqing An ( Chinese : 魏清安, 1961–1984, 23 years old) was a Chinese citizen who was executed for the rape of Kun Liu, a woman who had disappeared. The execution was carried out on 3 May 1984 by the Intermediate People’s Court. In the next month, Tian Yuxiu (田玉修) was arrested and admitted that he had committed the rape. Three years later, Wei was officially declared innocent. [8] Teng Xingshan ( Chinese : 滕兴善, ?–1989) was a Chinese citizen who was executed for supposedly having raped, robbed and murdered Shi Xiaorong (石小荣), a woman who had disappeared. An old man found a dismembered body, and incompetent police forensics claimed to have matched the body to the photo of the missing Shi Xiaorong. The execution was carried out on 28 January 1989 by the Huaihua Intermediate People’s Court. In 1993, the previously missing woman returned to the village, saying she had been kidnapped and taken to Shandong.

The absolute innocence of the wrongfully executed Teng was not admitted until 2005. [9] Nie Shubin ( Chinese : 聂树斌, 1974–1995) was a Chinese citizen who was executed for the rape and murder of Kang Juhua (康菊花), a woman in her thirties. The execution was carried out on April 27, 1995 by the Shijiazhuang Intermediate People’s Court. In 2005, ten years after the execution, Wang Shujin (Chinese: 王书金) admitted to the police that he had committed the murder. [10] [11] Qoγsiletu or Huugjilt (Mongolian:qoγsiletu, Chinese: 呼格吉勒图 , 1977-1996) was an Inner Mongolian who was executed for the rape and murder of a young girl on June 10, 1996.

On December 5, 2006, ten years after the execution, Zhao Zhihong ( Chinese : 赵志红) wrote the Petition of my Death Penalty admitting he had committed the crime. Huugjilt was posthumously exonerated and Zhao Zhihong was sentenced to death in 2015. [12] Ireland Harry Gleeson was executed in Ireland in April 1941 for the Murder of Moll McCarthy in County Tipperary in November 1940. The Gardai withheld crucial evidence and fabricated other evidence against Gleeson. In 2015 he was posthumously pardoned. [13] [14] Taiwan Jiang Guoqing (Chinese: 江國慶 , 1975–1997) was a Taiwanese air force private who was executed by a military tribunal on August 13, 1997 for the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl.

On January 28, 2011, over 13 years after the execution, Xu Rongzhou (Chinese: 許榮洲), who had a history of sexual abuse, admitted to the prosecutor that he had been responsible for the crime. In September 2011 Guoqing was posthumously acquitted by a military court who found Guoqing’s original confession had been obtained by torture. Ma Ying-jeou , Taiwan’s president, apologised to Guoqing’s family. [15] United Kingdom In 1660, in a series of events known as the Campden Wonder , an Englishman named William Harrison disappeared after going on a walk, near the village of Charingworth, in Gloucestershire. Some of his clothing was found slashed and bloody on the side of a local road. Investigators interrogated Harrison’s servant, John Perry, who eventually confessed that his mother and his brother had killed Harrison for money. Perry, his mother, and his brother were hanged. Two years later, Harrison reappeared, telling the incredibly unlikely tale that he had been abducted by three horsemen and sold into slavery in the Ottoman Empire .

Though his tale was implausible, he indubitably had not been murdered by the Perry family. Timothy Evans was tried and executed in March 1950 for the murder of his wife and infant daughter. An official inquiry conducted 16 years later determined that it was Evans’s fellow tenant, serial killer John Reginald Halliday Christie , who was responsible for the murder. Christie also admitted to the murder of Evans’s wife, as well as five other women and his own wife. Christie may have murdered other women, judging by evidence found in his possession at the time of his arrest, but it was never pursued by the police. Evans was posthumously pardoned in 1966. The case had prompted the abolition of capital punishment in the UK in 1965. George Kelly was executed in March 1950 for the 1949 murder of the manager of the Cameo Cinema in Liverpool, UK and his assistant during a robbery that went wrong. This case became known as the Cameo Murder . Kelly’s conviction was overturned in 2003.

Another man, Donald Johnson, had confessed to the crime but the police bungled Johnson’s case and had not divulged his confession at Kelly’s trial. [16] Mahmood Hussein Mattan was executed in 1952 for the murder of Lily Volpert. In 1998 the Court of Appeal decided that the original case was, in the words of Lord Justice Rose, “demonstrably flawed”. The family were awarded £725,000 compensation, to be shared equally among Mattan’s wife and three children. The compensation was the first award to a family for a person wrongfully hanged. Derek Bentley was a mentally handicapped young man who was executed in 1953. He was convicted of the murder of a police officer during an attempted robbery, despite the facts that it was his accomplice who fired the gun and that Bentley was already under arrest at the time of the shooting. The accomplice who actually fired the fatal shot could not be executed due to his young age, and served only ten years in prison before he was released.

[17] United States University of Michigan law professor Samuel Gross led a team of experts in the law and in statistics that estimated the likely number of unjust convictions. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences determined that at least 4% of people on death row were and are likely innocent. Gross has no doubt that some innocent people have been executed. [18] [19] Statistics likely understate the actual problem of wrongful convictions because once an execution has occurred there is often insufficient motivation and finance to keep a case open, and it becomes unlikely at that point that the miscarriage of justice will ever be exposed. In the case of Joseph Roger O’Dell III, executed in Virginia in 1997 for a rape and murder, a prosecuting attorney argued in court in 1998 that if posthumous DNA results exonerated O’Dell, “it would be shouted from the rooftops that … Virginia executed an innocent man.” The state prevailed, and the evidence was destroyed.

[20] Chipita Rodriguez was hanged in San Patricio County, Texas in 1863 for murdering a horse trader, and 122 years later, the Texas Legislature passed a resolution exonerating her. Thomas and Meeks Griffin were executed in 1915 for the murder of a man involved in an interracial affair two years previously but were pardoned 94 years after execution. It is thought that they were arrested and charged because they were viewed as wealthy enough to hire competent legal counsel and get an acquittal. [21] Joe Arridy (April 15, 1915 – January 6, 1939) was a mentally disabled American man executed for rape and murder and posthumously granted a pardon. Arridy was sentenced to death for the murder and rape of a 15-year-old schoolgirl from Pueblo, Colorado. He confessed to murdering the girl and assaulting her sister. Due to the sensational nature of the crime precautions were taken to keep him from being hanged by vigilante justice.

His sentence was executed after multiple stays on January 6, 1939, in the Colorado gas chamber in the state penitentiary in Canon City, Colorado . Arridy was the first Colorado prisoner posthumously pardoned in January 2011 by Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, a former district attorney, after research had shown that Arridy was very likely not in Pueblo when the crime happened and had been coerced into confessing. Among other things, Arridy had an IQ of 46, which was equal to the mental age of a 6-year-old. He did not even understand that he was going to be executed, and played with a toy train that the warden, Roy Best, had given to him as a present. A man named Frank Aguilar had been executed in 1937 in the Colorado gas chamber for the same crime for which Arridy ended up also being executed. Arridy’s posthumous pardon in 2011 was the first such pardon in Colorado history.

A press release from the governor’s office stated, “[A]n overwhelming body of evidence indicates the 23-year-old Arridy was innocent, including false and coerced confessions, the likelihood that Arridy was not in Pueblo at the time of the killing, and an admission of guilt by someone else.” The governor also pointed to Arridy’s intellectual disabilities. The governor said, “Granting a posthumous pardon is an extraordinary remedy. But the tragic conviction of Mr. Arridy and his subsequent execution on Jan. 6, 1939, merit such relief based on the great likelihood that Mr. Arridy was, in fact, innocent of the crime for which he was executed, and his severe mental disability at the time of his trial and execution.” George Stinney , a 14-year old black boy, was electrocuted in South Carolina in 1944 for the murder of two white girls, aged 7 and 11. He was the youngest person executed in the United States. More than 70 years later, a judge threw out the conviction, calling it a “great injustice.” [22] Carlos DeLuna was executed in Texas in December 1989.

Subsequent investigations cast strong doubt upon DeLuna’s guilt for the murder of which he had been convicted. [23] [24] Jesse Tafero was convicted of murder and executed via electric chair in May 1990 in the state of Florida for the murders of two Florida Highway Patrol officers. The conviction of a co-defendant was overturned in 1992 after a recreation of the crime scene indicated a third person had committed the murders. [25] Johnny Garrett of Texas was executed in February 1992 for allegedly raping and murdering a nun. In March 2004 cold-case DNA testing identified Leoncio Rueda as the rapist and murderer of another elderly victim killed four months earlier. [26] Immediately following the nun’s murder, prosecutors and police were certain the two cases were committed by the same assailant. [27] The flawed case is explored in a 2008 documentary entitled The Last Word. Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in February 2004 for murdering his three young children by arson at the family home in Corsicana, Texas.

Nationally known fire investigator Gerald Hurst reviewed the case documents, including the trial transcriptions and an hour-long videotape of the aftermath of the fire scene, and said in December 2004 that “There’s nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire. It was just a fire.” [28] In 2010, the Innocence Project filed a lawsuit against the State of Texas, seeking a judgment of “official oppression”. [29] In 2015, the Justice Department and the FBI formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an FBI forensic squad overstated forensic hair matches for two decades before the year 2000. [30] [31] Of the 28 forensic examiners testifying to hair matches in a total of 268 trials reviewed, 26 overstated the evidence of forensic hair matches and 95% of the overstatements favored the prosecution. Defendants were sentenced to death in 32 of those 268 cases. Exonerations and pardons Kirk Bloodsworth was the first American to be freed from death row as a result of exoneration by DNA fingerprinting.

Ray Krone is the 100th American to have been sentenced to death and then later exonerated. In the UK, reviews prompted by the Criminal Cases Review Commission have resulted in one pardon and three exonerations for people that were executed between 1950 and 1953 (when the execution rate in England and Wales averaged 17 per year), with compensation being paid. Timothy Evans was granted a posthumous free pardon in 1966. Mahmood Hussein Mattan was convicted in 1952 and was the last person to be hanged in Cardiff , Wales, but had his conviction quashed in 1998. George Kelly was hanged at Liverpool in 1950, but had his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal in June 2003.

[32] Derek Bentley had his conviction quashed in 1998 with the appeal trial judge, Lord Bingham , noting that the original trial judge, Lord Goddard , had denied the defendant “the fair trial which is the birthright of every British citizen.” Colin Campbell Ross (1892–1922) was an Australian wine-bar owner executed for the murder of a child which became known as The Gun Alley Murder , despite there being evidence that he was innocent. Following his execution, efforts were made to clear his name, and in the 1990s old evidence was re-examined with modern forensic techniques which supported the view that Ross was innocent. In 2006 an appeal for mercy was made to Victoria’s Chief Justice and on 27 May 2008 the Victorian government pardoned Ross in what is believed to be an Australian legal first. [33] U.S. mental health controversy There has been much debate about the justification of imposing capital punishment on individuals who have been diagnosed with mental retardation . Some have argued that the execution of people with mental retardation constitutes cruel and unusual punishment as it pertains to the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution .

[34] While the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted cruel and unusual punishment to include those that fail to take into account the defendant’s degree of criminal culpability, it did not determine that executing the mentally retarded constitutes cruel and unusual punishment until 2002. This issue was first addressed in the case of Penry v. Lynaugh , in which Johnny Paul Penry had filed a habeas corpus petition in federal district court that claimed his death sentence should be vacated because it violated his Eighth Amendment rights. His reasoning was that he suffered from mental retardation, and numerous psychologists had confirmed this to be factual, indicating that his IQ ranged from 50 to 63 and that he possessed the mental abilities of a six-and-a-half-year-old. [34] Penry’s petition was denied by the district court, whose decision was subsequently affirmed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Penry would later appeal to the Supreme Court, who ultimately ruled in a five-to-four decision that the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution did not categorically prohibit the execution of persons with mental retardation.

Following the 1989 Penry ruling, sixteen states as well as the federal government passed legislation that banned the execution of offenders with mental retardation. [34] Penry was overruled in 2002 by Atkins v. Virginia , which held that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment precluded the execution of the mentally handicapped, but the Supreme Court left the definition of mentally handicapped as something to be determined by the states. [35] In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled in Hall v. Florida that states cannot rely solely on an IQ test in determining whether a borderline mentally handicapped person can be executed. [36] See also BBC News - Timothy Evans family's 60-year conviction wait Printable version Timothy Evans family's 60-year conviction wait Mary Westlake (pictured holding baby Geraldine) visited her half-brother Timothy Evans and his wife Beryl at Rillington Place shortly before the murders By Neil Prior BBC News The case has been the subject of three judicial reviews, featured in at least three books, two films and a folk ballad, as well as occupying countless parliamentary debates and newspaper column inches.

Broadcaster Sir Ludovic Kennedy wrote his most famous book about it causing a national outcry. It is the story of one of the last century's most infamous serial killers; and, more pointedly, how, Timothy Evans, an innocent 25-year-old from south Wales went to the gallows in his place exactly 60 years ago today. On Tuesday, Mary Westlake's thoughts will not be too far from the events of that ill-fated morning on 9th March 1950 when her beloved half-brother was wrongly hanged for the murder of his wife and baby daughter Geraldine. Both had been strangled in a bath house at an address that would a few years later become notorious with murder - 10 Rillington Place. At his trial, Christie admitted that he had murdered Mrs Evans Mr Evans blamed his neighbour John Christie. No one would believe him. Christie went on to give evidence which would convict Mr Evans, but just three years later Christie himself was found guilty of a string of murders at the address. The remains of Christie's wife Ethel and those of five other women had been found in the house.

At his trial, Christie admitted that he had murdered Mrs Evans and later indicated that he may have been responsible for murdering Mr Evans's daughter as well. In 1966, Mr Evans was given a posthumous royal pardon but attempts to formally quash his conviction have failed. His half-sister Mary Westlake, now 80, is still waiting for justice. For the first time since her brother's execution, Mrs Westlake has finally agreed to speak to the media feeling it may be her last chance to tell her story. "We never once doubted Tim's innocence, the whole investigation was rotten through," she said. "They made Tim out to be a simpleton, a drunk and a wife-beater. "Okay, he couldn't read, because he missed a lot of schooling, but he was bright enough to drive a van all around London, and make deliveries to the right people, even though he couldn't read the signs or a map." My Tim was a scamp, so loving and caring, but overall so much fun Mary Westlake, pictured with her half brother And of the daughter he was convicted of murdering? "He loved Geraldine so much, always playing with her, and bringing her back little presents off his rounds on the van...

a little teddy bear and a yellow play suit come to mind especially. "He and Beryl did have their problems, but what couple didn't then? Living with no money after the war." Born in Merthyr Vale in 1924, Mr Evans spent his early years in south Wales, with his mother, step-father, older sister, step-brother and younger half sister Mary - his only surviving sibling. The family moved to London during the 1930s, though Mr Evans and Mary briefly returned to Merthyr during World War II. After returning to London, he fell in love with and married Beryl Thorley in 1947, and the couple moved into the top flat of 10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill. Unbeknown to them, in the ground floor flat, John Christie had already murdered two women and buried their bodies in the back garden. The couple's daughter Geraldine was born in October 1948. But just over a year later, Beryl and Geraldine were killed in their home, and Mr Evans stood accused of their murders.

On 30 November 1949 he returned to Merthyr and, clearly distressed and confused, confessed to murdering Beryl, but crucially never mentioned Geraldine. In so doing he set in train a police investigation which was never prepared to entertain the possibility that anyone other than Mr Evans could have carried out the murders, despite evidence to the contrary. It took two bungled searches of Rillington Place for the police to uncover the strangled bodies of Beryl and Geraldine in a rear outhouse. Sir Ludovic Kennedy campaigned tirelessly for Tim's conviction to be overturned Mary Westlake But even then they failed to unearth Christie's two previous victims. Under intense and aggressive questioning Mr Evans changed his story several times, readily acquiescing to every fresh allegation put to him. Inspector Jennings, who led the inquiry, took his conflicting stories to be a sign of dishonesty and further proof of his guilt, but Mrs Westlake explains that just a little research into his background could have thrown light on the mystery and saved her brother's life. She said: "When Tim was a little boy of about eight he cut himself playing in the Taff, and he got a tuberculosis in his foot.

He was in and out of hospital for the next 10 years. "To cope with the boredom and pain he began to make up little stories to keep him amused, a bit like an imaginary friend I suppose - 'storyfying' he called it. "But it was all in good fun, we knew when Tim was spinning a yarn, and he knew we knew. "I can only imagine that to cope with the shock and pain of Beryl's death he went back to his childhood, and made up a story to explain something which made no sense to him. "We went to Notting Hill Gate police station and explained all this to Jennings, but the police chose to take him at his word. "They made the evidence fit the stories, even though they were so outlandish they couldn't possibly have been true." Mrs Westlake says her family's pain has continued over the years, as each media report and fresh judicial review picked apart his character and scrutinised every aspect of his life and death. She says even those who believed in his innocence tended to place undue emphasis on his shortcomings, in order to highlight the bullying tactics of the police.

"Sir Ludovic Kennedy campaigned tirelessly for Tim's conviction to be overturned, and he did do a great job of drawing attention to how feeble the case against him really was," she said. "But I don't recognise the Tim he describes in his book, '10 Rillington Place'." It is 60 years to the day since Timothy Evans was hanged for the murders "My Tim was a scamp, so loving and caring, but overall so much fun. I remember when we were living back in London, when him and Penry (his step brother) were getting ready for a dance. "The pair of them had us in stitches, clowning around the living room with a chair each, trying to teach themselves to dance. I pity the poor girls they ended up with that night." "But there was another sensitive side to Tim, which worried about how people felt.

Once when his foot was playing him up, and I noticed pus and blood on his sheets, he made me swear not to tell mam, because he didn't want her to worry." She and her family have spent a lifetime stoically defending Tim's memory, and fighting for justice, while trying to lead as normal a life as possible under the glare of the world's press. Her son David explained: "At the time of the second, Brabin Inquiry I was 11 or 12 years old, and, up to then, knew nothing about Tim or the case. "Mam and dad did not want me to find out about the case from masters or boys at school who may have picked up press reports and made the connection with my name. "So, one evening, they sat me down in the living room and began to explain it all to me. "Mam ran out of the room, crying, after just a few minutes, leaving dad to give me a broad outline of events. He then brought mam back in, still crying. "She explained that she had been afraid that, when I found out about the case, I wouldn't love her, or her side of the family, anymore.

"Growing up mam and dad insisted I didn't tell anyone about Tim in case I was bullied, but when it came to serious girlfriends, they felt that it would be unfair for any lass to become my long-term partner or wife, without knowing that part of our family's history. Talk about mixed messages." Despite widespread acknowledgement in court and the media, that Mr Evans was a totally innocent man, the wait for justice has no end in sight, and Mary now fears that she won't see his conviction formally quashed in her lifetime. The last judicial review in 2004 called it "an historic and unique injustice" but decided it would not bring any "tangible benefit" to the family or the public to refer his case to the Court of Appeal. Bookmark with:

Question: Who was pardoned 12 years after his execution for murders carried out by John Christie?
Answer: TIMOTHY EVANS