John Reginald Christie. The name itself evokes a chilling unease, a shiver that runs down the spine even decades after his crimes were brought to light. For years, as I delved into the grim reality of the murders at 10 Rillington Place, I grappled with the darkness that surrounded this seemingly ordinary man. In 1953, the facade of respectability that John Reginald Christie had so carefully constructed crumbled, revealing a horrifying truth: he was a serial killer. Within the dilapidated walls of his Notting Hill flat, the remains of six women were discovered, each a victim of his brutal acts of strangulation and rape. Their bodies, hidden with macabre deliberation, were concealed under floorboards, buried in the garden, and entombed within the kitchen wall.
Having previously explored the unsettling depths of infanticide and matricide in my writing, the case of John Reginald Christie marked my first foray into the study of a serial killer, a perpetrator whose actions resonated with a particularly disturbing echo in living memory. This descent into the world of true crime, a genre that has witnessed an explosive surge in popularity in recent years, particularly among female audiences, was a journey into the heart of human darkness. Women, in fact, are twice as likely as men to engage with true crime narratives, drawn to their unsettling explorations of violence and its aftermath. Moreover, women are increasingly at the forefront of telling these chilling tales. The groundbreaking podcast Serial, crafted by Sarah Koenig and Julie Snyder, has captivated audiences with over 340 million downloads. Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos’s award-winning Netflix series, Making a Murderer, has sparked widespread debate and captivated viewers globally. Authors like Helen Garner, Becky Cooper, Hallie Rubenhold, and Michelle McNamara have penned critically acclaimed books that dissect the complexities of murder and its impact.
Caroline Fraser, writing in the New York Review of Books, posits that women have fundamentally reshaped the true crime genre, moving it away from the sensationalism and exploitation that characterized mid-20th-century accounts. Instead, they have transformed it into a vehicle for “retributive justice,” meticulously documenting and rectifying the historical narratives surrounding sexual violence. What was once a domain driven by “male avidity,” Fraser argues, is now being redefined by “female anxiety.” Crime novelist Megan Abbott, in the Los Angeles Times, suggests that women are drawn to true crime because it fearlessly confronts the “dark, messy stuff” that permeates their lives: domestic abuse, serial predation, sexual assault, dysfunctional families, the complexities of motherhood, and the enduring weight of trauma – all the “taboo topics the culture as a whole represses.”
A somber John Reginald Christie is escorted into West London Magistrates’ Court in 1953. The image captures the beginning of the legal proceedings that would unveil his horrific crimes.
There is a strange comfort to be found within the structure of a true crime narrative. Often mirroring the form of a detective novel, it commences with the discovery of a body and methodically unravels the intricate threads of the crime. Dates, times, names, ages, forensic findings, and the geography of the crime scene are meticulously laid out, restoring order and logic to a scene initially defined by chaos. Unlike thrillers or horror films that aim to escalate tension, true crime stories work in reverse, dismantling the act of violence and reconstructing motive and chronology. Within this framework, both the storyteller and the audience are recast, not as morbidly curious individuals fixated on suffering, but as seekers of truth and justice. These narratives engage with our deepest anxieties, yet paradoxically, they also offer a sense of solace. The perpetrator and the victim become “others,” separate from ourselves; the crime becomes a contained event, located in a different time and place. The phenomenon of young women on TikTok finding comfort in true crime podcasts as they drift to sleep underscores this paradoxical appeal.
My own journey into the John Reginald Christie case began in the unsettling summer of 2020, marked by the tragic murders of sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman in a London park. Their killer, Danyal Hussein, chillingly confessed to police his intent to murder six women within six months. This event forced me to confront a stark reality: the deliberate targeting of women by men. The following spring, the abduction, rape, and murder of Sarah Everard by Metropolitan police officer Wayne Couzens further amplified this unease. Seeking historical context, I turned to the dimly recalled case of the Rillington Place murders. Recalling a film viewed in my youth, revisiting the details of John Reginald Christie’s crimes revealed a disturbing parallel: like Couzens, Christie had been a policeman when his killing spree began. And like Hussein, Christie harbored a sinister mission: he planned to murder ten women.
My research soon led me to a compelling essay on the Rillington Place murders penned by Fryn Tennyson Jesse, the great-niece of the renowned poet Alfred Tennyson. Jesse had attended Christie’s trial and meticulously interviewed key figures connected to the case. A pioneer in the true crime genre, Jesse, in the 1920s and 30s, distinguished herself by producing incisive analyses of real murders, contrasting sharply with the fictional mysteries of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers. Her early collection of essays was lauded as a “classic,” illuminating the “dark places of national life.” However, her work also drew criticism, with some commentators expressing discomfort with her perceived morbid fascination. One critic in The Observer lamented her “passion for grim, ugly, speciously passionate subjects,” while The Nation offered a more sympathetic view, noting her preoccupation with “pain.” Intrigued by this woman who, like myself, had immersed herself in the disturbing details of John Reginald Christie’s crimes, I sought to understand her motivations and approach.
Fryn Tennyson Jesse’s life was marked by considerable personal turmoil. She described her mother as a cruel and unpredictable figure, and her clergyman father as having a sex life that was “probably less well adjusted than anybody’s I have ever heard of.” At 24, a devastating accident involving an aeroplane propeller resulted in the loss of fingers on her right hand, leaving her feeling “most horribly mutilated” and leading to a lifelong morphine addiction to manage the pain. Her marriage in 1918 was plagued by intense jealousy over her husband’s mistress and illegitimate child, and she was deeply saddened by her own infertility. Jesse attempted suicide on more than one occasion. Perhaps, through reading and writing about murder, Jesse found a way to engage with emotions – a killer’s rage, a victim’s terror – that dwarfed her own personal suffering. By revisiting scenes of cruelty and perversion through the lens of a detached investigator, she could transform herself from a bewildered child into a sharp-eyed detective.
While women of Jesse’s era were largely excluded from direct involvement in criminal investigations, her writing provided an avenue for her to conduct her own inquiries. Echoing Agatha Christie’s iconic Miss Marple, and foreshadowing the tenacious internet sleuths featured in documentaries like *Don’t F*k With Cats, The Keepers, and I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, Jesse embodied the role of the plucky amateur challenging the official narrative. When John Reginald Christie was arrested in March 1953, Jesse, despite facing impending blindness, was determined to cover the case. She astutely observed Christie as “an excessively inquisitive creature,” noting his voyeuristic tendencies, his penchant for photographing women, and his desire to keep their bodies close. She uncovered his method of gassing his victims before subjecting them to rape and strangulation. “He assaults his subjects in a defenceless condition,” she wrote, “his sexual excitement is intensified by their helplessness.” Jesse, in contrast, refused to be helpless. She sought to understand her enemy, to confront him directly through her investigation.
By the time Jesse attended John Reginald Christie’s trial at the Old Bailey in June, the Rillington Place case had become even more fraught with controversy. Three years prior to Christie’s arrest, he had served as a key witness in the trial of his upstairs neighbor, Timothy Evans. Evans had been accused of murdering his wife and infant daughter, Geraldine, at 10 Rillington Place in 1949. While the prosecution presented compelling evidence against Evans, including a detailed confession to the Notting Hill police, Evans claimed in court that John Reginald Christie was the actual killer. Evans’s accusation was largely dismissed as unbelievable. He was convicted and subsequently hanged in 1950. However, with Christie’s exposure as a serial killer, suspicions arose that he had framed Evans for murders he himself had committed. The horrifying possibility that the English justice system had executed an innocent man cast a long shadow over the case.
A composite image displaying three of John Reginald Christie’s victims: Muriel Eady, Beryl Evans, and Ruth Fuerst. This visual representation underscores the tragic loss of life at the hands of Christie. Illustration by Mark Harris/The Guardian.
To unravel the truth of who murdered Beryl and Geraldine Evans, Jesse meticulously interviewed the pathologists, psychiatrists, detectives, and barristers involved in both the Evans and Christie cases. She visited 10 Rillington Place and met with Evans’s mother and sisters. Eventually, she formulated her own conclusion regarding the 1949 double murder. Her essay, published in 1957, transcended a mere psychological profile of a serial killer, becoming a compelling whodunnit, seeking to rectify a potential miscarriage of justice alongside understanding the mind of John Reginald Christie.
True crime narratives, akin to detective novels, can offer a sense of relief by locating evil within a singular individual, rather than acknowledging its more diffuse presence within society itself. Fintan O’Toole, writing in The Irish Times, suggests that Ireland’s intense focus on the 1996 murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier in West Cork has served as “a giant deflector” from deeper societal issues. By fixating on a case involving an English suspect and a French victim, O’Toole argues, the public avoids confronting the “vicious ordinariness” of violence against Irish women perpetrated by Irish men. The Du Plantier case, he writes, “allows us to pretend to be talking about violent misogyny when we are, in fact, avoiding that very subject.” Similarly, in 1950s England, John Reginald Christie was often depicted as an aberration, a “psychopath,” a “monster,” a “creature” – an anomaly. However, with the benefit of seventy years of hindsight, it becomes clearer to see him as a product of his time and place, a grotesque exaggeration of prevalent prejudices, fantasies, and anxieties.
Newspaper accounts of the Rillington Place murders often presented the victims as mere sexual objects. Tabloid descriptions of their “well-developed” and “scantily clad” bodies seemed to invite readers to vicariously participate in John Reginald Christie’s twisted fantasies. Writing about these women’s deaths inevitably carries the risk of perpetuating this voyeuristic objectification. Even investigating their lives could be seen as a further intrusion upon their privacy; they did not choose to become figures in this gruesome narrative. However, to ignore these women would be to replicate John Reginald Christie’s own indifference to their humanity, and to echo the societal indifference they faced in life. Police files related to the murders offered fleeting glimpses into experiences rarely documented in contemporary books or newspapers, revealing the harsh realities of their lives.
Many of John Reginald Christie’s young victims had migrated to London seeking independence and opportunity. In a city still bearing the scars of war and austerity, they eked out livings in factories, pubs, and cafes. Some engaged in sex work, posed for pornography, and risked their lives seeking illegal abortions. Ruth Fuerst, Christie’s first known victim, was a Jewish refugee from Austria who trained as a nurse before being interned. Kay Maloney, his fourth victim, resorted to sleeping in public lavatories and frequented pubs for cheap, strong drinks. Rita Nelson, his fifth victim, a cafe worker with artistic aspirations, sought to capture “life as it really is” in her sketches of lorry drivers. Tragically, all three women had been forced to give up young children for adoption.
Jesse displayed a curious detachment from Christie’s victims, referring to them as “murderees,” “poor little tarts” whose fates were seemingly predetermined. Perhaps this detached tone was a defense mechanism, a way to avoid appearing overly sentimental or feminine, and to distance herself from the immense suffering these women endured. It may also have been a way to manage her own fear: by categorizing these women as inherently vulnerable “victims,” she could create a sense of separation, implying that other women, perhaps including herself, were somehow immune.
To write about these deeply disturbing murders, I, too, needed strategies for self-preservation. The facts of the case were relentlessly bleak and profoundly sad. I considered structuring my narrative around the parallel investigations of Fryn Tennyson Jesse and Harry Procter, an ambitious tabloid reporter who covered the case as it unfolded. These figures, I reasoned, could act as companions, guiding me closer to the heart of the story while providing a necessary buffer from its most harrowing aspects.
While access to documents related to the Evans and Christie cases was limited for Jesse and Procter in the 1950s, subsequent decades have seen the release of thousands of previously sealed files. As I meticulously examined the extensive dossier at the National Archives in Kew, I stumbled upon a prison memorandum that hinted at a new interpretation of the mystery surrounding the murders of Beryl Evans and her baby. Further investigation revealed a series of letters demonstrating the deliberate concealment of the information contained in the memo. The lure of playing detective myself, of potentially uncovering a hidden layer of truth within this already complex and tragic case, proved irresistible.
