Inside 10 Rillington Place: John Christie and me, the untold truth

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I am also going to confine my analysis solely to the version of events portrayed onscreen, rather than discussing discrepancies or omissions compared to the real case.

While psychopaths are less susceptible to fear than others, they’re by no means insensitive to threats. Needless to say, that wasn’t accepted and he was regarded as fit to stand trial for the murder of Ethel, his wife. I was oblivious of the fact that we were running over the two buried bodies of Muriel Eady and Ruth Fuerst.But after his capture and arrest Christie confessed to killing Beryl Evans and controversy still rages over whether Timothy Evans was the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice. The forensic evidence from Keith Simpson, Camps with Mr Smith of the Gas Board, and Teare, is consistent with Evans strangling Beryl. Trevallion was fairly firm on the point that Ethel Christie was a well known abortionist in the neighbourhood, and that the Christies operated a clandestine abortion clinic with Ethel performing the operations and Reg providing the ‘anaesthesia’. Christie pretended she had gone away and sold all his furniture including the bed as well as his wife’s wedding ring and watch.

I know that the Thorleys were less than thrilled with the final outcome and did not feel as though their story had in all respects been best served by the publishers. Elder in his book The Best Film You've Never Seen, director Sean Durkin states that 10 Rillington Place "depicts this story the way that a piece of journalism might, as opposed to worrying about preconceived notions of what a film should achieve. Vincent Canby of The New York Times described 10 Rillington Place as "a solemn, earnest polemic of a movie, one with very little vulgar suspense . Rillington Place was a three-story, end of terrace property, split into three small flats in Notting Hill, North Kensington. However, this is of course merely academic given Christie’s subsequent fate for his own crimes little more than three years later.In 1954, the year after Christie's execution, Rillington Place in Notting Hill, west London, was renamed Ruston Close, but number 10 continued to be occupied. Though Christie is by no means upper class, his war service and his fawning obsequiousness establish him as a trustworthy patriot in the blinkered eyes of the Judge and jury (despite Evans’ defence eviscerating him over his past convictions for dishonesty and violence). Brabin for one chose to ignore Trevallion’s testimony when he plumpted for Christie as Geraldine’s killer.