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Chapter 1: What are the shocking details about Timothy Evans's case?
On October 23, 1989, Charles and Carol Stewart were driving home from a birthing class when they were carjacked in Boston. Both were shot, and Carol would later die from her injuries. Charles told police their attacker was a young black man, and that claim set off a massive manhunt, media frenzy, and deep divisions across the city.
But the truth about what really happened would shock Boston and force people to confront how quickly perception overtook facts. It's one of the most infamous true crime cases we haven't covered yet. So if you want the full story, check out the American Criminal podcast, which digs into how the media shaped the narrative around the murder of Carol Stewart and everything that followed.
Listen to American Criminal wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Julia Cowley, a retired FBI profiler and host of the true crime podcast, The Consult, Real FBI Profilers. If you're fascinated with true crime and criminal profiling, then join us as we discuss real cases and examine the behavior exhibited before, during, and after the commission of the crime.
You can listen to The Consult wherever you get your podcasts. It's as close as it gets to being in the room with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit. I'm Brett. And I'm Alice. And we are The Prosecutors. Today on The Prosecutors, we talk John Reginald Christie. Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of The Prosecutors. I'm Brett and I'm joined as always by my brilliant co-host, Alice.
Brett, it only took five and a half years for you to say the obvious. Well, in England, they call everything brilliant. So I felt like it was a good time to do that. And it is about time that we use, hey, hey, you know, you try to be nice. I try to be nice. And then that strikes. What I was going to say is it's about time that we gave our English brethren credit.
their own case and boy is it a crazy case I don't know if you want to be aligned in country with this case because boy is this one crazy yeah so we talked a lot about Timothy Evans last week and you know this murder that he committed which is seems somewhat straightforward but then his bizarre confessions which draw in this other gentleman this John Reginald Christie and then as we said you know Timothy he's convicted
Very swift justice. He's executed a couple months later. And there the story ends. And yet, here we are. Why are we here? What's left to talk about in this case? I think we're kind of done with this. And why are we talking about someone who isn't the one who was convicted? We're just going to really go into depth about his testimony and how important it was. Okay. Yes.
So we are going to talk more about the chief witness in the Timothy Evans murder case. John Reginald Christie. And you may recall, Christie, he's the downstairs neighbor. He's a former police officer. He's a clerk. During World War II, he's a medical guy. He's helping people. And he and his wife are downstairs.
They hear this weird noise during the midst of this knock-down, drag-out fight between the Evans. Then there's no more sound. They never see Beryl again. She ends up dead. They find her body and the body of their year-old baby dead. Geraldine in one of the outbuildings behind the apartments.
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Chapter 2: How did John Reginald Christie become involved in the Evans case?
He left school at age 15 and worked as a projectionist in a local movie theater. He served in World War I as a signalman until he was injured by mustard gas and he lost his ability to speak for three years. Interestingly, doctors really couldn't point to a medical reason why. Now, World War I was incredibly traumatic. The gas attacks were incredibly traumatic.
You can imagine this is just some sort of shell shock slash trauma. They didn't really understand PTSD and everything else back then. But this was a pretty horrific event. He gets through it. It takes him three years to speak again. In 1920, he married Ethel Waddington. This was shortly after his speech returned. And he was described as quiet and inconspicuous. Just sort of a normal guy.
And Ethel was described as sentimental and passive. So they have just a very sort of low-key relationship. Now, some speculated that Ethel was afraid of her husband and did whatever he said. But the general feeling was that they were just an ordinary, pleasant couple. And frankly, Christy seemed... Pretty reserved. He doesn't come across as a sort of overbearing husband.
He doesn't come across as someone who bossed his wife around, if anything. He seems kind of meek and passive. And that is what everyone thinks who just sees them together. But behind closed doors, things were a little different. And their marriage was described as a difficult one. So Christie had an affinity for hiring sex workers, and he had had several run-ins with the law.
And just a few years into their marriage, when he was 25 years old, he actually left Ethel and moved to London while she remained in Sheffield. Kind of a big one. You know, we've been talking about how he's kind of a mild-mannered seeming guy who didn't speak for three years. But like his, I guess his vice is kind of a big one, especially in the 1920s, hiring sex workers.
And as you'll see, that's probably the least... offensive thing he's going to do this has nothing to do with the story whatsoever but did you know that when it came down to my name my parents were going to name me alice or ethel really and i only know this wisely I think so too. I think so too. Although I do love Ethel from I Love Lucy. And that's why they liked the name Ethel.
I found a baby book from the year I was born. And in it were two names highlighted and it was Alice and Ethel. And I was like, are these the two names? And it was indeed. So I could have been an Ethel, could have been my co-host. Ethel. Ethel. But instead, it's Alice. So we're just talking about an Ethel. So that is kind of the seemingly normal start of John Christie's life.
Now, April 12th, 1921, John Reginald Christie, he gets a job as a postman, which is, again, a pretty regular, respectable job. Not long after, though, he was sentenced to three months of prison for stealing hundreds of pounds of postal orders. And these are pounds like the money, not the weight. Yeah. Either way, if it were like pounds of mail, that's a lot of mail, but it was money.
And by the way, This is very annoying. We have like a horrible epidemic across the country, current day, of postal worker, or we suspect it's postal workers, and many of them are postal workers, but mail being stolen, like, and we just can't prosecute it enough. That's just a... I don't know if that's a hot tip. Like, I guess if you went into that field, you can go for it.
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Chapter 3: What were Christie's confessions and how did they evolve?
I mean, now you may remember, we mentioned this earlier, that Christie, he actually will lose his job after he testifies in that trial because all of this does come back to haunt him, all these convictions. Now, at the time of the trial, it had been 17 years since his last conviction.
But despite that, when they find out about this history, he is going to lose his job with the police department, at least. But anyways, he's got a job with the police department. You know, he's turning his life around. He's about to solve a murder. Everything's going great. But Christy, he just couldn't keep it in his pants. I mean, that's what it comes down to, right?
He soon begins an affair with a woman working at the police station, a coworker, which, you know, it's not great to have an affair with a coworker. particularly when her husband is away at war. So she's cheating on her husband, who's off, this is, you know, the 40s, fighting the Nazis. He's off fighting the Nazis. His wife's back home having an affair with another married man.
And this relationship will actually last until 1943. When husband comes home. Hey, honey, I'm back from the front. It's so good to see you. He walks in and what does he find? He finds Christy and his wife in bed together. And he reacts how you might expect. He beats crap out of him. And this is actually his first government job. He resigned from the police department.
He's going to get another government job later that he's going to lose after he testifies. But he does resign from the police department after the fallout from this affair. Okay, I don't know if this ride is still the same today, but back in the day, so come back with me a couple decades, the Tower of Terror. Oh, yeah. You know, where if you've never gone on it, I hated it.
It was like one of the most famous rides. Is it at, this is bad, Disney? Yeah. Okay, so it's at Disney World. I don't know if it's still there or not because I am an old person. MGM Studios, I think. MG, okay. They still have that. I'm old, but this is 20 years ago. And if you don't know what this ride is, it's basically a tower of terror.
You go up a tower and ultimately the like fear factor is that they open up and you look out and you see everyone below you like in an elevator shaft. Or you're in an elevator and then all of a sudden you drop all of the floors and it's terrifying. So it's one of those rides. But before you do the drop, there's actually this whole story, right?
It's like a haunted house and you ride along on your little elevator shaft and it's like a very calm ride. I mean, it jerks you around a little bit. You see a ghost here and then, you know, you kind of jerk a little. Everyone laughs. You get a little bit of whiplash over here. But it's not like a roller coaster. That's kind of like Christie's story so far. We've jolted you around a little bit.
Oh, you got three months here. Oh, hiring sex workers. Oh, my goodness. Having an affair with a married woman whose husband's off at war fighting the Nazis. The window's about to open. You're about to look out at the crowd below. And this story is about to take a whole other different turn that you may not be prepared for. Because while there's been kind of an extensive decade-long process
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Chapter 4: What led to the investigation of Christie's apartment?
Bring it in. The more murders, the better. And so they're bringing in all these murders, just piling this in. Crazy strategy, right? But that is their strategy. The trial lasts for four days and it takes the jury an hour and 20 minutes to announce the verdict. Christie was guilty and he would be sentenced to death.
And the UK does it quick because July 15th, 1953, like a couple weeks later, not even a full month later, Christie is hanged at Pentonville Prison. That same day, after an inquiry and two parliamentary debates regarding whether Timothy Evans did in fact kill his wife and daughter, the findings were released. the investigation found that it was Evans who had been the killer.
But despite this finding, the public remained unconvinced that two murderers lived in the same house and called for another inquiry, which was initially denied. Fast forward to 1961. So Christy had been hanged eight years earlier.
After Ludovic Kennedy's book 10 Rillington Place came out, which criticized the investigation into Beryl and Geraldine's death, another parliamentary debate was held, but still a second inquiry was denied. By the way, Christie was hanged by the same hangman who hung Timothy Evans. So, you know, a little bit of continuity there. So we're having all these debates in England.
And all of this is happening, by the way, and this is important, against the backdrop of England's debate over the death penalty. So in the 50s, there had been a death penalty abolishment movement. Now you have this sort of very strange situation where people think maybe we executed a guy who was innocent.
So this is something that hangs around in the public's mind and becomes used more and more by politicians. In 1965, politician Herbert Wolfe, an editor of the Northern Echo, Harold Evans, formed the Timothy Evans Committee, calling for another inquiry into the matter.
Their efforts worked, and in 1965, Home Secretary Sir Frank Soskes ordered a new inquiry, which was to be led by High Court Judge Sir Daniel Braben. The inquiry went on from 1965 to 1966, with Braben ultimately concluding something that doesn't make any sense. Ultimately concluding that Timothy Evans likely did murder his wife, but did not murder his daughter.
And remember, he was only charged with murdering his daughter. Recall, they were afraid that, you know, what gentleman in England would convince a man for murdering his annoying wife? So we're only going to charge him with murdering his daughter. And so now this inquiry has concluded, well, actually, he did murder his wife, but the one he was convicted of murdering, he did not kill. What?
Like, we'll go into theories later, but like, much more likely the other way around. Much more likely, yeah. So in October of 1966, Timothy Evans was granted a posthumous royal pardon for the murder of his daughter. What? He had never been charged with the murder of his wife, so now he's basically exonerated. He's like clean as the driven snow, I guess.
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