On November 8th 1949 the tempestuous relationship between 25-year-old lorry driver Timothy Evans and his 19-year-old wife Beryl ended. She lay dead in their home at 10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill, West London. Their baby daughter Geraldine was also dead. Both had been strangled with ligatures – the method of choice of depraved serial killer John Reginald Halliday Christie, who lived in the downstairs flat at the same address.

Evans panicked and fled to his native Wales. He eventually went to a police station in Merthyr Tydfil and confessed to both murders. Although he retracted rapidly, blaming Christie, he wasn't believed. On January 13th he was sentenced to death by Mr Justice Lewis after a three-day long trial.

Few cases did more to end the death penalty in Britain, but when Albert Pierrepoint, assisted by Sid Dearnley, hanged Evans less than two months later for a crime he did not commit, hardly anyone raised a murmur of protest. That came later.

The Veneer of Respectability:

He cut a respectable figure in the witness-box, but Christie was anything but the paragon of virtue he was portrayed as. He already had a criminal record that belied his claims and he had already killed in exactly the same fashion that Evans was accused of. His criminal past was not exposed in court.

Christie was in fact a depraved serial killer that swore away the life of an innocent man as well. On March 9th 1950 Evans was led to the gallows by Pierrepoint, not only protesting his innocence, but firmly pointing the finger at Christie. Evans was suggestible and had a low Intelligence Quotient.

If Evans was guilty, it means that two killers lived at the same address at the same time and used exactly the same method of killing without being aware that the other was also such a murderer – an incredible coincidence to put it mildly. Timothy Evans was dead, but his case refused to go away.

Campaign:

Christie's evidence put the noose around Evans' neck. However, his exposure as a serial killer three years later had the inevitable effect. A campaign to clear Evans' name began in earnest. There were official inquiries – both fell far short of a declaration of innocence. The cover-up was underway too.

Evans was charged with just one murder, that of his daughter – a standard practice then. That allowed Sir Daniel Brabin to suggest that Evans was in fact guilty of murdering his wife – a crime he had not been tried for and which Christie had admitted to.

Brabin's claim that Evans had merely been hanged for the wrong crime was preposterous to put it mildly. In 1966 Evans was posthumously granted a Royal Pardon by then Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, but the pardon was insufficient. It did not declare Evans innocent. That would require almost four decades more.

His family later applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission to do refer the conviction back so it could be quashed, but the CCRC refused claiming the Royal Pardon was enough. Evans family took it further, applying for a judicial review, which resulted in the judges, Mr Justices Collins and Burnton dismissing the application, but declaring Evans innocent of the murder of baby Geraldine, the crime he was executed for and also the murder of his wife Beryl. 54 years after he was wrongly executed Timothy Evans' innocence had finally acknowledged by the judiciary.

Christie had claimed another victim and neither the death penalty, nor the life of an innocent man could prevent his killing-lust claiming more, but even a vicious murderer like Christie knew that he could not just carry on as if nothing had happened. He had to wait. It was more than two years before he killed again.