British Police Officers Convicted of Murder - John Christie (Paperback)

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: John Reginald Halliday Christie (8 April 1899 15 July 1953), born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, was an English serial killer active in the 1940s and 1950s. He murdered at least six womenincluding his wife Ethelby strangling them in his flat at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London. Christie moved out of Rillington Place in March 1953, and shortly afterwards the bodies of three of his victims were discovered hidden in an alcove in his kitchen. Christie was arrested and convicted of his wife's murder, for which he was hanged in 1953. Serving in the infantry during the First World War, Christie was injured in a gas attack that he claimed left him permanently unable to speak loudly. He turned to crime following his discharge from the army and was imprisoned several times, for offences including theft and assault. On the outbreak of war in 1939, he was accepted for service as a Special Constable, when the authorities failed to check his criminal record. He committed his murders between 1943 and 1953, usually by strangling his victims after he had rendered them unconscious with domestic gas. Christie raped some of the women as they lay unconscious. Substantial controversy surrounds the responsibility for the deaths of Beryl Evans and her daughter Geraldine, who, along with Beryl's husband Timothy, were tenants at 10 Rillington Place during 1948 and 1949. Timothy Evans was charged with both murders, found guilty of the murder of his daughter, and hanged in 1950. Christie was a key prosecution witness, but when his own crimes were discovered three years later, serious doubts were raised over the integrity of Evans's conviction. In an official inquiry conducted 19656, Justice Sir Daniel Brabin concluded that it was "more probable than not" that Eva... More: http://booksllc.net/?id=1930927