My murdered sister and niece were not victims of the evil ser killer I called Uncle Reg
10 RILLINGTON PLACE VICTIM’S BROTHER SPEAKS OUT
When he was a teenager, Peter Thorley regularly visited his older sister. If she wasn’t in, he waited in the kitchen of the man in the downstairs flat where they would play cards and eat buns.
That man was John Christie, who was later unmasked as a serial killer.
He has gone down in infamy as murdering eight people, including Peter’s sister Beryl, 20, and her 13-month-old daughter Geraldine in 1949.
Beryl’s husband Timothy Evans was convicted and hanged for the two killings, but was pardoned posthumously in 1966 after Christie’s confession.
But now Peter reveals he believes his sister and niece WERE killed by Evans.
Peter, with the help of wife Lea, has scoured hundreds of documents over the past 35 years and has told his sister’s tragic story in a new book Inside 10 Rillington Place: John Christie and Me, the Untold Truth.
Speaking from his home in West Sussex, 85-year-old Peter says: “Christie did not kill Beryl and he did not kill Geraldine. He wouldn’t have done that.”
He adds that delivery driver Evans was a “violent, uneducated drunk” who spent his wages on gambling and booze, beating his wife every night.
Peter claims neighbours witnessed Evans making death threats to Beryl on numerous occasions. And he even saw the violence himself.
“Evans was horrible,” he says. “He’d smack her round the face. I’d be in their front room with Geraldine and had to put my hands over her ears and pull faces to make her laugh, so she couldn’t hear what her father was doing.”
Peter also claims Christie and his wife Ethel, later one of the victims, cared about Beryl. “Mr Christie used to say, ‘Come in the kitchen and sit with me’. I called him Uncle Reg and his wife Aunty Ethel. I knew the two of them so very well.
“He seemed a real nice man, I had no fear of him. He used to say, ‘You have to watch that Evans. He’s a nasty character, always shouting at Beryl’. They were protective towards her. Christie used to tell Tim to leave her alone.”
The chair in which Peter, then 14, ate the buns was where Christie’s victims sat when they were gassed to unconsciousness before being strangled.
“Unfortunately, I’d also sit in the rope chair he killed those other girls in. I didn’t know that at the time,” says Peter.
Years before the Evanses moved to Rillington Place in the Ladbroke Grove area of London, Christie had murdered his first two victims; Austrian munitions worker Ruth Fuerst in 1943 and Muriel Amelia Eady, a colleague at the radio factory where he was a clerk, a year later.
He buried their bodies in the back garden. Peter says: “I still think about running around in the garden, totally oblivious to the fact that bodies were lying underneath my feet.”
On November 5, 1949, Peter saw his sister for the last time. She gave him her wedding ring so Evans could not sell it for gambling money.
Peter feared for Beryl. He was being sent by his dad to work in New Zealand for two years and felt he was the only relative looking out for her. She was pregnant and argued with Evans about an abortion, which was illegal at the time. “We cuddled each other tightly in the doorway, and tears flooded down our cheeks. I didn’t want to let go.
“I knew Beryl and Geraldine were in real danger in that poisonous atmosphere.”
Two days later, Beryl was murdered, followed by Geraldine.
The accepted account is Christie persuaded Beryl he could perform an abortion, murdering her and the child while Evans was at work.
Peter says: “That night... Evans came back from the pub and hit her in the face and made her unconscious. When
PETER THORLEY ON ‘PROTECTIVE’ CHRISTIE
she got up in a confused state, he brought in a bit of rope from his van – he admitted this in his statements – and strangled her from behind. That’s shown in the forensic reports.”
Peter says Christie would not have offered an abortion, and there was no evidence of Beryl being gassed, like most of Christie’s other victims.
But Peter believes Christie was aware of the murder well before the police.
He says: “Evans, I have no doubt, told Christie how he had strangled his wife with a rope.”
Peter thinks Christie couldn’t go to the police because of the two bodies buried in the back garden.
He adds: “Two nights later, the sound of Geraldine’s screaming, combined with drink, heightened Evans’s vile temper. He killed the baby by strangling her with a tie.”
Fleeing to his hometown of Merthyr Tydfil, Evans was questioned by his family about the whereabouts of his wife and child.
“Evans stormed out. He ended up in a cafe near the police station... He headed into the station,” Peter says.
Evans confessed to the killings, but there were claims his statements read like police manipulated him. Peter says: “Evans knew too much for an innocent man. He volu teered information about where th bodies were and how his wife an daughter were strangled.” Evans withdrew his confessio claiming he had been protectin Christie. But he went on trial 1950, and Christie was th prosecution’s star witnes Evans was found guilty Christie moved o of the flat three yea later and after a ne tenant noticed th smell there were mo grim discoveries. The bodies of Kat leen Maloney, Ri Nelson and Hect rina Maclenna
He seemed a real nice man. He told Tim to leave my sister alone
were in a papered-over alcove in the kitchen. Christie’s wife was buried under the floorboards and the two other women were found in the garden.
“When they said Christie murdered these women, I couldn’t believe it,” Peter says. Christie’s lawyers decided the best chance of avoiding the death penalty was to prove insanity and that the best strategy was to claim he killed as many as possible, including Beryl. But he never confessed to murdering the baby.
The defence strategy failed and Christie was hanged in 1953. The outcry over Evans being executed helped lead to the death penalty being abolished.
The Home Office awarded the Evans family compensation in 2003 and ruled Beryl “was most probably murdered by Christie”. The story has been dramatised several times but Peter says none came close to portraying what went on.
Peter hopes his extraordinary book will “open people’s eyes”.
“My life and my family was destroyed, my sister and niece’s lives cut short by Timothy Evans,” he says. “Geraldine would’ve been 71, Beryl would be 90.
“The dates of their deaths are days when I pause, reflect and remember two very special people.”
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