In a three-story house (divided into flats) in Notting Hill, lived John Christie and Timothy Evans. Both were hanged for murder. But one of them innocent.

Christie moved into the ground flat of 10 Rillington Place with his wife Ethel in 1938. He enrolled with the War Reserve Police and he developed a relationship with a woman who worked at the station. This ended when Christie was found at this woman's house, when her husband unexpectedly returned, gave him a beating and threw him out.
 

The First Killings

As a policeman Christie took delight in apprehending prostitutes, killing them and making love to their dead bodies.
The first person Christie killed was Ruth Fuerst, an Austrian munitions worker and part-time prostitute. Christie met Fuerst while she was soliciting clients in a snack bar in Ladbroke Grove.
During August of 1943 Christie strangled her during sex at his home. He first hid the body beneath the floorboards of his living room before later burying it in the back garden.

Soon after the murder, at the end of 1943, Christie resigned as a Special Constable and later became a clerk at a radio factory. It was here that he met his second victim, Muriel Amelia Eady.
In October 1944, he invited Eady back to his flat to try a "special mixture" he made that could cure her bronchitis. Eady was to inhale the mixture from a jar with a tube inserted in the top, with her back turned he inserted a second tube that was connected to the domestic gas mains. After a while she passed out. Christie then strangled her with a piece of cord, had sex with her body, then buried it in the garden next to Fuerst.

The Murder of Beryl Evans

In the spring of 1948 Timothy Evans and his wife, Beryl, moved into the top flat. They had been married less than a year and were expecting their first baby.
Evans [Timothy] was prone to inventing stories about himself to boost his self-esteem, he even told people that his father was an Italian count.
When the baby arrived, the Evanses named her Geraldine.
Her birth put a strain on the marriage, since Tim's wages could not quite cover the bills. In addition, Beryl turned out to be a poor housekeeper and cook.  She even neglected the baby at times. They frequently fought, even striking one another and to Beryls horror she discovered that she was pregnant again.  Beryl about was determined to seek an abortion and she let everyone about it. Christie had learn of this and offered to abort her.

Beryl's trusted Christie, after all he was a former police officer with a medical background, and was just trying to help her.

Evans discovered this arrangement and told Christie that they were not interested. Christie tried to convince Evans that he knew about medical procedures from his time in War Reserve Police and had performed successful abortions, but Evans still refused.

On November 7th, Evans went to work. Beryl made arrangements with Christie to perform the abortion the following day. She told her husband that night, but he did not believe her. They had an argument that night that involved physical contact.

The next evening Christie went to Evans flat and laid out a quilt in front of the fire. It is not clear exactly what happened that evening but Evans came home and Christie met him at the bottom of the stairs.Christie told Evans, "It's bad news. It didn't work." Beryl was dead. Her body lay on the bed covered in a blanket. She had been bleeding from the mouth, nose, and vagina. Christie said that Beryl may have died from septic poisoning, since she'd tried so many miscarriage remedies.

Christie told Evans that going to the police would get them both into trouble, with a charge of manslaughter, and Evans
could be seen as an accomplice, since he had prior knowledge and did not stop it. He also had a history of fights with his wife, which would make him suspect. Evans was easily persuaded to keep quiet.

Christie then proposed that he would dispose of the body, however, he was unable to manage so together they carried Beryl into another unoccupied flat and left her in the kitchen. Christie said he would put her down one of the drains later.

Evans wanted to take his daughter to his mother's house, but Christie persuaded him not to as this would cause suspicion. Christie told Evans that he knew a young couple who would take her. That was the last day that anyone saw Geraldine alive.

Christie persuaded Evans to sell his furniture and leave town. Evans complied moving to Merthyr Vale; a village in Wales.

A few days later Christie moved the bodies, hiding them in the washhouse.

Guilt must have gotten to the better of Evans because whilst living in Wales he entered a police station and told them that he'd put his wife's body down a drain. He didn't say that it was him that killed her and he didn't want to get Christie in trouble. So he made up a story that she took some abortion pills that she'd got from a stranger, and died shortly after.
Scotland Yard police soon went to the address to search the drain where Evans had said the body was only to find that it was empty.
Evans was told of this discovery, then  changed his statement.
He would now tell the truth.

He said that there was no stranger who had given him abortion pills.
But it was in fact his neighbour Christie. Evans had claimed to make up the first statement only to protect himself from Christie.
He said that Christie had offered to help Beryl abort the child, but warned that the concoction he used was dangerous and could kill her. She wanted to try it, so when Evans left for work on November 8th, Beryl had gone to see Christie. The stuff she took had killed her. When Evans had returned home, he had found her bleeding from every orifice. Then Christie put her body in a drain.

As the investigation intensified, Evans added things to his story. He then admitted that he had helped Christie to carry the body down to the other flat, but only because Christie could not do it on his own.

The police investigated the house and garden at 10 Rillington Place, but their search was superficial. They never even saw the human thigh bone that belonged to his first victim Ruth Fuerst that propped up a fence. Nor did they notice her skull that Christies dog dug up. Christie later tossed the skull into the bombed out house at number 133 St Mark’s Roada. There was endless speculation over who the unfortunate air-raid victim was.

What they did find in Evans' flat was a pile of papers by a window, which contained clippings from the newspaper of a sensational torso murder, known as the Stanley Setty case. This was odd, since Evans could not read.
There was also a stolen briefcase. Evans was arrested for the briefcase and brought back to London for further questioning.  
Christie was also summoned for an interview that lasted six hours.  
Christie dismissed Evans' accusations as ridiculous and the police accepted him as one of their own, after all Evans was a known liar. He then went on to recount how violent the marriage had been.

When Beryl and the baby could not be located, the police searched the house again. They then went into the back yard and tried to get into the washhouse, but the door was stuck. Mrs. Christie brought them a piece of metal to loosen it. They noticed some wood standing against the sink.
One of the officers reached behind it and felt something.  They moved the wood and saw what appeared to be a package wrapped in a green tablecloth and tied up with cord. Mrs. Christie claimed she had never seen it before and did not know what it was. 
They pulled the package out further and untied the cord. A pair of feet slipped out, revealing the decaying corpse of Beryl Evans. Further searching produced the baby, lying under some wood behind the door. Both had been strangled. A man's tie was still around the baby's neck.

When Tim Evans was returned to London from Wales, all he was told on the way was that he was going to be questioned about a briefcase found in his apartment that belonged to someone else. When he arrived in London, however, there was no doubt in his mind that he was being arrested for murder.  

That night, the Notting Hill police took two more confessions from Evans. 
He first admitted that he was responsible for their deaths and added that it was a relief to get it off his chest. He said he had killed his wife because she was running up debts. They had quarreled and he had hit her.  
Then he had strangled her with a piece of rope. He wrapped her body in the tablecloth in which she had been found and took her to the apartment below. After that, he put it in the washhouse at midnight on November 8th.  
The next day he fed the baby and left her alone all day.  
He repeated this again the day after. Then he quit his job and came home and killed his child by strangling her with his tie.  He put her into the washhouse as well.

On January 11, 1950, Evans was tried at the Old Bailey for the murder of his wife and baby. It took the jury forty minutes to reach a verdict guilty and Evans was swiftly condemned to die.
Evans went quietly to the gallows at Pentonville Prison March 9th.

Murder of Ethel Christie

On the morning of 14 December 1952, Christie strangled Ethel in bed.
She had last been seen in public two days earlier.
Christie invented several stories to explain his wife's disappearance and to help mitigate the possibility of further inquiries being made. 
In reply to a letter from relatives in Sheffield, he wrote that Ethel had rheumatism and could not write herself; to one neighbour, he explained that she was visiting her relatives in Sheffield; to another, he said that she had gone to Birmingham.

Further Murders

Between 19 January and 6 March 1953, Christie murdered three more women whom he had invited back to 10 Rillington Place: Kathleen Maloney, Rita Nelson and Hectorina MacLennan.
For these murders Christie modified the gassing technique he had first used on Muriel Eady; he simply used a rubber tube connected to the gas pipe in the kitchen which he kept closed off with a bulldog clip. He seated his victims in the kitchen, released the clip on the tube, and let gas flow.
As with Eady, Christie raped his last three victims while they were unconscious and continued to do so as they died.
After he murdered each of his final victims, he hid their bodies in a small alcove behind the back kitchen wall, which was covered over with wallpaper. Christie wrapped his semi-naked victims' bodies in blankets, similar to the way in which Beryl Evans's body had been wrapped.

Christie eventually moved out of Rilling Place. The landlord then allowed the tenant of the top-floor flat, Beresford Brown, to use Christie's kitchen. On 24 March, Brown discovered the kitchen alcove when he attempted to insert 
brackets into the wall to hold a wireless set. Peeling back the wallpaper, Brown saw the bodies of Maloney, Nelson and MacLennan. Brown informed the police and a city-wide search for Christie began.

On the morning of 31 March Christie was arrested near Putney Bridge; all he had in his possession were some coins and an old newspaper clipping about the remand of Timothy Evans.
While in custody, Christie confessed to seven murders: the three women found in the kitchen alcove, his wife, and the two women buried in the back garden. He also admitted being responsible for the murder of Beryl Evans, but denied killing Geraldine Evans.
Christie was tried only for the murder of his wife Ethel. His trial began on 22 June 1953, in the same court in which Evans had been tried three years earlier. Christie pleaded insanity and claimed to have a poor memory of the events. The jury rejected the plea, and after deliberating for 85 minutes found Christie guilty.
Christie did not appeal against his conviction, and on 15 July 1953 he was hanged at Pentonville Prison by Albert Pierrepoint, who had also hanged Evans. After being pinioned for execution, Christie complained that his nose 
itched. Pierrepoint assured him that "It won't bother you for long".

A posthumous pardon for Timothy Evans was granted, and the authorities returned Evans' remains to his family.

The house and street has since been demolished, and the area has changed beyond all recognition. Housing in Bartle Road, London W11, now occupies the site.

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Coordinates: 51°30'56.77"N 0°12'48.97"W