John Christie (murderer) - Early Criminal Career

Early Criminal Career

During the decade following his marriage to Ethel, Christie received many convictions for criminal offences. His first was for stealing postal orders while working as a postman, for which he received three months' imprisonment on 12 April 1921. In January 1923 Christie was convicted of obtaining money on false pretences and violent conduct, for which he was bound over and put on 12 months' probation respectively. He committed two further crimes of larceny in 1924 and received consecutive sentences of three and six months' imprisonment from September 1924. In May 1929, he was convicted of assaulting a prostitute with whom he was living in Battersea and was sentenced to six months' hard labour; Christie had hit her over the head with a cricket bat, which the magistrate described as a "murderous attack". Finally, he was convicted of stealing a car from a priest who had befriended him, and was imprisoned for three months in late 1933.

Christie and Ethel were reconciled after his release from prison, but although Christie was able to end his course of petty crime, he continued to seek out prostitutes. In December 1938, Christie and his wife moved into the ground-floor flat of 10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill, then a rather run-down area of London. The house was a three-storey brick terrace; the ground and first floors contained a bedroom, living room and kitchen but the second-floor flat had no kitchen. Living conditions were "squalid" – the building's occupants had just one outside lavatory to share, and none of the flats had a bathroom. The street was close to an above-ground section of the Metropolitan line (now the Hammersmith & City and Circle lines), and the train noise would have been "deafening" for the occupants of 10 Rillington Place.

On the outbreak of World War II, Christie applied to join the War Reserve Police and was accepted despite his criminal record, as the authorities failed to check his background. He was assigned to the Harrow Road police station, where he met a woman with whom he began an affair. Their relationship lasted until mid-1943, when the woman's husband, a serving soldier, returned from the war. After learning of the affair he went to the house where his wife was living, discovered Christie there, and assaulted him.