Timothy Evans - Trial and Wrongful Execution

Trial and Wrongful Execution

Evans was put on trial for the murder of his daughter on 11 January 1950 (in accordance with legal practice at the time, the prosecution proceeded only with the charge of murdering Geraldine; Beryl's murder, with which Evans was still formally charged, was "left on file", though evidence from this murder was allowed to be used to prove Evans's guilt in the murder of Geraldine). Evans was represented by Malcolm Morris. He recanted his confession during consultations with his solicitor and alleged that Christie had always been responsible for the murders. This was the basis of Evans's defence in his trial, which Evans maintained as the truth until his execution. Subsequent events were to confirm the veracity of Evans's beliefs.

Christie and his wife, Ethel, were key witnesses for the prosecution. Christie denied that he had offered to abort Beryl’s unborn child and gave detailed evidence about the quarrels between Evans and his wife. The defence sought to show how Christie was the murderer by highlighting his past criminal record. Christie had previous convictions for several thefts and malicious wounding. The latter case involved Christie striking a woman on the head with a cricket bat. But his apparent reformation, and his service with the police, impressed the jury. The defence also could not find a motive for why a supposedly respectable person like Christie would want to murder two people, whereas the prosecution could use the explanation in Evans's confessions as Evans's motive for wanting to kill the victims. Evans had no criminal record. Had the police conducted a thorough search of the garden and found the bones of two prior victims of Christie, the trial may not have occurred at all, and a serial killer prevented from murdering again. However, Evans's reputation for conflicting statements fatally undermined his credibility. That reputation was created by the police themselves in preparing several false confessions, forcing Evans to incriminate himself with threats of violence. The case largely came down to Christie’s word against Evans's and the course of the trial rapidly turned against Evans. The trial itself lasted only three days and much key evidence was omitted, or never shown to the jury. The judge was prejudiced against Evans from the start, and his summing-up biased against the defendant. He was found guilty two days later — the jury taking just 40 minutes to come to its decision. After a failed appeal held before the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard, Mr Justice Sellers and Mr Justice Humphreys on 20 February, Evans was hanged on 9 March 1950 by Albert Pierrepoint, assisted by Syd Dernley.

The safety of Evans's conviction was severely criticised when Christie's murders were discovered three years later. During interviews with police and psychiatrists prior to his execution, Christie admitted several times that he had been responsible for the murder of Beryl Evans. If these confessions were true, Evans's second statement detailing Christie's offer to abort Beryl's baby is the true version of events that took place at Rillington Place on 8 November 1949. Ludovic Kennedy provided one possible reconstruction of how the murder took place, where an unsuspecting Beryl lets Christie into her apartment, expecting the abortion to be carried out, but is instead attacked and then strangled. Christie claimed to have possibly engaged in sexual intercourse with Beryl's body after her death (he could not remember the precise details) but her autopsy had failed to uncover evidence of sexual intercourse. In his confessions to Beryl's death, Christie denied he had agreed to carry out an abortion on Beryl. He instead claimed to have strangled her while being intimate with her, or that she had wanted to commit suicide and he helped her do so.

One important fact was not brought up in Evans's trial: several workmen were willing to testify that there were no bodies in the wash-house when they worked there several days after Evans supposedly hid them. They stored their tools in the wash-room, and mended the roof during this period. Their evidence in itself would have raised doubts about the veracity of Evans's alleged confessions, but the workmen were not called to give evidence. Indeed, the police reinterviewed the workmen and forced them to change their evidence to fit the preconceived idea that Evans was the sole murderer. The murderer, Christie, would have hidden the bodies of Beryl and Geraldine in the temporarily vacant first-floor flat, and then moved them to the wash-house four days later when the workmen had finished. Christie had used a similar procedure in both his previous murders of Fuerst and Eady according to his confession in 1953.