Hanging of An Innocent Man

Timothy John

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He is Timothy John Evans and he was wrongfully executed for the killing of his 19-year-old spouse and 13-month-old daughter in London.

 

Timothy with his family

Timothy's childhood was not so simple, he struggled to talk properly and didn't do extremely well at school. By the time he left school, he was almost like an uneducated man. He could hardly read and write his name. He would even openly called mentally retarded.

 

He would meet Beryl Sussana Thorley on an unplanned date and she would go become his spouse just nine months later.

 

In early 1948

 

Their daughter Geraldine Evans was born and it wasn't a clear relationship, they would argue constantly. Money was the major cause of tension between them because Timothy would waste all his income on alcohol. Timothy would get very brutal especially when he drinks which is why in 1949 Beryl found out she is pregnant again and there is no way they could afford another kid. They now understood abortion was the only choice. But of course, abortion was forbidden at that time in the UK and women have to go to backstreet doctors for support.

 

On November 30th, 1949:

 

Timothy turns up to Merthyr Tydfil police station in Wales and tells that his spouse has died of natural circumstances. He told that he had given a mixture in a jar that is given to him by a man on the road in a try to induce abortion, and his wife died after consuming the mixture and he had disposed of her corpse after putting in a ditch.

 

The police took this case seriously and discovered nothing and found that the manhole was way too heavy for an individual to lift it and it is not possible that a single man would put a corpse down there. So he was questioned again and this time he reverses his story and tells that their neighbor John Christie had offered to try an abortion on Beryl.

 

But not all of them knew, John Christie was a serial killer who killed at least 8 people.

 

John Christie:

 

And this serial killer had to perform an abortion on Beryl. On the 8th of November, Beryl had to go through the process and Timothy goes to work as usual and when Timothy comes back after work in the evening, Christie tells him that the abortion went wrong and Beryl had expired and said him that he would dispose of her corpse and look out Geraldine. So off he goes back to Wales where many days later guilt overcomes him and he goes to the police station to confess, he told the authority to put Beryl body down the manhole because that what Christie told and he was going to do.

 

A further investigation following his 2nd declaration did turn up Beryl's corpse and baby Geraldine in the wash house in the back garden. The only man to have access to the washing house was John Christie.

 

Both Geraldine and Beryl were strangled and scrapes were discovered on their body, so police turn back to Timothy and he is questioned and questioned so eventually when he is inquired if he murdered them he answered ‘yes’ before providing full confession.

 

This innocent man who didn't even finish his education and was very overwhelmed and confused with all that questioning and just wished to end.

 

There was zero forensic proof to point towards Timothy at all the detectives tell him what to do.

 

He would drag back to London and is threatened to make a third confession, this confession did sound strangely professional for a man who could hardly read and write. He admitted that he killed Beryl and Geraldine during an argument over money and kept her body in the wash house.

 

During trials, he even declared that John Christie had committed the homicides. John Christie was made a key witness for the trial. He rejected everything and told that he never offered to abort Beryl's baby.

 

The trial ended up lasting three days and returned a guilty decision and sentenced him to end and he was hanged on the 9th of March, 1950.

 

in 1953:

 

Three years later, Christie cleared his premises at 10 Rillington Place and the owner allowed an upstairs resident, Beresford Brown, to use Christie's kitchen. Brown discovered the bodies of three women (Kathleen Maloney, Rita Nelson, and Hectorina Maclennan) hidden in a papered-over kitchen pantry, a recess shortly next to the wash-house where Beryl and Geraldine Evans had been discovered. A further investigation of the building and floors turned up three more corpses: Christie's spouse, Ethel, under the floorboards of the front room; Ruth Fuerst, an Austrian nurse, and munitions worker; and Muriel Eady, a former friend of Christie, who were both buried in the right-hand side of the small back lawn of the building. Christie had even used one of their thigh bones to prop up a trellis in the garden, which the police had missed in their initial investigations of the residence.

 

Christie was arrested on 31 March 1953, on the Embankment near Putney Bridge and during inquiry admitted four separate times to killing Beryl Evans. He never confessed to murdering Geraldine Evans, however. He admitted to killing Fuerst and Eady, saying he had stored their corpses in the wash-room before burying them in shallow graves in the garden. 

He was hanged on the 15th of July, 1953.

 

In 1966:

 

Timothy was reburied in St Patrick's Roman Catholic Church in Leytonstone.

Source:

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