Timothy Evans

On 16 November 2004, Westlake began an application for judicial review in the High Court, challenging a decision by the Criminal Cases Review Commission not to refer Evans's case to the Court of Appeal to have his conviction formally quashed. She argued that Evans's pardon had not formally expunged his conviction of murdering his daughter, and although the Brabin report had concluded that Evans probably did not kill his daughter, it had not declared him innocent. The report also contained the "devastating" conclusion that Evans had probably killed his wife. The request to refer the case was dismissed on 19 November 2004, with the judges saying that the cost and resources of quashing the conviction could not be justified, although they did accept that Evans did not murder either his wife or his child.

The Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions (2003) states that some of the phraseology of the confession seemed more in line with language a police officer might use, rather than that used by an illiterate man as Evans was. Evans was kept in solitary confinement for two days before being handed over to the London police. He did not know what was happening other than his wife's body had not been found in the drain as expected. At Notting Hill police station, he was shown his wife's and daughter's clothing, and the ligature which had been used to strangle his daughter. This book cites Kennedy as a source for the conclusion that Evans felt tremendous guilt over not doing more to prevent the deaths of his wife and daughter, and particularly that his daughter's murder must have been a tremendous shock.

In January 2003, the Home Office awarded Timothy Evans's half-sister, Mary Westlake, and his sister, Eileen Ashby, ex gratia payments as compensation for the miscarriage of justice in Evans's trial. The independent assessor for the Home Office, Lord Brennan QC, accepted that "the conviction and execution of Timothy Evans for the murder of his child was wrongful and a miscarriage of justice" and that "there is no evidence to implicate Timothy Evans in the murder of his wife. She was most probably murdered by Christie." Lord Brennan believed that the Brabin Report's conclusion that Evans probably murdered his wife should be rejected given Christie's confessions and conviction.

Three years after Evans's execution, Christie was found to be a serial killer who had murdered several other women in the same house, including his own wife (Ethel). Christie was himself sentenced to death, and while awaiting execution, he confessed to murdering Mrs. Evans. An official inquiry concluded in 1966 that Christie had probably murdered Evans's daughter (Geraldine), and Evans was granted a posthumous pardon. The High Court dismissed proceedings to officially quash Evans's murder conviction in 2004 on the grounds of the cost and resources that would be involved, but acknowledged that Evans did not murder his wife or his daughter, a full 54 years after his wrongful execution by the British government.

Since Evans had only been convicted of the murder of his daughter, Roy Jenkins, Soskice's successor as Home Secretary, recommended a royal pardon for Evans, which was granted in October 1966. In 1965, Evans's remains had been exhumed from Pentonville Prison and reburied in St Patrick's Roman Catholic Cemetery in Leytonstone, Greater London. The outcry over the Evans case contributed to the suspension and then abolition of capital punishment in the United Kingdom.

The case generated much controversy and is acknowledged to be a miscarriage of justice. Along with those of Derek Bentley and Ruth Ellis, the case played a major part in the removal of capital punishment for murder in 1965 and, later, its abolition for all crimes.

In 1965, Liberal Party politician Herbert Wolfe of Darlington, County Durham contacted Harold Evans, then editor of The Northern Echo. He and Kennedy formed the Timothy Evans Committee. The result of a prolonged campaign was that the Home Secretary, Sir Frank Soskice, ordered a new inquiry chaired by High Court judge Sir Daniel Brabin in 1965–66. Brabin found it was "more probable than not" that Evans murdered his wife and that he did not murder his daughter. This was contrary to the prosecution case in Evans's trial, which held that both murders had been committed by the same person as a single act. The victims' bodies had been found together in the same location and had been murdered in the same way by strangulation.

In 1955, David Astor, editor of The Observer, Ian Gilmour, editor of The Spectator, John Grigg, editor of The National and English Review and Sir Lynton Andrews, editor of The Yorkshire Post, formed a delegation to petition the Home Secretary for a new inquiry because of their dissatisfaction with the conclusions of the Scott Henderson Inquiry. In the same year, barrister Michael Eddowes examined the case and wrote the book The Man on Your Conscience, which argued that Evans could not have been the killer on the basis that if he were there were a number of extraordinary coincidences with his crimes and Christie's, most notably that two strangler murderers, who both used a ligature to kill their victims, had been living in the same property at the same time, unknown to each other.

Christie was arrested on 31 March 1953, and during the course of interrogation confessed four separate times to killing Beryl Evans. He never admitted to killing Geraldine Evans, however. He confessed to murdering Fuerst and Eady, saying he had stored their bodies in the wash-room before burying them in shallow graves in the garden. It was in the same wash-room that the bodies of Beryl and Geraldine Evans had been found during the investigation into their murders. Christie was found guilty of murdering his wife and was hanged on 15 July 1953 by Albert Pierrepoint, the same hangman who had executed Evans at the same prison three years prior.

Evans was put on trial for the murder of his daughter on 11 January 1950 before Mr Justice Lewis and a jury. In accordance with legal practice at the time, the prosecution proceeded only with the single charge of murder, that concerning Geraldine. Beryl's murder, with which Evans was still formally charged, was not formally before the court, though evidence that he had murdered Beryl was used with the aim of establishing Evans's guilt of the murder of Geraldine. Evans, who was represented by Malcolm Morris, withdrew his confession during consultations with his solicitor and alleged that Christie was responsible for the murders in accordance with his second statement given to the police at Merthyr Tydfil. Although this allegation was dismissed by the court as "fantastic" and Evans's solicitors had also warned him that it was difficult to prove, Evans maintained this defence until his execution. It was subsequently found that Christie, not Evans, was responsible.

The case largely came down to Christie's word against Evans's and the course of the trial turned against Evans. The trial lasted only three days and much key evidence was omitted, or never shown to the jury. Evans was found guilty – 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 at Pentonville Prison.

The television journalist Ludovic Kennedy's book Ten Rillington Place criticised the police investigation and evidence submitted at the 1950 trial in which Evans was found guilty. This produced another Parliamentary debate in 1961 but still no second inquiry.

Their marriage was characterised by angry quarrels; Beryl was alleged to be a poor housekeeper and incapable of managing the family's finances, while Timothy misspent his wages on alcohol, and his heavy drinking at the time exacerbated his already short temper. The arguments between Timothy and Beryl were loud enough to be heard by the neighbours and physical violence between them was witnessed on several occasions. In 1949, Beryl revealed to Timothy that she was pregnant with their second child. Since the family was already struggling financially, Beryl decided to have an abortion. After some initial reluctance, Evans agreed to this course of action.

Several weeks later, on 30 November 1949, Evans informed police at Merthyr Tydfil that his wife had died in unusual circumstances. His first confession was that he had accidentally killed her by giving her something in a bottle that a man had given him to abort the foetus; he had then disposed of her body in a sewer drain outside 10 Rillington Place. He told the police that after arranging for Geraldine to be looked after, he had gone to Wales. When police examined the drain outside the front of the building, however, they found nothing and, furthermore, discovered that the manhole cover required the combined strength of three officers to remove it.

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 likely to be 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, surmising that an unsuspecting Beryl let Christie into her flat, expecting the abortion to be carried out, but was instead attacked and then strangled. Christie claimed to have possibly engaged in sexual intercourse with Beryl's body after her death (he claimed to be unable to remember the precise details) but her post-mortem 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.

On 20 September 1947, Evans married Beryl Susanna Thorley, whom he had met in January 1947 on a blind date. The couple initially lived with Evans's family at St Mark's Road but after Beryl discovered she was pregnant in 1948 they moved into the top-floor flat at 10 Rillington Place in the Ladbroke Grove area of Notting Hill. Their neighbours in the ground-floor flat were the serial killer John Christie, then working as a post office clerk, and his wife, Ethel Christie. Timothy's and Beryl's daughter Geraldine was born on 10 October 1948.

In 1935, his mother and her second husband moved to London, and Evans worked as a painter and decorator while attending school. He returned to Merthyr Tydfil in 1937 and briefly worked in the coal mines but had to resign because of continuing problems with his foot. In 1939, he returned to London to live again with his mother, and in 1946 they moved to St Mark's Road, Notting Hill. This was just over two minutes' walk from 10 Rillington Place, his future residence after he married. Evans was fined 60 shillings at West London Magistrates court on 25 April 1946 for stealing a car, and driving without insurance or a licence.

Timothy John Evans (20 November 1924 – 9 March 1950) was a Welshman who was wrongly accused of murdering his wife (Beryl) and infant daughter (Geraldine) at their residence in Notting Hill, London. In January 1950, Evans was tried, and was convicted of the murder of his daughter; he was executed by hanging on 9 March of the same year.

Evans was a native of Merthyr Tydfil in Glamorgan, Wales. His father Daniel abandoned the family in April 1924 before Evans's birth. Evans had an older sister, Eileen, born in 1921 and a younger half-sister, Maureen, who was born in September 1929. Evans's mother remarried in September 1933. As a child, Evans had difficulty learning to speak and struggled at school. Following an accident when he was eight, Evans developed a tubercular verruca on his right foot that never completely healed and caused him to miss considerable amounts of time from school for treatments, further setting back his education. As a result, when he reached adulthood Evans possessed low literacy skills, often needing others to read lengthy documents to him, although he did possess some ability to read simple passages such as in comics, newspaper football reports and on his wages and receipts. He liked boxing and football, supporting Queens Park Rangers, as did Christie. He was also prone to inventing stories about himself to boost his self-esteem, a trait that continued into adulthood and interfered with his efforts to establish credibility when dealing with the police and courts.