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To his unassuming neighbours, serial killer John Reginald Christie was an intelligent, respected and softly-spoken man – they described him as the poshest on the street.
But behind the gentile facade was a psychopath who liked to have sex with the dead.
Branded 'Reggie-No-Dick' and 'Can't-Do-It-Christie' during his teens, he later admitted the only way he could keep an erection was with victims he rendered helpless.
READ MORE: 'Fantasist monster' who strangled six-year-old to death in 1994 finally jailed for life
While living at 10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill, the bespectacled police officer would go on to kill seven in total using methods such as strangulation and gassing with carbon monoxide.
Their bodies were first stuffed in a secret kitchen alcove and under the floorboards. When neighbours started to complain about the stench, some were haphazardly strewn around the communal garden, with Christie even using one of their femur bones to prop up a fence.
Lover strangled during sex
Christie committed his first murder in August 1943, four years after moving into a ground flat at Rillington Place with wife Ethel.
Ruth Fuerst, an Austrian munitions factory worker, was strangled in the marital bed while Ethel was away visiting her mother.
Muriel Eady, a 32-year-old colleague in the War Reserve Police, suffered the same fate.
Lured into his home by a promise he could cure her recurring bronchitis with a special inhaler, Christie gassed her with carbon monoxide, strangled her then raped her dead body.
Christie killed baby but child's dad hanged for the crime
In the spring of 1948, Beryl Evans moved into the flat upstairs with her husband Timothy and their baby daughter Geraldine.
When she fell pregnant again, fearing she could not support another child, Christie claimed to be able to perform an abortion but instead took her life.
He also killed 13-month-old Geraldine. Her father Timothy – who had learning difficulties and an IQ of 70 – was wrongly executed for the crime.
Killer offered to help with abortions
Rita Nelson, a pregnant prostitute, suffered the same fate as Beryl after Christie promised to help her with a back-street termination.
Kathleen Maloney, 26, another sex worker, was gassed and strangled and raped, as was Hectorina McLennan, 26.
Christie's vile crimes finally came to light in 1953 when the couple moved out and a new tenant found the naked body of a woman in a hidden cupboard.
Patricia Pichler lived a few doors down from Christie and told reporters how she returned from school one day at the age of 11 to find her street cordoned off by police.
“The rumour was that Mrs Christie, who had been missing for some time, had been found down the drain," she said.
"But it wasn’t Mrs Christie; she was still buried out back, under the roses. It was Beryl Evans, the tenant who lived upstairs.”
Of Christie she recalled: “He was the poshest man on the street, the smartest. He was someone to be respected.”
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'As mad as a March hare'
The bodies also included Christie's wife, Ethel, murdered when she was 54. Defence lawyer Derek Curtis-Bennett QC said her murder was the best example of a "motiveless, purposeless killing of the one person he liked".
In his final speech to the court, Mr Curtis-Bennett argued that Christie was suffering from "a defect of reason" – although he knew what he was doing, he did not know that it was wrong.
Mr Curtis-Bennett told the jury Christie had begun showing signs of hysteria as long ago as 1918. It was, he said, no exaggeration to say Christie was "as mad as a March hare".
Christie was hanged at Pentonville prison on July, 15, 1953. Rillington Place was demolished in the 1970s and replaced with Bartle Close and Andrews Square.
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- Murder
- Serial Killers
- London
- Crime
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