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monday.com to learn more. Welcome

1:34

to After Dark. Today we are

1:36

turning our attention to a very

1:38

dark story indeed, and one which

1:40

contains murder, infanticide, and sexual assault.

1:42

So please proceed with caution. If

1:45

you think this one might not be for you,

1:47

head over to our back catalogue where you'll find

1:49

many other episodes there. But for those

1:51

of you who are still with us, it's time to head

1:53

back to Tuesday the 24th of March, 1953. Beresford

2:03

Wallace Brown trundles down the

2:05

stairs of number 10, Rillington

2:07

Place. The wooden

2:10

steps announce his descent from his room

2:12

on the top floor with

2:14

hollow thumps and creaks. Jamaican

2:17

has been living in the UK since

2:19

1950 and works at

2:22

a dairy in Shepherd's Bush. If

2:24

you ask him though, he's a jazz musician.

2:27

Today, however, he's a

2:29

handyman. His landlord,

2:31

Charles Brown, has asked that he clear

2:33

and clean the rooms on the bottom

2:36

of the building, floors beneath

2:38

his own home. The

2:40

tenant, who is occupying it, has

2:42

left unannounced, still

2:45

owing rent. Beresford

2:48

enters the flat, which, much like

2:50

the rest of the building, is

2:52

all thin walls and uneven flooring.

2:56

Light from grimy windows highlights the

2:58

dust that rises in clouds with

3:00

each of Beresford's steps, though

3:03

it's not enough to fully peel back

3:05

the shadows that linger in the corners

3:07

of the room. Moving

3:10

through, Beresford deposits a small toolkit

3:12

on the table in the kitchen

3:14

looking around for a space to

3:16

put his transistor radio. None

3:19

forthcoming, he decides to put

3:21

up a shelf to accommodate it. It'll

3:24

be a long day if he can't listen to

3:26

music as he works. Before

3:28

attaching the brackets, he taps the

3:30

kitchen wall to test its sturdiness.

3:34

It's hollow. Strange. Beresford

3:37

even heads outside to the back of

3:39

the house looking for an explanation, concluding

3:42

that there must be a cellar of

3:44

some sort in that corner. He

3:46

goes back inside and pulls the

3:48

wallpaper away. There's

3:51

a hole in the wooden panel

3:53

beneath. The

3:55

43-year-old jazz musician turned handyman

3:58

brushes the dust from his front. puzzled

4:01

and climbs the staircase back up through the

4:03

rest of the house into his own room.

4:05

From it, he fetches a torch before

4:08

heading down again to stare

4:10

into that hole in the wall. He

4:14

bends down to peer

4:16

inside. His breath catches.

4:19

There is a cellar, after

4:21

all, but that isn't what's caught

4:23

his attention. Because

4:25

there in front of him, in

4:28

the walls of this now abandoned

4:30

flat, is the bare

4:32

back of a human being. After

4:54

Dark Hello

4:57

and welcome to After Dark. I

4:59

am Anthony. And I'm Maddie.

5:01

And today we have a

5:03

super special episode because without getting too sycophantic,

5:06

Maddie and I are trying to control her

5:08

excitement because we have, I don't know, I

5:10

think a woman who changed the game when

5:12

it comes to true crime

5:15

writing and authoring crime,

5:17

and that is Kate Summerscale. Now, you

5:19

may know her as the author

5:21

of The Suspicions of Mr. Witcher, which

5:23

of course we have done an episode

5:25

on that particular crime ourselves on After

5:27

Dark, but also books like The Wicked

5:30

Boy and The Haunting of Alma Fielding,

5:32

which I just read myself a couple

5:34

of months ago. Her new book is

5:36

The Peep Show, The Murders at Ten

5:38

Rillington Place. This is a particularly dark

5:40

period and address in time. And Kate,

5:42

we are so, so happy to have

5:44

you on After Dark today. Thank you

5:46

so much for giving us your time.

5:49

Thank you so much for having me. I

5:51

want to know, first of all, what

5:54

draws you to these

5:56

histories specifically? I mean, I think, I

6:00

think in other ways. But as I

6:02

said in the introduction there, you have changed

6:04

this game. Whether you set out to do it

6:06

or not, I think you have, and you've really

6:08

informed it. And you've set a really incredible template

6:10

for the ways in which historic

6:13

true crime writing particularly can be undertaken.

6:15

But what brings you to your subjects? How do

6:17

you decide what you're going to investigate next?

6:20

The process is always rather mysterious,

6:22

what draws you to a particular

6:25

story and all the more mysterious to

6:27

be drawn to such dark stories so

6:29

often. I think in this

6:32

case, Peep shows

6:34

look about a serial killer of women.

6:37

And I think there were some crimes in

6:40

the summer of 2020 and

6:42

then the abduction of Sarah

6:45

Everard in 2021 that made me suddenly kind

6:49

of look like baffled and curious of

6:51

what were these men up to who

6:54

specifically wanted to kill women, women who

6:56

weren't even known to them. And

6:58

I remembered the Christie case, the

7:01

Rillington Place case, from

7:03

seeing a film about it a long time ago.

7:05

And then sometimes I find that

7:07

kind of going back in

7:09

time can help cast light on

7:11

the present. You can get perspectives

7:13

and a different distance.

7:17

And you can through a very

7:19

lurid sensational story that attracted a

7:21

lot of attention at the time.

7:24

Christie was the most notorious killer of

7:26

his era. You can also

7:28

somehow get access to the emotional life of

7:30

that time, the fears

7:33

and fantasies of the people who reported

7:36

on the case, the neighbors,

7:38

the ordinary British people as well,

7:40

of course, as the murderer himself

7:43

and his victims. It's

7:45

a sort of heightened emotional moment in

7:47

which you can sort of see beneath

7:49

the surface somehow. Kate, you

7:51

mentioned the film about this particular crime. And I

7:54

think for a lot of people that will be

7:56

the way into this story, and that's maybe how

7:58

they know it. But for

8:00

people who have never come to this case before

8:02

and know nothing about it, let's

8:05

start with the flat that is empty that

8:07

we've just heard about. And can you tell

8:09

us who the occupants of that were? Yes,

8:12

until recently the occupants had

8:14

been a middle-aged couple, their

8:16

early 50s, called Reg and

8:19

Ethel Christie. Apparently very

8:21

proper, respectable. They were thought of as

8:23

the sort of poshest residents of the

8:25

street. And he

8:27

was a white-collar worker. He was an accounts

8:30

clerk. And Ethel was a

8:32

very sort of demure, quiet woman

8:34

who just sort of said good

8:36

morning to her neighbours as she

8:38

went by. Ethel has disappeared in

8:40

December, it was now March, and

8:43

Reg had left the flat, abandoned

8:45

the flat just a few days

8:48

before Beresford Brown made

8:50

his discovery in the kitchen.

8:52

The police immediately launched a

8:54

manhunt for him, because

8:56

what they found in the alcove

8:58

was not just one body, but the

9:01

bodies of three young women who

9:03

had evidently been murdered

9:05

in the last three

9:08

months. And then beneath

9:10

the floorboards in the front room when

9:12

they started to dismantle the house, they

9:14

found the body of Ethel Christie, Reg's

9:17

wife, who had been lying there for

9:19

even longer. So yes, Reg Christie was

9:21

the clear chief suspect in the case,

9:24

and a huge search

9:26

operation began all over the

9:28

country. So you mentioned there,

9:30

Kate, that we have Ethel

9:32

found in the floorboards, but

9:35

who were the women that were found in

9:37

the wall then? Because they were the initial

9:39

discovery, weren't they? Yes, at

9:41

the time they were dismissed

9:43

as prostitutes or of prostitute

9:46

type. They were poor women,

9:48

without families in London, but in

9:51

fact they had quite varied histories.

9:53

One of them, called

9:55

Kathleen Maloney, was the

9:57

first one that Christie

10:00

killed in this particular spree

10:02

after killing his wife. And

10:04

she was a professional prostitute.

10:06

She earned a living by

10:09

selling sex to men around

10:11

Paddington and Hyde Park and

10:13

Notting Hill. And she

10:15

evidently had quite a bad

10:17

alcohol problem. And her work

10:19

funded her drinking. Basically, she

10:21

hung out in pubs in

10:23

the Edgware Road, prayed streets,

10:26

her road. And she slept in

10:28

a laboratory, public laboratory in the

10:30

corner of Harrow Road and Edgware

10:33

Road. She was essentially homeless.

10:36

But she had great friendships with the other working

10:38

girls and with people in the pubs and so

10:41

on. And she inspired

10:43

great loyalty and protectiveness in

10:45

her friends. So she

10:47

was the first woman who Christie Strangled

10:50

and placed in the Alcove. Then

10:52

there was Rita Nelson, who came

10:55

from Belfast. And

10:57

she'd been living in London a couple of years having

10:59

escaped to sort of mental

11:01

health order. She had a

11:04

child, an illegitimate child back in

11:06

Northern Ireland, as Kay

11:08

Maloney had left five children in

11:11

Southampton. And Rita called

11:13

herself an art student. She worked

11:15

in cafes, but she was just

11:17

being sacked from her last job

11:20

at a lion's corner house because

11:22

she was again pregnant. And

11:24

then the last woman was Hectorina

11:27

MacLennan, who led a

11:29

rather sort of precarious life

11:31

in London. She'd come down from Scotland.

11:33

So all these women were immigrants, one

11:35

sort of another recent arrivals. And

11:38

she was very down on her luck,

11:40

also pregnant, absolutely desperate

11:42

for money. And we've

11:45

got testimony from her last boyfriends,

11:47

her lovers in the last year

11:49

of her life, who seemed to

11:51

have absolutely adored her and sent

11:53

her these notes. So she lived

11:55

a very vivid and fragile, very

11:57

sort of dangerous life, Hectorina. incredible

12:00

that we can reconstruct so much

12:02

of these women's lives beyond the moment

12:04

of their death and that's so wonderful.

12:06

The world that you open up to

12:08

us here Kate is quite

12:11

an interesting one that's full of

12:13

these different social strata, there's a

12:15

lot of diversity in terms of

12:18

social class, in terms of racial

12:20

identity and at the heart of it we

12:22

have this really monstrous serial killer

12:24

himself, Christie. And you

12:26

mentioned that they were considered to be the

12:28

poshest people on their streets, certainly in their

12:31

building. Where did he see his

12:33

position in this world? Did he see

12:35

himself as superior, as separate

12:37

in some way from the other human beings

12:39

around him? He does seem

12:42

to have adopted a very sort

12:44

of supercilious attitude to his neighbours

12:46

and people he worked with. He

12:48

was a man who liked authority, he

12:51

liked being in charge, he liked watching

12:53

others. He took photographs

12:55

of women and also of the

12:57

VE Day celebrations on his street,

12:59

the local children. During

13:01

the war he was constantly reporting his

13:03

neighbours for a chink in their blackout

13:05

curtains. He served as a policeman

13:07

in the war, he'd served as a soldier in the

13:10

First World War, so he adhered

13:12

to all the sort of respectable

13:14

norms and he was very proud

13:16

of the fact he didn't drink much and he

13:18

didn't go to pubs. The latter

13:20

of which was not true because he

13:23

picked up several of his victims in

13:25

those circumstances. He's a

13:27

very curious sort of chilling figure

13:30

because he placed so

13:32

much value on his propriety

13:34

and uprightness. He was like

13:36

an old-fashioned Englishman with

13:38

the highest moral standards and he

13:40

somehow didn't seem to see any

13:42

conflict between that and

13:44

his capacity to

13:47

randomly kill women and

13:50

then conceal their bodies. So

13:52

there's a sort of emptiness in

13:54

him and a split in

13:56

him between this kind of

13:58

cartoon 19-year-old. and fifties

14:01

upright gentleman and this

14:03

absolutely monstrous, unbridled appetite

14:06

that he privately indulged. I'm

14:26

Matt Lewis, host of the

14:28

Echoes of History podcast, where

14:30

every week we'll be delving

14:32

into the real life history

14:34

that inspires the locations, characters

14:36

and storylines of the legendary

14:38

Assassin's Creed franchise. Join

14:41

us as we explore the narrow

14:43

streets of Medici Ruled Florence, cross

14:45

sand dunes in the shadow of

14:47

ancient pyramids, climb the

14:49

rigging of 18th century brigs sailing

14:52

across the Caribbean and

14:54

come face to face with some

14:56

of history's most significant individuals. Whether

14:59

you're a history fan, a gamer or

15:01

just someone who loves a good story,

15:03

Echoes of History is the podcast for

15:05

you. Make sure to catch

15:07

every episode by following Echoes of History,

15:10

the Ubisoft podcast brought to you by

15:12

History Hits, wherever you get your podcasts.

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16:32

getting into spooky season, what is it that scares

16:34

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16:36

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16:39

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is something particularly chilling. at

40:00

the time campaigns to abolish the death

40:02

penalty and a miscarriage

40:04

of justice would have been

40:07

really explosive material

40:09

for abolition. So

40:11

there was a very tense atmosphere

40:13

in the courtroom about whether the

40:15

Evans case would be raised, whether

40:17

Christie would confess to having killed

40:20

Beryl Evans and her

40:22

baby. It was actually the murder

40:24

of the baby for which Tim Evans had

40:26

been hanged. So that was

40:28

an added kind of drama hanging

40:31

over something which was already intensely

40:33

dramatic with all the forensic evidence

40:36

and the evidence being

40:38

given of necrophilia

40:40

and gasings in

40:43

this tiny terrorist house. It

40:45

was already the most lurid

40:47

case probably that had been reported on

40:50

in the British press. Do you think

40:52

that one of Harry Proctor's

40:54

blindspots was social class in

40:57

his initial reporting around Evans

40:59

trial? Because we know that

41:01

Evans was a member of the working

41:03

class and I think I'm right in

41:05

saying that he was actually illiterate, whereas

41:07

what we know about Christie is, as

41:09

you said Kate, he served as a

41:12

soldier in World War One. He occupied

41:14

this very seemingly outwardly respectable position in

41:16

his neighbourhood in society at

41:18

large. Do you think that's the reason why

41:20

Harry Proctor maybe didn't push him as hard

41:22

as he should have? I think it probably

41:25

is. When Harry Proctor met Christie in 1949,

41:28

Christie was very ingratiating, getting

41:30

cups of tea, bonding with

41:32

him over there, shared heritage.

41:34

They both came from Yorkshire

41:37

and yes, impressing him as a sort of

41:39

genteel, refined, older

41:41

gentleman. And so

41:44

I think, well like many people

41:46

at the time, they thought it

41:48

sort of ridiculous to suggest that

41:51

this middle-aged man had committed this

41:53

crime. Well, yeah, middle-aged white collar

41:56

man and that it was much more

41:58

likely that the illiterate 25-year-old van