John Reginald Halliday Christie

John Reginald Halliday Christie was a British serial killer in the 1940s and '50s. He was arrested and hanged in 1953 after being involved in one of the most sensational murder trials in British legal history, in which his tenant Timothy Evans was executed for the murders of Evans' wife and child; some critics have speculated that Christie actually committed the murders and framed Evans for it. While neither Christie's guilt nor Evans' innocence have ever been conclusively proven, the case sparked massive public outrage, contributed to the suspension of the death penalty in Britain in 1964, and later abolition, and remains controversial to this day.

Early Life

Born in Yorkshire in 1898, Christie was abused by his father and dominated by his mother and sisters. His one happy childhood memory was seeing his dead grandfather as he lay in state in the family home; he felt powerful in front of the helpless corpse of a man he had once feared. Upon reaching puberty, he already associated sex with death, dominance and violent aggression, rendering him impotent unless in complete control. His first attempts at sex were failures, branding him as "Reggie-No-Dick" and "Can't-Get-It-Christie" throughout adolescence.

Related Topics:
Yorkshire - 1898 - Abuse - Corpse - Puberty - Impotent - Adolescence

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Christie enlisted as a signalman in WWI, during which he was hospitalized after a mustard gas attack, claiming to have been blinded. No record of his supposed blindness exists, however; in 10 Rillington Place, considered the definitive Christie biography, author Ludovic Kennedy wrote that Christie, a hysteric since childhood, exaggerated his blindness, as well as the three-year period after the attack when he was mute, as a ploy to gain attention.

Related Topics:
WWI - Mustard gas - Blinded - 10 Rillington Place - Biography - Ludovic Kennedy - Hysteric - Mute

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Upon returning from the war, Christie married Ethel Waddington. It was a dysfunctional union, as Christie was impotent with her and frequented prostitutes. Friends and neighbors gossiped that she stayed with him out of fear. They separated after three years, during which Christie drifted through a series of dead-end jobs, where he without fail got a reputation among coworkers as a bully and fanatic for rules, and was jailed more than once for violence and petty theft. The couple reconciled in 1933, but Christie did not reform, continuing to seek out prostitutes to relieve his increasingly bizarre sexual urges, which included necrophilia.

Related Topics:
Dysfunctional - Prostitute - Gossip - Petty theft - 1933 - Necrophilia

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