jul 15, 1953 - Timothy Evans executed

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Timothy Evans lived with his wife, Beryl, and their baby daughter, Geraldine. John Christie, their downstairs neighbour, had performed an illegal abortion on Beryl and informed Evans that she had died and that he would get rid of her body and get someone to look after Geraldine. Christie was actually a serial killer who had murdered many women in the same house. A lot of evidence, including two women in shallow graves in the garden, was either ignored or not yet found by the police at the time.

Christie, when told that his wife and daughter had both been found strangled in the garden washroom, said that he was responsible for their deaths. He made up a story about how he had killed them. Crucial pieces of evidence which would have shown his story to be the guilty lie that it was were ignored in the trial.

The truth was only found out three years after Evans' execution when the new upstairs tenant found three bodies in Christie's kitchen. All the other bodies and body parts around the house and garden were then found, and Christie was arrested. The media criticised Evans' execution, putting forward all the evidence that showed Evans couldn't possibly have been the murderer. In 1966, he was given a posthumous pardon. In 2003, compensation was paid to his family.

The case was controversial. It was one of the high-profile cases which made the public question the death penalty, and led to its abolition in 1965.

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