TEN RILLINGTON PLACE

SLR.—I was out of the country at the time that the Home Secretary made his statement in the House of Commons on the case of Timothy John Evans, and have only recently, had an opportunity of studying it.

Mr. Butler gave as his opinion that the interest in my hook Ten Rillington Place lay 'in its presentation of the case for believing Evans to be innocent rather than in its addition tr the information already avail- able about the deaths of MN Evans and her child.'

Lest this statement gives the .impression that my book is nothing more than a plausible piece of special pleading. perhaps you will allow me to state sonic of the additional information 1 have obtained and which, because of the complexity of the case, seems to have escaped even those who have made a special study of it.

(I) The fact (not published before) that a prison medical examination of Evans showed him to have an IQ of 68, with the mental abilities of a boy of 101 and the vocabulary of a boy of 14. This, in my view, explains more than anything else (a) why Christie was able to persuade Evans to leave Rilling- ton Place after the death of Mrs. Evans instead of going to the police, and (1,1 why Evans put his sig- nature to the so-called 'confession' (false in substance and detail) which, more than any other factor. was responsible for his conviction. (2) The body of evidence now available that Christie assumed a bogus medical knowledge in order to be alone with his victims in the way that Evans alleged he did with Mrs. Evans. These fall into five items. (1) Christie's statement in the Sunday Pictorial of July 12,1953. that he told Muriel Eady (his second victim) that he knew how to cure her catarrh. 12) Christie's offer to Mrs. Forrestt (Conrad Phillips: Murderer's Moon) to cure her migraine. (3) Christie telling Mrs. Evans's friend. Lucy Endecott. that he was going to abort Mrs. Evans (Peter Baker's inter- view with Lucy Endccott). (4) Christie telling Mar- garet Wilson, when he was on the run, that he could help her end her pregnancy (Margaret Wilson's state- ment to the police). (5) The fact that Rita Nelson, one of the prostitutes whom Christie murdered, and

who was six months pregnant, had not availed herself of the opportunity to visit the Samaritan Hospital to arrange about delivery. (1) (4) and (5) were available

to Mr. Scott Henderson, although there is no evi- dence that he considered them. (2) and (3) are new information and would, I should have thought, have been worth investigating. If shown on balance to be true, there would then exist a very large body of evidence to support Evans's claim that Christie had (untruthfully) told him that he was going to abort, and later had aborted his wife.

(3) Christie's statement of December 1 to the Notting Hill Police (trot published before) that when Evans returned from work at about 7 p.m. on Tues- day. November 8. he told Christie and his wife that Mrs. Evans and the child nad gone to Bristol with friends. But according to his Notting Hill 'confession' Evans did not murder Mrs. Evans until after he had returned from work on Tuesday the 8th, and did not murder the baby un01 the evening of Thursday the 10th. In his statement of June 8, 1953, Christie admitted to murdcrit.g Mrs Evans at about lunch- time on Tuesday. Novembe- 8..

(4) Later in his statement of December I (not pub- lished before) Christie. referring to Evans's return visit to Rillington Place from South Wales, said: 'My wife asked how Mrs. Evans was.' But Mrs. Christie, in her statement of the same date (also not published before) said: 'I did not see Evans . . . I was in the house but I did not go to the door'; and Evans himself makes no mention of seeing Mrs.

Christie. These statements of Christie and his wife were taken simultaneously, the one at Notting Hill police station, the other at Rillington Place, so Christie had no opportunity of concerting on a com- mon story beforehand. For what other reason would he have lied about his wife than to show that there

was a third party present during a conversation which, if Evans's version of it were to be believed, in- criminated him?

(5) The admission in Mrs. Christie's statement of December 5 (not published before) that the wood covering the bodies in the wash-house belonged to her and Christie. This statement contradicts Mr. Scott Henderson's suggestion Supplementary Report. para.

8) that the carpenter put the wood in the yard where Evans picked it up; and it supports the carpenter's statement (which Mr Scott Henderson rejected) that he personally gave the wood to Christie.

(6) The original statements to the police of Messrs. Larter's workmen (not published before) in which they emphatically stated that there were no bodies in the wash-house at the times that Evans. in his 'con- fession.' alleged to have put them there. The peculiar circumstances (not related before) in which the police got hold of these workmen again, and the extremely dubious methods (also not related before) by which they persuaded them to go back on their first state- ments and make second, contradictory statements.

(7) Christie's third statement to the Notting Hill police (not published before) in which he told no fewer than three lies designed to show that the work- men were out of the wash-house by November 8, and that therefore the body of Mrs. Evans could have been placed there that night.

(8) The untrue statement in the Scott Henderson Supplementary Report. purrs 37 that work in the wash-house finished on November 8, when in fact it finished on November 9. Here Mr Scott Henderson seems to have relied more on the word of Christie than that of Messrs Larter'• manager, who gave the police a complete record of the movements of the workmen within ten days of the discovery of the bodies.

(9) The fact (not pointed out before and ignored by Mr. Scott Henderson) that Christie's evidence at Evans's trial was a mass of lies. What reason had he to lie if he was innocent. ar.d if he was guilty, what other reason than to save his own skin?

I agree with Mr. Butler that witnesses' recollec- tions may get dimmed and confused by the passage of

time, but nearly all the above new information rests. not on recollections, but on written documents, from which it is possible to draw deductions. Why cannot a new inquiry be appointed to look into this matter

afresh, as was done in the case of Oscar Slater'? Would such an inquiry be denied if Evans. unlike Slater, was now alive instead of dead? 1 asked for a new inquiry in my hook, and 1 ask for it again now.---Yours faith-