Speaker 1: Okay, round two. Name something that's not boring.
Speaker 2: Laundry, a book club, computer solitaire.
Speaker 1: Huh oh, Sorry, we were looking for Chumba casino to chump.
Speaker 1: That's right, chumbacasino dot com as over one hundred casino
Speaker 1: style games joined today and play for free for your
Speaker 1: chance to redeem some serious prizes. Chump chumbacasino dot com.
Speaker 1: No sis, We're repeated by the lockety plus starts the
Speaker 1: condition of the blue website retails.
Speaker 3: Step into the world of power, loyalty and luck.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.
Speaker 3: With family, Canoli's and spins mean everything.
Speaker 2: Now you want to get mixed up in the family business.
Speaker 4: Introducing the Godfather at champacasino dot com. Test your luck
Speaker 4: in the shadowy world at the Godfather Slough.
Speaker 2: Someday I will call upon you to do a service
Speaker 2: for me.
Speaker 3: Play the Godfather now at champacasino dot com.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Family vdW group.
Speaker 4: No purchase necessary if we were privitted by lossy terms
Speaker 4: and conditions. Eighteen plus Lucky.
Speaker 1: Land Casino asking people what's the weirdest place you've gotten Lucky.
Speaker 2: Lucky in line at the Delhi I guess.
Speaker 3: Ah in my dentist's office more than months.
Speaker 2: Actually, do I have to say? Yes?
Speaker 3: You do?
Speaker 1: In the car before my kid's PTA meeting?
Speaker 2: Really? Yes?
Speaker 1: Excuse me?
Speaker 3: What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Speaker 2: I never win?
Speaker 3: And tell well, there you have it.
Speaker 1: You could get lucky anywhere playing at Lucky landslots dot com.
Speaker 3: Play for free right now?
Speaker 1: Are you feeling lucky?
Speaker 3: Nope, we're not necessary foida.
Speaker 1: We're going my law eighteen plus terms and conditions of
Speaker 1: pluck see say details.
Speaker 2: With Lucky Land Slots, you can get lucky just about anywhere.
Speaker 3: Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today. Has anyone seen
Speaker 3: the bride and broom murri.
Speaker 2: Sorry we're here. We were getting lucky in the limo
Speaker 2: and we lost track of time.
Speaker 3: No Lucky Land casino with cash prizes that add up
Speaker 3: quicker than a guess registered. But in that case, I
Speaker 3: pronounce you lucky.
Speaker 2: Play for free at Lucky landslots dot com.
Speaker 1: Daily bonuses, no purchase necessary board.
Speaker 2: We're prohibited by lack eight team plus terms and conditions
Speaker 2: the flag see website for details.
Speaker 3: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 3: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 3: written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 3: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 3: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 3: host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 4: Good Evening, a real life thriller in the Vein of
Speaker 4: the Devil in the White City, Kate Winkler Dawson's debut
Speaker 4: Death in the Air is a grip being historical narrative
Speaker 4: of a serial killer, an environmental disaster in an iconic
Speaker 4: city struggling to regain its footing. In winter nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 4: London automobiles and thousands of coal burning hearths belched particulate
Speaker 4: matter into the air, but the smog that descended on
Speaker 4: December fifth of nineteen fifty two was different. It was
Speaker 4: a type that held the city hostage for five long days.
Speaker 4: Mass transit ground to a halt, criminals roam the streets,
Speaker 4: and twelve thousand people died that same month. There was
Speaker 4: another killer at large in London, John Reginald Christie, who
Speaker 4: murdered at least six women in a braided narrative that
Speaker 4: draws on extensive interviews, never before published material, and archival research.
Speaker 4: Dawson captivatingly recounts the intersecting stories of these two killers
Speaker 4: and their long standing impact on modern history. The book
Speaker 4: they were featuring this evening is Death in the Air,
Speaker 4: The True Story of a serial killer, the Great London Smog,
Speaker 4: and the Strangling of a City, with my special guest,
Speaker 4: documentary filmmaker, author, and journalist Kate Winkler Dawson. Welcome to
Speaker 4: the program, and thank you very much for agreeing to
Speaker 4: this interview. Kate Winkler Dawson, Thanks Dan, I'm really happy
Speaker 4: to be here. Thank you very much. This is an
Speaker 4: incredible story. Of course, I had not heard anything about
Speaker 4: the London smog, and I'm sure our audience will be
Speaker 4: excited to hear this incredible tale, the intersection of two
Speaker 4: incredible killers, John Reginald Christy and the London Smog. I
Speaker 4: just mentioned that you were a documentary filmmaker. Please tell
Speaker 4: us about your background in filmmaking before we talk about
Speaker 4: a little bit about the origins of this book.
Speaker 2: Sure. So, I've been a journalist for about twenty five
Speaker 2: years or so in television news and television documentaries, and
Speaker 2: of course now in books, and so you know, I
Speaker 2: have a pretty extensive relationship with the press, and so
Speaker 2: with documentary films. I started making those when I was
Speaker 2: in college and throughout my graduate school studies in New York,
Speaker 2: and then when I went to San Francisco. I lived
Speaker 2: two years in San Francisco, and I made a two
Speaker 2: part documentary with another filmmaker for ABC Nightline. And so
Speaker 2: I've sort of when I've worked for different television network,
Speaker 2: so Fox News Channel, I've worked for WCBS television, ABC
Speaker 2: Network Radio. I've always done both long form and short
Speaker 2: form journalism projects, and of course those do include documentaries.
Speaker 2: And so when I was in San Francisco with Fox
Speaker 2: News Channel, I was assigned to work on the Gary
Speaker 2: Condit case, which I'm assuming many people in your audience
Speaker 2: would would remember. Dan, Do you remember the Gary Condit
Speaker 2: case from you know, two thousand and one. So I
Speaker 2: think that was probably the case I've spent the most
Speaker 2: time on. And of course that was a US congressman
Speaker 2: who's was having it was married and having an affair
Speaker 2: with his intern, and then she went missing and he
Speaker 2: fell under suspicion, and so this was, you know, a
Speaker 2: pretty deep dive for me into working on a longer
Speaker 2: project and also just sort of the day to day
Speaker 2: grind of working for a twenty four hour news channel
Speaker 2: on really gathering the visuals and the sources for a
Speaker 2: crime story. And I think that case really got me
Speaker 2: hooked on true crime and true crime tailor, and so
Speaker 2: that sort of extended. I've done, you know, sports documentaries,
Speaker 2: I've done various I did the one I did for
Speaker 2: Nightline was on the rise and fall of UH dot
Speaker 2: Coms in San Francisco. So I have, you know, as
Speaker 2: any news producer would, I've had a bil lot of
Speaker 2: varying experiences, but true crime is certainly what is interested
Speaker 2: me the most, which is why I've pursued this in books.
Speaker 2: So the thing that's interesting, I think, at least about
Speaker 2: being a documentary producer and television producer and then turning
Speaker 2: and pivoting your career to write about these these things
Speaker 2: and books is of course it's so different, And people
Speaker 2: ask me, how do you go from you know, being
Speaker 2: involved with documentaries and writing these very short sentences for
Speaker 2: television broadcasts, so then you know, constructing an entire book
Speaker 2: that's long form. And I think that I found that
Speaker 2: my love of documentaries and my love of visuals and
Speaker 2: my appreciation and understanding of visuals have served me very well,
Speaker 2: particularly with this book, because it's not easy turning the
Speaker 2: smog into a boogeyman. And that's what you have to
Speaker 2: do when you're writing a book. You have to, you know,
Speaker 2: take this this thing. For me, in my case, of course,
Speaker 2: it was pollution and describe it in such a way
Speaker 2: that you know, somebody should be able to close their
Speaker 2: eyes and really smell it and feel it and taste
Speaker 2: it and understand what it feels like to have you know,
Speaker 2: smoke particles burn the inside of your throat, and you know,
Speaker 2: all of the sensory things that come with being caught
Speaker 2: in a five day long smog have to come across
Speaker 2: in the page. And so I think that my work
Speaker 2: with documentaries really helped me in that sense.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, this is incredibly visual, and you have definitely succeeded
Speaker 4: in conveying that or and that incredible presence of the
Speaker 4: smog and devastation. Can you talk about your work on
Speaker 4: the Texas Board for Actual Innocence? And you mentioned in
Speaker 4: early in your book that also that your father was
Speaker 4: a criminal defense attorney. Tell us a little bit about
Speaker 4: this work with the Texas Board for Actual Innocence And
Speaker 4: if your father was an influence at all on how
Speaker 4: much of an influence as a criminal defense attorney.
Speaker 2: Sure, So my father, who has had passed away in
Speaker 2: two thousand and five, my entire life was a criminal
Speaker 2: law professor. He was a criminal defense attorney for a
Speaker 2: short period and then he went into teaching and he
Speaker 2: was a criminal law professor at the University of Texas
Speaker 2: School Law, which is one of the best law schools
Speaker 2: in the country, for thirty seven years. And he started
Speaker 2: several different types of clinics for students to come and
Speaker 2: gain experience sort of this real life experience, and one
Speaker 2: of them before he died, was the what they called
Speaker 2: the Actual Innocence Clinic, and it was it's was run
Speaker 2: under a nonprofit that was separate from the university called
Speaker 2: the Texas Center for Actual Innocence. So my father had
Speaker 2: this sort of dream of really delving into these cases,
Speaker 2: these claims from prisoners, which which you know, the nonprofit
Speaker 2: organization received hundreds and then thousands of letters when it
Speaker 2: really started of claims of actual innocence from prisoners. And
Speaker 2: so my dad and I would talk about it quite
Speaker 2: a lot. And you know, I grew up talking about law.
Speaker 2: I've got a couple of cops in my family. I've
Speaker 2: got a couple of attorneys in my family. And my
Speaker 2: father and I always debated, you know, law, and he
Speaker 2: worked particularly in juvenile justice, so he would work to
Speaker 2: create laws that would help protect privacy for juveniles, but
Speaker 2: also you know, kind of create strict guidelines. And so
Speaker 2: there was always a lot to debate in our house.
Speaker 2: And when I became a journalist, there was even more
Speaker 2: to debate, and so he and I would talk. We
Speaker 2: would talk quite a lot about you know, law and
Speaker 2: order and what's right and what's wrong, and what laws
Speaker 2: are working in one art. And so when he started
Speaker 2: this clinic, I was really intrigued and we talked about
Speaker 2: a lot. But unfortunately, when he started the clinic, he
Speaker 2: was sort of in the downward slide of dying of
Speaker 2: lung cancer, and so he never lived to see an exoneration,
Speaker 2: which is what he really wanted to see the most,
Speaker 2: was the clinic actually and achieve an exoneration, and we
Speaker 2: ended up achieving two, which was wonderful, but it was
Speaker 2: after he died, So before he died, he and I talked,
Speaker 2: and he said, you know, I would like you to
Speaker 2: become involved in the clinic as much as you can.
Speaker 2: And at this point, I was still living in New York.
Speaker 2: I was not moved back to Austin, Texas. I was
Speaker 2: at WCBS in New York. I was teaching full time
Speaker 2: Fordham University, and so I had quite a full life,
Speaker 2: and you know, I was making documentaries. But I said, sure,
Speaker 2: you know, if I end up back in Austin, I'll
Speaker 2: come and help. And then when he died, I came
Speaker 2: back to Austin and I just never left. I wanted
Speaker 2: to build my life here. And I started teaching at
Speaker 2: the University of Texas School of Journalism as an adjunct professor.
Speaker 2: And I spoke to my boss and I said, listen,
Speaker 2: I think that there's a really good collaboration between the
Speaker 2: School of Journalism and the actual nessent clinic at the
Speaker 2: law school. I think that I, as a journalist someone
Speaker 2: who's teaching other young journalists, I think we can join
Speaker 2: the young journalists together with the young law school students
Speaker 2: and we can all teach together. Because I think that
Speaker 2: there are many things that journalists can teach law students
Speaker 2: and lawyers quite frankly, about how to speak with people,
Speaker 2: how to interview people, you know, I think people putting
Speaker 2: people at ease, which sometimes attorneys aren't so great at doing.
Speaker 2: And so we started this collaboration and it was really
Speaker 2: really positive. There was a case already in the works
Speaker 2: when I got there. I didn't have anything to do
Speaker 2: is except that consulted somewhat on the media aspect of it.
Speaker 2: But we had an exoneration of two men a few
Speaker 2: years after my father died, who were in prison for
Speaker 2: twelve years for a murder that they didn't commit, and
Speaker 2: because of our clinic's work, they were released, and so
Speaker 2: that was a really it was very bittersweet, I think
Speaker 2: for me, because my father would have been thrilled and
Speaker 2: this book, this book is very bittersweet for me because
Speaker 2: I think it would have been I think I'm very
Speaker 2: proud of the book the way it is now, but
Speaker 2: for some reason, I feel like it would have had
Speaker 2: even more depth had he been alive, and he and
Speaker 2: I would have really been able to hash things out
Speaker 2: because I know, Dan, you and I talked about this
Speaker 2: briefly offline, that there are a lot of nuances and
Speaker 2: intricacies with this case, and it's a wrongful conviction case
Speaker 2: in the book, and so I think it would have
Speaker 2: been a very live, we probably year long discussion with
Speaker 2: my father had he lived.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, Now let's talk about let's get right to this
Speaker 4: because we have so much to cover and it's such
Speaker 4: a fascinating complex story. So as you do, you set
Speaker 4: this story in nineteen fifty two in the winter in London,
Speaker 4: and London being the most populous city in the world
Speaker 4: at that time, and also you talk about the state
Speaker 4: of energy at that time, how people, what energy sources
Speaker 4: there were, and that's of course was coal, but you
Speaker 4: talk about the specific type of coal, the coal that
Speaker 4: wealthier people might use, in the coal that the everyday
Speaker 4: not so wealthy person used. So tell us a little
Speaker 4: bit about nineteen fifty two in the winter and the
Speaker 4: confluence of events. As you talk about, there had been
Speaker 4: pasted environmental type disasters a fog like this, but this
Speaker 4: was unique. So tell us about what was happening in
Speaker 4: the winter of nineteen fifty two in London.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll give you a quick little around the world
Speaker 2: history of the London and fuel. So London depended and
Speaker 2: the city of London from its sort of origin, and
Speaker 2: that area depended on wood for fuel for course hundreds
Speaker 2: and thousands of years until the city began to expand
Speaker 2: and all the woods were being cut down and it
Speaker 2: became too expensive. So that's the switch to coal. And
Speaker 2: there were pieces of coal that used to wash up
Speaker 2: onto the shore of the sea and England and people
Speaker 2: collect them, and it was this really brown, nasty, soft,
Speaker 2: crumbly coal. And you had to burn four times the
Speaker 2: amount of coal of this brown coal to get the
Speaker 2: warmth from a quarter of the amount of black coal.
Speaker 2: So if we fast forward now to nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 2: you have a city that has experienced hundreds of years
Speaker 2: of smog because it's, as you said before, it's the
Speaker 2: world's most populous city. It is the world's most industrialized
Speaker 2: city at the time. So you have in the area
Speaker 2: forty which is an awful lot for a small city
Speaker 2: like London, forty coal fueled power plants pumping out pollution
Speaker 2: around the clock in a in a very small space
Speaker 2: right of London. Then you have more than eight million
Speaker 2: people burning this cheap coal. So they were they're sort
Speaker 2: of if we're gonna keep it very simple, there were
Speaker 2: two types of coal but the quote unquote clean coal,
Speaker 2: which we know there's no such thing as clean coal,
Speaker 2: but the black coal that has the very high carbon
Speaker 2: content that you can burn and it, you know, puts
Speaker 2: off quite a lot of heat and not as much
Speaker 2: smoke as smoke, there's still a lot of toxins, there's
Speaker 2: still a lot of sulfur dioxide and smoke particles. But
Speaker 2: compared to the other stuff, the cheap stuff you were
Speaker 2: referring to was this brown coal that they nicknamed nutty
Speaker 2: slack in a very low carbon content, high moisture content,
Speaker 2: and you had to burn an awful lot of it,
Speaker 2: and most of it was brown dust with little bits,
Speaker 2: little nuts of coal, and when it burned, it sparked
Speaker 2: and smoked and put off very little heat. So you
Speaker 2: can imagine how much coal of this brown coal you
Speaker 2: had to put onto your fireplace to create warmth a lot.
Speaker 2: So what happened is this perfect storm in nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 2: the first week of nineteen fifty two, it was the
Speaker 2: coldest week of the year that they have experienced, and
Speaker 2: you have more than eight million people stoking a fire
Speaker 2: coal fireplace, and you've got forty power plants churning out
Speaker 2: all sorts of particles and pollution. The city had just
Speaker 2: a few months earlier suspended permanently suspended its electric tram
Speaker 2: system and replaced it with those beautiful red double decker
Speaker 2: buses that people who are not so much except their
Speaker 2: diesel fueled. And so there's coming off of that, and
Speaker 2: so there's this incredible combination of pollutions from all these
Speaker 2: different sources. And here comes on the fifth of December
Speaker 2: a anti cyclone, which is a fancy word for a
Speaker 2: high pressure system that floats over London and stops right
Speaker 2: over the city. And this anti cyclone creates a lid.
Speaker 2: It's a weather current and it creates a lid over
Speaker 2: the city that traps the air from the ground to
Speaker 2: this cloud cover and creates a smog. This is pretty common,
Speaker 2: it's common everywhere. And what happens is when this air
Speaker 2: is trapped, any pollution that is in the air also
Speaker 2: becomes trapped. It's really not allowed outside into the atmosphere.
Speaker 2: All it takes is a little wind, a low pressure
Speaker 2: system to come in and push away this high pressure
Speaker 2: system and open the lid. And that normally would happen.
Speaker 2: It would be you know, a few hours, or it
Speaker 2: would be a day or two at the very most,
Speaker 2: and then the system would go. This one lasted five days,
Speaker 2: no win mil on all of the weather reports that
Speaker 2: I looked at zero wind for five days. So there's
Speaker 2: a litter of the city, no wind, nowhere to go,
Speaker 2: and the most polluted city in the world, with all
Speaker 2: of these people burning more and more cold because it's
Speaker 2: really cold. And so by the end there were thousands
Speaker 2: of people who died and continued to die from December
Speaker 2: of nineteen fifty two all the way until March. And
Speaker 2: that was I think a conservative cutoff for sure. I
Speaker 2: think that probably there were many many meat for years,
Speaker 2: people whose lives were shortened or died, you know, within
Speaker 2: the year. But just to create some sort of a cutoff,
Speaker 2: the scientists in the government had said, let's, you know,
Speaker 2: make it this first week of March. So by the
Speaker 2: end the government had admitted that four thousand people died. However,
Speaker 2: about forty fifty years later, a group of scientist from
Speaker 2: Cornebigie Carnegie Mellon suggested and then confirmed that it was
Speaker 2: an additional eight thousand, So a total of twelve thousand
Speaker 2: people died, which made it four thousand, made it Dan
Speaker 2: the world's deadliest air pollution disaster. But of course twelve
Speaker 2: thousand is a phenomenal number. So it was at a
Speaker 2: crisis that the British government and the British public and
Speaker 2: the British press never recognized as a crisis.
Speaker 4: Incredible. Let's go back to nineteen forty nine to ten
Speaker 4: Rillington Place and John Reginald Christie's and he is a
Speaker 4: place with a garden. So tell us about ten Rillington
Speaker 4: Place and also his neighbors Tim and Beryl. If we
Speaker 4: talk about again we alluded to this incredible wrongful conviction.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about these two, these two couples that hung
Speaker 4: out together next door at ten Willington Place.
Speaker 2: Sure, I almost want your listeners to grab a piece
Speaker 2: of paper and a pencil, because there's a lot of
Speaker 2: information about this case, but it's so incredibly fascinating, So,
Speaker 2: you know, being involved with the actual essence clinic, I
Speaker 2: had heard of this case of Timothy Evans and this
Speaker 2: wrongful conviction and then a wrongful execution. It's one of
Speaker 2: the most well known cases and it's certainly one of
Speaker 2: the most dramatic. So I went into this considering it
Speaker 2: to be an investigation but thinking that, you know, I
Speaker 2: was going to agree with everyone else, and we'll talk
Speaker 2: about what everybody else things happened a little bit later,
Speaker 2: and I don't necessarily agree, And I know, Dan, you
Speaker 2: want to talk a little bit about that. So let's
Speaker 2: start with John Reginald Christy, a quiet and assuming man
Speaker 2: who had a rough go of it early in life,
Speaker 2: had some major embarrassments with women early on, and it created,
Speaker 2: you know, a kind of a bitter, angry, resentful man
Speaker 2: who figured out a way to really really get that
Speaker 2: anger out. And it started really in nineteen forty three
Speaker 2: with him when he met a woman in the middle
Speaker 2: of the war and he was a war reserve policeman
Speaker 2: and looked moderately handsome in a uniform and he carried
Speaker 2: on an affair with her in notting Hill. And at
Speaker 2: the time, notting Hill was one of the worst areas
Speaker 2: of London. It's very posh now, but it was a
Speaker 2: horrible place. And Tim Rillington Place was smack in the
Speaker 2: middle of notting Hill. So there was a lot of prostitution,
Speaker 2: a lot of gambling, a lot of crime, a lot
Speaker 2: of petty theft, a lot of murders, and the police
Speaker 2: in notting Hill particularly were undermanned overpowered much of the time,
Speaker 2: and so John Reginald Christy was not such a bad
Speaker 2: catch as a as a man in that area. He
Speaker 2: wasn't he didn't appear to be sleazy, he didn't appear
Speaker 2: to be violent. He had money he offered to pay
Speaker 2: for drinks, and so he carried on an affair with
Speaker 2: a woman. Then he met named Ruth first and in
Speaker 2: the middle of having relations, he thought that it would
Speaker 2: be fun to strangle her, and that's what he did.
Speaker 2: And I think that that triggered him and he really
Speaker 2: figured out that this was a method of murder that
Speaker 2: he enjoyed, and so he buried her in the backyard
Speaker 2: in forty three, and the next year he met another
Speaker 2: woman named Muriel Edie and the same thing happened, except
Speaker 2: what he becomes very interesting as a serial killer because
Speaker 2: of his method, which I've never heard of this before.
Speaker 2: And I was fascinated with William here and William Burke,
Speaker 2: you know, the famous Brews from Scotland. I'm very interested
Speaker 2: in cases with I think a unique killing style. And
Speaker 2: what Christy did was this next woman in nineteen forty four.
Speaker 2: It's really should be noted because in nineteen forty four
Speaker 2: he meets Muriel Edie and she's a cough, kind of
Speaker 2: an asthmatic cough from the fogs that are happening constantly.
Speaker 2: And he says, listen, I have a certificate in first aid,
Speaker 2: which is very common in the UK to carry, you know,
Speaker 2: for somebody to be certified and in first aid. And
Speaker 2: he says, I can treat you, and I have a
Speaker 2: cure for that, and just come to my house. And
Speaker 2: my wife is away, and his wife, Ethel, would frequently
Speaker 2: visit her sister out of town in Sheffield, and so
Speaker 2: he would have the flat to himself quite a bit,
Speaker 2: and he said, come over, I can help you take
Speaker 2: care of that cough. And so she came over. She
Speaker 2: trusted him, and she came over and he sat her
Speaker 2: down in a chair in the kitchen and he had
Speaker 2: a glass jar that he put kind of like almost
Speaker 2: like a smelling salt, like a balsam friar kind of perfume,
Speaker 2: and that was in, you know, with with this in
Speaker 2: this jar, and it created a scent, a very small,
Speaker 2: strong smelling scent, and he had her breathe at in
Speaker 2: and at the same time he had a tube that
Speaker 2: was connected to his gas caps, so coal gas was
Speaker 2: being pumped into this glass jar while she was breathing
Speaker 2: in you know, this sweet smelling stuff that would have
Speaker 2: that she would have thought was calming. She was also
Speaker 2: bringing me in coal gas, which completely disabled her. And
Speaker 2: you know, he assaulted her and then he strangled her
Speaker 2: with a pair of pantyhose. So he had became sort
Speaker 2: of very good at this m O and I thought
Speaker 2: it was an interesting MO. He didn't do anything for
Speaker 2: several years. So he took both bodies. He buried him
Speaker 2: both in the backyard, and he says and there's no
Speaker 2: evidence that he killed anyone up until nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 2: So in nineteen forty nine, he and his wife are
Speaker 2: living into Rilington place. He is still frequenting prostitutes, which
Speaker 2: is something he always did, and they're on the ground
Speaker 2: floor and a young couple moves in in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 2: The man is named Timothy Evans. He's Welsh, and he
Speaker 2: has a wife named Burl, and they're both you know,
Speaker 2: Burl is nineteen and Timothy is in his early twenties.
Speaker 2: And then they have a little girl who is at
Speaker 2: the time, I think she was about eight months old
Speaker 2: or so, and later on when she made the headlines,
Speaker 2: she was thirteen months old and her name was Geraldine.
Speaker 2: And they moved into the top floor in the third
Speaker 2: floor of a really narrow, windy staircase up Tim Rilington Place,
Speaker 2: and they have a really tumultuous relationship. He drinks a lot,
Speaker 2: he is violent, he's i would say, probably your typical
Speaker 2: abusive husband. He seems like a really good father. Ethel
Speaker 2: and John Christy don't particularly care for him. They like
Speaker 2: Burle and they like the little girl quite a lot.
Speaker 2: And Ethel actually watches Geraldine when Burle goes out to
Speaker 2: do some part time work, but just generally stay out
Speaker 2: of Timothy Evans way. They think he's a ruffian. And
Speaker 2: there are an awful lot of arguments over infidelity. And
Speaker 2: about a year after they moved in, the Burrel and
Speaker 2: Geraldine go missing and nobody knows where they are. And
Speaker 2: at the time they were the only ones. These two
Speaker 2: families are the only ones living in the building. So
Speaker 2: the Christie's, who have no children are on the ground
Speaker 2: floor and tim and Burrel and Geraldine are on the
Speaker 2: top floor, and there's no one in between. There was
Speaker 2: an elderly man who went into the hospital and so
Speaker 2: his flat was empty at the time. So Burrell and
Speaker 2: geraldineo missing Timothy Evans, the husband, goes to his home
Speaker 2: in Wales and spends time with his family there and
Speaker 2: makes up a few lies about where his family is.
Speaker 3: At the time.
Speaker 2: And when his aunt and uncle, who he's staying with,
Speaker 2: receive a letter from Tim's mom saying Tim's a liar.
Speaker 2: I know he's telling you a bunch of things, none
Speaker 2: of it's really true, he walks out the door and
Speaker 2: goes to the police department in Wales and confesses to
Speaker 2: killing his wife and his child. And so it's interesting
Speaker 2: because he says, I killed him and they're in the
Speaker 2: drainage essentially in the drainage pipe at the front of
Speaker 2: our building. Go look right now. So the Welsh police,
Speaker 2: of course, are are in a frantic panic to find
Speaker 2: these two people who they've never heard of, and they
Speaker 2: called a notting Hill police department and notting Hill, you know,
Speaker 2: brings over some men and they try to get this
Speaker 2: drain lid in front of ten Rillington Place up, which
Speaker 2: happens to be right in front of John Christy's window,
Speaker 2: and it will not come up. It's essentially rusted clothes
Speaker 2: and they cannot, for the life of them get it up.
Speaker 2: And it takes three or four men with kind of
Speaker 2: crowbars to get this up finally, and the Welsh police
Speaker 2: officer says, you're full of it. This never happened. You
Speaker 2: didn't do this. They're not down there and you couldn't
Speaker 2: have gotten this lid up if you tried. So what's
Speaker 2: going on? And so Timothy Evans just never has any
Speaker 2: real answers. He confessed, he said I did it, and
Speaker 2: then as a police are frantically looking for this wife
Speaker 2: and his little girl. You know, Timothy Evans kind of
Speaker 2: continues to make up these stories, which is part of
Speaker 2: his character. It's just what he's always done. He's always
Speaker 2: been this sort of bombastic, puff out the chest, get
Speaker 2: in a lot of fights, get drunk. But he loves
Speaker 2: his little girl and he can occasionally be a good
Speaker 2: man and a good friend. So he's an unreliable source.
Speaker 2: And the I think one of the tragedies of this
Speaker 2: case is while they were searching, you know, they talked
Speaker 2: to John Christie, who they don't know is a serial
Speaker 2: killer at the time. He's got two women buried in
Speaker 2: the backyard, and he is he and his wife say, listen,
Speaker 2: this is a really bad guy. He was really mean.
Speaker 2: He's having an affairs. He threatened to kill Burle and
Speaker 2: you know, we wouldn't be surprised if he was involved
Speaker 2: with this, with this somehow, But we don't know where
Speaker 2: Burle and Geraldine are, and so not to get to
Speaker 2: to you know, intricate with the book, I know, if
Speaker 2: we already done that already, but uh, you know, the
Speaker 2: police go searching and they look for Burle and Geraldine,
Speaker 2: and they managed to walk right past a large piece
Speaker 2: of evidence that would connect John Christy to being a
Speaker 2: serial killer, which is when you know, Christy buried these
Speaker 2: two women. They turned into skeletons eventually, and his dog
Speaker 2: dug in the backyard and dug up a bone from
Speaker 2: one of the women. It was a femur bone, and
Speaker 2: he found it and Christy picked it up and strapped
Speaker 2: it to a fence, the part of a sense that
Speaker 2: was falling down. So the police, while looking for two
Speaker 2: murdered people, walked right past the femur bone of a
Speaker 2: murder victim from you know, seven years earlier. And it
Speaker 2: was just a real Keystone cops feeling about this investication.
Speaker 2: Everybody was supposed to look in the wash house where
Speaker 2: the bodies were eventually found, and nobody ended up doing
Speaker 2: it for several days because there was a miscommunication and
Speaker 2: so it became quite quite a mess. And essentially, just
Speaker 2: to kind of get down to the end of it,
Speaker 2: they asked John Christy to testify and be kind of
Speaker 2: a character with witness and to testify against Timothy Evans
Speaker 2: in his murder trial because he can found And then
Speaker 2: he recanted, and then he confessed, and then he recanted,
Speaker 2: and he finally said John Christy is the one who
Speaker 2: did it. My neighbor did it, and no one believed
Speaker 2: him because John Christy was a Respective War Reserve police
Speaker 2: officer and nobody had any reason to doubt him. So
Speaker 2: John Christy testified against Timothy Evans. Timothy Evans was convicted
Speaker 2: and he went to the gallows saying, I didn't do it.
Speaker 2: John Christy did it. I didn't do it, and he
Speaker 2: was hanged and that was the end of that case
Speaker 2: until bodies turned up at tim Millington place three years later,
Speaker 2: and the public and the press put it together very
Speaker 2: quickly that this was the same house where Timothy Evans
Speaker 2: supposedly killed his wife and his little girl and put
Speaker 2: them in the washhouse, and no one believed that two
Speaker 2: killers could live at the same address at the same time.
Speaker 2: So it became a very, very controversial case. And you know,
Speaker 2: one of the great things about this case is that
Speaker 2: it's not just a weirdo serial killer, because, believe me,
Speaker 2: I've read enough about serial killers to be bored by
Speaker 2: many of them, and John Christy as a person is
Speaker 2: not as a serial killer, is not a boring one
Speaker 2: at all. I thought he was really fascinating. But this
Speaker 2: case changed British law. It became a case that was
Speaker 2: one of the major reasons, if not the main reason,
Speaker 2: that the UK abolished the definalty in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 2: is because of this wrongful conviction.
Speaker 4: What we didn't talk about, and maybe just talk about briefly,
Speaker 4: is that this wrongful conviction is profound, and that you
Speaker 4: talk about Timothy Evans giving a confession and then four
Speaker 4: subsequent confessions where he changes his tune, but along the
Speaker 4: way he says some things that could be checked out
Speaker 4: forensically but aren't. So just tell us briefly some of
Speaker 4: the things that he does say that again, the Keystone
Speaker 4: cops conveniently don't explore.
Speaker 2: Well, I think, and you can tell me if I
Speaker 2: don't cover the stuff that you're thinking of. I think
Speaker 2: one of the largest issues with forensics was that there
Speaker 2: was no rape kit done on Burl So, you know,
Speaker 2: initially and and and quite literally in the paperwork and
Speaker 2: the police interviews that I read, you know when when
Speaker 2: later on a judge was and who was in charge
Speaker 2: of an inquiry trying to decide if there was a
Speaker 2: wrongful execution here, you know, asked the police officers, listen,
Speaker 2: you know, why didn't you do a rape kit John
Speaker 2: Christie's emo. We later find out a sexual assault and
Speaker 2: then killing. You know, maybe a rape kit might have
Speaker 2: might have shown something. Now this is of course decades
Speaker 2: before DNA, but it would have least shown, you know
Speaker 2: that that if there was semen there, it would have
Speaker 2: at least shown that there was some type of MO
Speaker 2: connecting Christy. And they didn't do it because the police
Speaker 2: officers said that, you know that the detective told one
Speaker 2: of the police officers and the pathologists, Hey, the husband confessed,
Speaker 2: no worries, save your money, we don't need to do it.
Speaker 2: And so we don't know if there was any kind
Speaker 2: of sexual assault. There wasn't anything consistent with sexual assault.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, there were claims that she had
Speaker 2: tried to have an abortion, so there was some you know,
Speaker 2: injuries that were consistent with that, but could have also
Speaker 2: maybe been consistent with sex assault, but there was no
Speaker 2: evidence one way or the other. So unfortunately, with circumstantial evidence,
Speaker 2: some of it it's sort of, you know, it cancels
Speaker 2: itself out. So, you know, we on the one hand,
Speaker 2: you've got some injuries that could have been attributed to
Speaker 2: an abortion. On the other hand, there were injuries that
Speaker 2: could have been attributed to a sexual assault. And she
Speaker 2: was pregnant at the time with a little boy. So
Speaker 2: you know, all of this creates a big mess. They
Speaker 2: really dropped the ball, and so I think that that
Speaker 2: was part of it. Later on, John Christie confessed to
Speaker 2: killing Burle and Geraldine, which I don't even remotely believe
Speaker 2: his confession. It was so factually ridiculous and inaccurate it
Speaker 2: could have never happened. Number one and number two, his
Speaker 2: attorney asked him to confess to everything under the sun.
Speaker 2: If JFK had happened during that time period, he would
Speaker 2: have confessed to shooting JFK. I mean, honestly, he wanted
Speaker 2: an insanity plead. That's what he wanted. That's the only
Speaker 2: thing that was going to save his life. And his
Speaker 2: attorney actually tried to get him to confess to the
Speaker 2: murder of a little girl when he wasn't even in
Speaker 2: the area at the time, and he said, no, I
Speaker 2: don't kill kids. And I think that that is another
Speaker 2: for me one of there were two major points Stan.
Speaker 2: I think that if you take if you say that
Speaker 2: there's no sexual assault evidence on Burle, that takes away
Speaker 2: ninety percent of Christy's motive, with the exception of killing
Speaker 2: his wife. That was his main emma, right, there was
Speaker 2: a sexual assault any killing, and so if he didn't
Speaker 2: sexually assault her, then to me, there's already doubt. One
Speaker 2: of the things I had was I have a couple
Speaker 2: of friends who are really, really wonderful pathologists, and they
Speaker 2: looked at some of the crime scene photos, including you
Speaker 2: know Burl's photo, and it very clearly the photos very
Speaker 2: clearly show and the pathology's report really clearly says that
Speaker 2: she was punched in the face so hard that her
Speaker 2: lip touched the top of her nose. It's a big punch.
Speaker 2: But here's the key. Twenty minutes before she was killed.
Speaker 2: They estimated twenty minutes, and I thought, okay, well, well,
Speaker 2: ninety fifties pathologists know that. So I sent it to,
Speaker 2: you know, my friends who were a pathologist, and they said, yeah,
Speaker 2: that looks really consistent with the plotting. And so if
Speaker 2: you think logically, do you think that Burl Evans is
Speaker 2: going to let John Crete puncher in the faith, which
Speaker 2: he's never done before to anybody else, puncher in the face,
Speaker 2: and then twenty minutes later strangle her and kill her.
Speaker 2: I mean it just to me, doesn't make any sense
Speaker 2: an abusive husband, I think absolutely, because that's happened before.
Speaker 2: So it's a mess. This case, Stan is a mess.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are so many different pieces of evidence
Speaker 2: that are confusing and contradictory, but I think that's just
Speaker 2: one of the things that makes it so fascinating.
Speaker 4: Were going to use this as an opportunity to stop
Speaker 4: for a second to talk about our sponsor for this program,
Speaker 4: Blue Apron. Blue Apron is the number one fresh ingredient
Speaker 4: and recipe delivery service in the country, and Blue Apron's
Speaker 4: mission is to make incredible home cooking accessible to everyone.
Speaker 4: Lu Apron achieves this by supporting a more sustainable food system,
Speaker 4: setting the highest standards for ingredients, and building a community
Speaker 4: of home chefs. And Lapron established partnerships with over one
Speaker 4: hundred and fifty local farms, fish and ranchers across the
Speaker 4: United States, and as a result, seafood is sourced sustainably. Beef, chicken,
Speaker 4: and pork come from responsibly raised animals. Produced is sourced
Speaker 4: from farms that practice regenerative farming. Well featured upcoming meals
Speaker 4: seared chicken and roasted fall vegetables with caper butter pan sauce.
Speaker 4: I tried myself thirty minute meal shrimp and pesto fetaccini
Speaker 4: with spinach. Absolutely delicious and of course very very easy
Speaker 4: to do, gourmet cooking made by myself. And I tried
Speaker 4: the sweet pepper chicken with buckchoi and rice, and this
Speaker 4: was fantastic. I never would have thought, and I never
Speaker 4: really think of putting all of these things together, these
Speaker 4: unique spices and combinations of foods and flavors. It's just amazing.
Speaker 4: Now you can choose from a variety of new recipes
Speaker 4: each week, or let Blue aprons culinary team surprise you.
Speaker 4: Recipes are not repeated within a year, so you'll never
Speaker 4: get bored. You can customize your recipes each week based
Speaker 4: on your preferences, and Blue Apron has several delivery options
Speaker 4: so you can choose what fits your needs, and there's
Speaker 4: no weekly commitment, so you only get deliveries when you
Speaker 4: want them. Each meal comes with a step by step,
Speaker 4: easy to follow a recipe card and pre portion ingredients
Speaker 4: can be prepared in now thirty minutes or less this
Speaker 4: week's menu and get thirty dollars off thirty dollars off
Speaker 4: your first order with free shipping by going to blue
Speaker 4: Apron dot com slash murder. You will love how good
Speaker 4: it feels and tastes to create incredible home cooked meals
Speaker 4: with Blue Apron. So don't wait, that's Blue Apron dot
Speaker 4: com slash murder. Blue Apron a better way to cook.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: You talked about this incredible case of wrongful conviction, but
Speaker 4: you also spoke about the John Reginald Christy also being
Speaker 4: very much like what Timothy Evans was labeled as as
Speaker 4: a pathological liar. Let's talk about Let's go back, because
Speaker 4: you do to the state of London five days later,
Speaker 4: and what the press, how the press depicted this disaster,
Speaker 4: and how you say that no one was announcing this
Speaker 4: except or no one was concerned, or especially the people
Speaker 4: were concerned, were the undertakers and not the politicians and
Speaker 4: not other people you might have thought of. So tell
Speaker 4: us about what happens after this fog finally lifts in London.
Speaker 2: Okay, so the fog after five days, the fog finally
Speaker 2: lifts and there's blue skies, and London goes back to work.
Speaker 2: Life goes back to normal, relatively speaking. And there aren't
Speaker 2: bodies lying in the streets. There aren't people floating in
Speaker 2: the Thames River. You know, it's not the catastrophe that
Speaker 2: you would think it would be, because the people who
Speaker 2: died were people who were prominently already sick, and elderly
Speaker 2: pensioners who maybe were by themselves. Awful lot of people
Speaker 2: who died in the hospitals and in the homes. But
Speaker 2: there was no centralized computer system for hospitals, so there
Speaker 2: was no real way for doctors to find out how
Speaker 2: many hospitals, how many intakes there were at each hospital.
Speaker 2: There was just no coordination. But the undertakers and the
Speaker 2: morticians and the florists knew something was wrong. And the
Speaker 2: reason was very quickly they started running within weeks, they
Speaker 2: started running out of funeral reefs, and they started running
Speaker 2: out of plots and coffins, and it became a real problem.
Speaker 2: And so those were the people who actually alerted the
Speaker 2: public first. There was nowhere, you know, they started running
Speaker 2: out of areas to bury people.
Speaker 3: And so one of the.
Speaker 2: Characters in my book is a thirteen year old girl
Speaker 2: whose father, you know, is dying of from bonchitis. He
Speaker 2: suffered from architis for years and the fog really caused
Speaker 2: him some problems, and you know, and she talks about
Speaker 2: in the family's history as in with many Lunders, and
Speaker 2: at the time, when somebody died, they kept them in
Speaker 2: their front parlor and they kept the body there for
Speaker 2: sometimes a week to two weeks until plot was available.
Speaker 2: And so I think, you know that this was sort
Speaker 2: of part of living in a city that is literally
Speaker 2: shell shocked from World War Two. I mean, you have
Speaker 2: to think it's the government's bankrupt. They can't afford to
Speaker 2: rebuild many of the buildings that have already been bombed.
Speaker 2: So you know, Rosemary and her friends are playing hide
Speaker 2: and go seek and bombed out buildings with shattered glass
Speaker 2: and you know, metal and broken cold cupboards, and it's
Speaker 2: kind of an incredible scene. And then there's a lot
Speaker 2: of unemployment and like I said before, a lot of violence.
Speaker 2: So Era London is not an easy city to live
Speaker 2: in at the time, and so after the fog, there
Speaker 2: was no public outcry, there was no outcry in parliament.
Speaker 2: And you know, John Reginald Christy, the serial killer, was
Speaker 2: at the time unknown as a serial killer. He was
Speaker 2: just another person caught in a fog. So when the
Speaker 2: December tenth came and the fog had blown away, things
Speaker 2: went relatively back to normal. Where it became concerning, and
Speaker 2: I don't think concerning enough certainly, but where it became
Speaker 2: very concerning was within several weeks the Ministry of Health
Speaker 2: began releasing numbers of how many people died. They had
Speaker 2: compiled all of these numbers from the hospitals they had
Speaker 2: asked for anecdotal evidence, and they started putting together, you know,
Speaker 2: the numbers, and it was something like twelve hundred the
Speaker 2: first week died, fourteen hundred the second week died. So
Speaker 2: it's incredibly large numbers, even for a huge city like London,
Speaker 2: and still it was backpage news. It was incredible because
Speaker 2: you're talking about a city that had just been bombed
Speaker 2: seven years earlier, you know, and was really struggling all ready,
Speaker 2: and I think they just wanted to get on with it.
Speaker 2: So where I became alarmed myself was when I began
Speaker 2: this book. The research really was on this log I
Speaker 2: didn't know anything about John Reginald Christy, I didn't think
Speaker 2: about serial killers. I really was exploring the idea of
Speaker 2: doing this narrative nonfiction book on the Great Smog of
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty two, and I needed characters, and I identified
Speaker 2: one who was a politician for the Labor government named
Speaker 2: Norman Dodds. And I began searching, probably about three or
Speaker 2: four months into this research. I began searching the newspaper archives,
Speaker 2: and so I looked at the New York Times archives
Speaker 2: for nineteen fifty three, so beginning the month after the
Speaker 2: smag happened, and I looked in the London Times, in
Speaker 2: the Evening Standard, at any newspaper essentially that existed in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty two or nineteen fifty three, and I was
Speaker 2: searching for Norman Dodds and his speeches in Parliament. I
Speaker 2: was searching for any article that talked about the fog,
Speaker 2: and I was finding very little, but still some information
Speaker 2: in January fifty three, in February fifty three, and it
Speaker 2: all came to a halt in March of nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: three because John Reginald Christy went on the run and
Speaker 2: the bodies started coming out of the house and the
Speaker 2: police converged and in all this house of cards that
Speaker 2: he had built all fell down, and all of a
Speaker 2: sudden the beast of Rillington Place became known, and the
Speaker 2: public panicked, and the press loved it, of course, and
Speaker 2: it just sucked away any news that could have been
Speaker 2: attributed to the fog, any attention that politicians, that the
Speaker 2: public and the press could have put towards the fog.
Speaker 2: Of this was incredible disaster, and it was virtually ignored,
Speaker 2: and the press was so fixated on and honestly, why
Speaker 2: wouldn't they be, because it's a morbid, weird, scary story.
Speaker 2: And as we know now, I think that sixty five
Speaker 2: years later, we are still as a public and the
Speaker 2: press consumed by strange, weird stories. Beginning time a politician
Speaker 2: tweets something, you know that seems strange or inappropriate or
Speaker 2: you know, attention getting. We are constantly distracted and our
Speaker 2: attentions turned away from subjects that we really need to
Speaker 2: pay attention to. And so Dan, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2: We have a salacious headline grabbing story like John Christy,
Speaker 2: which is newsworthy. I'm not saying it wasn't. Certainly I
Speaker 2: would have picked it up. If the New York Post
Speaker 2: was around at the time, I would have absolutely wanted
Speaker 2: to read about, you know, one body, two body, three
Speaker 2: bodies being pulled out of the House of Horse. On
Speaker 2: the other hand, that left very little space for stories,
Speaker 2: and the fog was a very real story. And you know,
Speaker 2: finally these stories collide in Parliament when they're simultaneously debating
Speaker 2: air pollution alongside the death penalty, because there's now panic
Speaker 2: that that the government has executed the wrong man. So
Speaker 2: these stories kind of have a climax at the same time,
Speaker 2: which is in the summer of nineteen fifty three, and like,
Speaker 2: what's going to happen with both of these Are we
Speaker 2: going to have clean air in the UK? Are we
Speaker 2: going to continue to have the death penalty, did they
Speaker 2: execute the wrong man? And and John Christie while he's
Speaker 2: in prison. It just virtually every sound the man made
Speaker 2: while he was in prison was documented, and he finally
Speaker 2: got the tension he wanted. He had always wanted this
Speaker 2: kind of attention, and he finally got it.
Speaker 4: You chronicle John Christie's entire life, and you talk about,
Speaker 4: we don't have a lot of time to go into this,
Speaker 4: but just to show what he had said, to demonstrate
Speaker 4: what he had said in these confessions, talks about his
Speaker 4: grandfather and just the what he experienced seeing his grandfather dead.
Speaker 4: Could you just go into that, because I think it's
Speaker 4: very demonstrative.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, one of his earliest what he thought
Speaker 2: was a pivotal turning point for him was when his
Speaker 2: grandfather died. He was able to go to the funeral
Speaker 2: and it was an open casket and he, you know,
Speaker 2: went to the viewing and he looked and he stared
Speaker 2: at this body, and you know, I think it was
Speaker 2: almost an erotic experience for him. I think he really
Speaker 2: appreciated he wasn't scared, And in his confession he said,
Speaker 2: I thought I would be, but I wasn't scared of
Speaker 2: a dead body. I was fascinated with it. And when
Speaker 2: he killed Ruth First in nineteen forty three, who was
Speaker 2: his first victim, it was spontaneous. I mean, I certainly
Speaker 2: believe him when he said it wasn't planned. I think
Speaker 2: it was a spontaneous thing that happened, and he realized
Speaker 2: that it was a thrill for him. And then he
Speaker 2: makes these, you know, as any serial killer who wants
Speaker 2: attention would, he makes these very you know, ludicrous, grand
Speaker 2: statements and about you know, the beauty of a corpse
Speaker 2: and that living body could never be as beautiful as
Speaker 2: a corpse, which I think mostly was the was the
Speaker 2: benefit was for the benefit of the public. And also,
Speaker 2: you know, an even more disturbing and even more disturbing
Speaker 2: development that comes out of journalism was checkbook journalism. So
Speaker 2: there was a reporter who paid for John Christie's defense,
Speaker 2: and in exchange, Christy wrote several very extensive confessions. So
Speaker 2: that's where this came from. And of course this is
Speaker 2: the problem you run into you pay for somebody's confession.
Speaker 2: There's the expectation that it's going to be pretty dramatic,
Speaker 2: and Christy really made it dramatic. I don't know how
Speaker 2: reliable it is. I mean it's sort of like HH Holmes,
Speaker 2: how how reliable is HH Holmes or anyone when they confess.
Speaker 2: But but you know, he really didn't have much reason
Speaker 2: to lie about certain details. And I and I think
Speaker 2: that he, you know, like anyone who lives through World
Speaker 2: War One and World War two, saw death, but I
Speaker 2: think he saw it certainly as a type of beauty.
Speaker 2: And it's just when you have a sick mind, it
Speaker 2: just you know, you just never know where that sort
Speaker 2: of fascination, how it's going to manifest itself.
Speaker 4: You talk about too, that the he confesses to all
Speaker 4: kinds of things, and you say, it's hard to discern
Speaker 4: what is truth from fiction in those confessions. But it's
Speaker 4: amazing to hear some of the things that he does say,
Speaker 4: because again it's it seems like always a put down
Speaker 4: of potential victims and other people, and there's always something
Speaker 4: that the killer would not want to admit, but there's
Speaker 4: other things that they seem to be gleeful about in
Speaker 4: admission in a mission. And it's what it seems to
Speaker 4: be characterized by by Christy as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I certainly think he as anybody would when you're
Speaker 2: in the Lime Night. Limelight would pick and choose the
Speaker 2: details that he wanted exposed. So with Ruth first, his
Speaker 2: first victim, he certainly he called it either having relations
Speaker 2: or making love. He had never admitted to rape, and
Speaker 2: he really the last three women, he said individually attacked
Speaker 2: him and forced their way into his house, and certainly
Speaker 2: he had some pretty some pretty incredible claims. He told
Speaker 2: the police officer who's in my book, Lynn Trevillion, that
Speaker 2: his wife was actually an abortionist and that's why the
Speaker 2: women were there, but he refused to say that in
Speaker 2: his confession because he said it would have You know,
Speaker 2: I've done damage to Ethel's reputation. So that is the
Speaker 2: problem with this case. And as an investigator sixty five
Speaker 2: years later, I sure, I'm certain I feel the same
Speaker 2: way that the Metropolitan Police must have in nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: two and before in nineteen forty nine, dealing with both
Speaker 2: of these men who are just habitual, prolific wiars. And
Speaker 2: you know that is the problem is there are of course,
Speaker 2: false confessions are very common, and so it makes it
Speaker 2: even more difficult to figure out who's right and is wrong.
Speaker 2: You have to go on evidence. So okay, great, let's
Speaker 2: see all the circumstantial evidence. And then of course we
Speaker 2: find out that the police didn't do a very good
Speaker 2: job gathering evidence and there were a lot of missteps.
Speaker 2: So then you're left with two executed people. And so
Speaker 2: this is the way that this lays out dam which
Speaker 2: I find is so fascinating. So you've got the majority
Speaker 2: of the public who thought that Timothy Evans was he
Speaker 2: was initially convicted of killing Geraldine. They didn't put him
Speaker 2: on trial for killing his wife because they thought if
Speaker 2: they put her, This prosecutor thought if they put him
Speaker 2: on trial for killing Burle, that perhaps that they the
Speaker 2: defense could turn Burrel into a not very nice woman
Speaker 2: and there would be empathy and he would get off
Speaker 2: scot free. But there's no way he could wiggle around,
Speaker 2: you know, killing his girls, his little girl. So he
Speaker 2: was put on trial for killing Geraldine, and that's what
Speaker 2: he was convicted of. So, you know, in the sixties
Speaker 2: there was a judge who Justice Braben, who was told
Speaker 2: to please go and look at this case again. The
Speaker 2: family insisted. There was a very famous book written in
Speaker 2: later a famous movie called Tim Rillington Place that you know,
Speaker 2: professes that Timothy Evans was innocent, and Justin Spraben looked
Speaker 2: at all the evidence and concluded that he thought John
Speaker 2: Christie killed the little girl, but didn't kill the wife.
Speaker 2: He thought Timothy Evans killed his own wife and the
Speaker 2: two worked together. Does that make any sense? What's I mean?
Speaker 2: That made no sense to me. But what happened is
Speaker 2: because he said, because the judge Braved said, listen, I
Speaker 2: don't think that he actually killed a little girl. Timothy
Speaker 2: Evans was exonerated from murdering Geraldine, not from murdering his wife.
Speaker 2: But he was exonerated officially because he was never convicted
Speaker 2: of murdering his wife, only of the little girl. So
Speaker 2: he was his body was exhumed and he was buried.
Speaker 2: He was exhumed from a prison graveyard and he was
Speaker 2: buried in a Catholic graveyard. And you know, then about
Speaker 2: ten years ago his half sister filed another claim and
Speaker 2: there was a panel in the UK finally exonerated Evans
Speaker 2: of all charges. And I believe they were given some
Speaker 2: sort of monetary stipend, you know, for wrongful execution. But
Speaker 2: my goodness, there was just so many different opinions and
Speaker 2: I just think it's presumptuous to know anything. I think
Speaker 2: it's a fifty to fifty shot. I have no idea.
Speaker 2: I think most of the evidence points towards Timothy Evans.
Speaker 2: But I think that there's just no It's incredible that
Speaker 2: somebody could make a declarative statement that one of these
Speaker 2: men did it while the other one didn't.
Speaker 4: You know, why do you think? Just your theory on
Speaker 4: why he was so anxious to confess if he wasn't.
Speaker 2: Guilty, do you mean Timothy Evans?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 2: Or or yeah? That's that's the big that is the problem.
Speaker 2: That's the sticking point for me. Why did he walk
Speaker 2: into that Welsh police station and confess? So if he
Speaker 2: did it, Okay, I understand he walks in, he confesses,
Speaker 2: then why not tell the police the correct location of
Speaker 2: the bodies? He didn't. He told him the wrong location.
Speaker 2: And if he didn't do it, what motivates him to
Speaker 2: go and confess to begin with? And that's what's confusing.
Speaker 2: So I don't know. On the other hand, I completely
Speaker 2: understand why John Christy might have confessed to killing Timothy Evans.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sorry to confessing to Burrell and Geraldine's
Speaker 2: murder because he was trying to get in insanity plea,
Speaker 2: and he never mentioned before his attorney suggested doing this.
Speaker 2: He never mentioned their murders, he never mentioned being involved.
Speaker 2: So I'm apt to believe John Christy over Timothy Evans.
Speaker 2: I also just cannot It's hard to picture either one
Speaker 2: of them killing a little girl. But there's just no
Speaker 2: motivation for John Christy to kill Geraldine. I just can't.
Speaker 2: I can't see. I could see Timothy Evans panicking and
Speaker 2: killing his own child, but I can't see John Christy
Speaker 2: doing it. Think there were churches they could have dropped
Speaker 2: her off and she would have been perfectly safe. So
Speaker 2: I I just think there's so many big question marks
Speaker 2: in the case. And again it's confusing. So Burrell and Geraldine,
Speaker 2: here's one of the more confusing points. Burrell and Geraldine
Speaker 2: were found in a wash house in the back of
Speaker 2: the garden. This is a wash house where John Christy
Speaker 2: kept some of his victims. The key is he kept
Speaker 2: them in there for very very brief periods of time
Speaker 2: and then he buried him and and Geraldine were kept
Speaker 2: in there for several weeks until they were finally until
Speaker 2: they were finally discovered. And that's not John Christie's m
Speaker 2: he would have never done that. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: what are the chances of two killers hiding bodies in
Speaker 2: the exact same place? And then on the other other hand, well,
Speaker 2: how many places are you going to really hide a body?
Speaker 2: I mean, this wash house seems like one of the
Speaker 2: better options. So you can see Dan mike conundrum.
Speaker 4: When investigating this case.
Speaker 2: It was very difficult.
Speaker 4: What did John Christy have to say about the disappearance
Speaker 4: of his wife Ethel?
Speaker 2: That was so creepy. So you know, he killed Ethel
Speaker 2: a few days after the fog lifted, and he had
Speaker 2: he went out into the middle as a fog to resign.
Speaker 2: I mean, I certainly think he was planning. He had
Speaker 2: visited prostitutes a couple of days before the fog, and
Speaker 2: then he went out into the middle of the fog
Speaker 2: to resign from his job. He was there was a
Speaker 2: master plan happening in his head. I think he was
Speaker 2: done with being married and he was done with Ethel.
Speaker 2: And so when he finally killed her, and he put
Speaker 2: her under the forwards of the front parlor and continued
Speaker 2: to live in the flat. She did not have very
Speaker 2: many friends, and she had one really good friend who
Speaker 2: was the neighbor next door, and he kept making excuses
Speaker 2: to various people, and this neighbor was really the only
Speaker 2: one who kind of pressed him because she would see
Speaker 2: Ethel frequently, and then all of a sudden, Ethel's disappeared.
Speaker 2: And then of course he's doing really odd things like
Speaker 2: you know, putting down lie that that will cover up
Speaker 2: the smell, and I mean, you know, I mean, he's
Speaker 2: a strange man to begin with. So he said that
Speaker 2: she was traveling back to go see her sister, and
Speaker 2: then people would her sister. Ethel's sister would send Christmas
Speaker 2: cards and Christmas gifts, and Christy would write notes saying
Speaker 2: that Ethel had arthritis in her hands. He would write
Speaker 2: notes on you know, Ethel's behalf quote unquote and send
Speaker 2: him back. So he was really he was working on
Speaker 2: a cover up, which to me, of course means sociopath
Speaker 2: and that psychopath because he was he was actively covering
Speaker 2: up his cards. He knew the difference between right and law.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. You talk about the impact of the deaths from
Speaker 4: the Fog again, it's it's overshadowed by the news of
Speaker 4: John Christy and the tales in the newspapers. And you
Speaker 4: say that was a thriving business at that time and
Speaker 4: there was a big audience for it. You have some
Speaker 4: things to say about in conclusion to what you again
Speaker 4: parallels to what's happening today, or maybe you can tell
Speaker 4: us what your some of your ideas are about in
Speaker 4: conclusion what this has basically got you to conclude about
Speaker 4: again the environmental disaster, and it's again I guess ability
Speaker 4: to happen ever again, well, I mean.
Speaker 2: I think it would be Listen of the state of
Speaker 2: China is getting better, in India's is slowly improving. But
Speaker 2: I certainly think that there's always a tipping point in
Speaker 2: countries like that that are so industrialized and overpopulated that
Speaker 2: you know, with the with the wrong weather pattern, certainly
Speaker 2: like this, something like this could happen again. In London
Speaker 2: today is a horribly polluted city. I mean, they regularly
Speaker 2: break their pollution their allotment for pollution levels, and you know,
Speaker 2: and certainly in our country there's always talk about what's
Speaker 2: happening now with the EPA, who might be taking over
Speaker 2: the e p A, shutting down coal plants and shutting
Speaker 2: down cold jobs. And so I certainly think that there
Speaker 2: are themes from the book that resonate wrongful conviction is
Speaker 2: a very strong theme holding a government accountable for you know,
Speaker 2: wrongful doings and for promoting a fuel that that they
Speaker 2: know kills. I think that that is something that certainly,
Speaker 2: I think people contemporary readers can understand that. Certainly, for me,
Speaker 2: the biggest red flag is you have two very different
Speaker 2: killers in this book, and that happens, you know, alongside
Speaker 2: the same time period. So you've got, you know, a
Speaker 2: fog that kids kill twelve thousand people, and then you
Speaker 2: have a serial killer who killed six maybe eight, And
Speaker 2: why was one leading the headlines and the other wasn't?
Speaker 2: Why are six to eight people in their lives more
Speaker 2: interesting than the lives of twelve thousand people At the time,
Speaker 2: it was four thousand people, that was the no number.
Speaker 2: That's an extraordinary amount of people to have died in
Speaker 2: just a few months from one air pollution disaster. And
Speaker 2: so that really, what I think is so interesting is
Speaker 2: what that says about society and what we value just
Speaker 2: you know, like, look, now, it's the types of stories
Speaker 2: that get the most hits on the internet. It's certainly
Speaker 2: not about air pollution. I don't even know if it's
Speaker 2: about police brutality, about crime, about education. I mean, certainly,
Speaker 2: you know, we are all aware of the types of
Speaker 2: stories that get more attention, and it's very frustrating because
Speaker 2: it's just it's a repetition of what's happened in the past.
Speaker 2: Is these sort of you know, really relacious, juicy, needy
Speaker 2: stories that just bury the things that the subjects that
Speaker 2: really really matter to us, slight, clean air, clean water,
Speaker 2: and and and our health. And so, you know, I
Speaker 2: want that to be a takeaway that we do need
Speaker 2: to demand from the press, and and and as part
Speaker 2: of the you know, members of the public, we have
Speaker 2: to demand that that we want to read the whole
Speaker 2: array of stories that affect our lives, not just the
Speaker 2: ones that are going to get the most hits on
Speaker 2: the internet.
Speaker 4: Would you say that the Great London Smog, though was
Speaker 4: not was a cover up of sorts rather than just
Speaker 4: a uh the emphasis was on John Christy, then people
Speaker 4: really didn't know the actual details was this. Would you
Speaker 4: go as far as to say that this was a
Speaker 4: cover up of this disaster?
Speaker 2: I think so. So one of the things that I
Speaker 2: discovered and was that you know, the governments revealed these
Speaker 2: numbers for the amount of people dead, and so the
Speaker 2: numbers were from December fifth until the end of December,
Speaker 2: four thousand people died. And the government initially had made
Speaker 2: the cutoff for the amount of people who died to
Speaker 2: be in March, which included a total of twelve thousand people.
Speaker 2: Between December fifth and about the first week of March,
Speaker 2: twelve thousand people died, so that was included in the
Speaker 2: interim report of a fairly powerful committee that eventually the
Speaker 2: committee recommended to some pretty sweeping, big sweeping changes of
Speaker 2: how coal was utilized in London. Later on, but the
Speaker 2: government went and demanded that the Ministry of Statistics changed
Speaker 2: that number and roll it back so that the official
Speaker 2: cutoff time was December thirty first, not March, but December,
Speaker 2: leaving four thousand being the official total of fog related deaths.
Speaker 2: And then this chart that had once said twelve thousand
Speaker 2: dead from the smog, it said four thousand dead. And
Speaker 2: then the last portion of the chart was eight thousand
Speaker 2: attributed to a influenza epidemic, and that was an epidemic
Speaker 2: that never happened. It was fabricated by the British government. Absolutely,
Speaker 2: there's no mention of it. There's no you know, hospital
Speaker 2: records of it. The World Health Organization never talked about it.
Speaker 2: Eight thousand dead you know, from the flu in London
Speaker 2: would have made huge news and instead this little chart
Speaker 2: got buried and so the number has been left at
Speaker 2: four thousand for you know, sixty something years. So it's
Speaker 2: pretty incredible that we are now, just in the past
Speaker 2: decade finding out the real toll and how many people
Speaker 2: have still remain sick. And you know, there have been
Speaker 2: studies based completely on the Great Smog of nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: two women who were pregnant at the time, little children
Speaker 2: at the time, and charted how their health has developed
Speaker 2: since this moog, and the news was not good as
Speaker 2: you can imagine, And it's just an extreme example of
Speaker 2: what could happen, you know, when you have a government
Speaker 2: that's not willing to take responsibility, you know, for the
Speaker 2: health of its citizens.
Speaker 4: Absolutely incredible, very incredible tale. I want to thank you
Speaker 4: very much Kate Winkler Dahnson for coming on and talking
Speaker 4: about death in the Air, the true story of a
Speaker 4: serial killer, the Great London Smog, and the strangling of
Speaker 4: the city. It's been fascinating. Do you have a Facebook
Speaker 4: page for the book and if people might want to
Speaker 4: give a website, people might want to contact you or
Speaker 4: find out more about your work.
Speaker 2: Sure, it's so. My website is Kate Winkler Dawson. So
Speaker 2: Kate T W I N K L E R Dawson
Speaker 2: dot com. You can just go there and it shows
Speaker 2: you all the different ways you can get the book
Speaker 2: and you read more about it. I have a book
Speaker 2: trailer there that you can look at, which is like
Speaker 2: a movie trailer. It's a book trailer, and some other interviews.
Speaker 2: And then yes, on Facebook, you can just look me
Speaker 2: up my name Kate Winkler Dawson, and I have an
Speaker 2: author's page and you can keep you up to date
Speaker 2: about what's happening there.
Speaker 4: Well, that's great. Thank you very much, Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 4: You have a great evening. Thank you very much for
Speaker 4: this interview. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you, Dan, good night, good night, thank you.