People keep saying this film is a perfect example of the miscarraige of justice brought by the death penalty but if Timothy Evans confessed to the murders surely the authorities had no choice but to find him guilty? Could they really be in the wrong if Evans confessed? If he proclaimed his innocence but was still hung that that would be a completely different matter but he said he murdered them.
shareHe did say he murdered them, but at the time he confessed he had just found out that his daughter was dead and he says in court that he didn't have anything to live for after that. The police should have been able to see that he was someone with mental problems - something we'd probably call learning difficulties now - who probably wasn't capable of fully understanding what was going on and that he shouldn't keep changing his story. He had a long history of being a fantasist eg saying his father was an Italian count and it may be that he believed each of the stories he made up.
There have been so many miscarriages of justice in the UK over the years in similar situations - I would hope that nowadays the justice system is much more tuned into this and doesn't always take confessions at face value.
Heard you were swearing. Mind if I join in?
You know I regreted posting that (after realising how stupid it was what I was saying) and was hoping that nobody had read it so I could delete it. Thanks anyway.
shareIt's okay mate - how many times have I done and said something I regretted. In a way, you were right to ask. It shows in the film how confused he was, how many 'untrue' statements he made, and how, right at the end, he named Christie, but no-one took him seriously. Too much to mention here - Ludovic Kennedy picks up on the forensics though. Why wasn't a swab taken of Beryl's lower area for a DNA (Ok not quite DNA in those days, but they were able to determine blood-type/semen samples) Then they could've dug up the garden, but everyone's looking for a quick promotion and when the cops think they've an easy nick...
shareThe post mortem report clearly explains that no semen was found in her "lower area" as you say ( why not describe what you mean).Also Christie on his own admission could not achieve intercourse at that time.Kennedy's book has duped you all because he omits what he wants to omit in order to sell his book
shareyou seem to have a real issue with Kennedy....what has he ommited?
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The film shows pretty well that everything went against Evans: his fantasising, his confessions, changing his story. And he had a motive, thin but tangible.
Christie on the other hand appeared as a very respectable person, who had some brush ups with justice early on, but who went clean for many years.
So in a way this was NOT such a terrible miscarriage of justice. The medical board was a bit light in his conclusions though. Today the judicial system would more heavily try to rely on psychiatric evaluation, which might have saved Evans' skin, and pointed rightly the finger at Christie.
The issue is the death penalty, not the miscarriage of justice.
The miscarriage of justice, terrible or regular as you may argue, becomes terrifying against the irreversibility of the death sentence. Had Evans be simply jailed for murder (say, ten or twenty years), he would have been released a few years later upon discovery of the grim truth.
I found the film interesting in that it presents two suspects, one pretty suspicious looking, one respectable. One may have killed by blowing a fuse during a petty argument about money, the other is a cold blooded psycho using his respectability to lure victims.
Under the law of the time their crimes were equal. They are not. This argument (and the fact that after all a death sentence was perfectly fitting for Christie) is a very current one. See the Fourniret trial in France last spring. What do you do with people like these ? Fourniret was locked up for years on several occasions, and as soon as he was released he started killing again.
But you should never hang people like Evans, especially if there is any shadow of a doubt about their culpability (and there was).
It seems the 1950s yielded several British legal cases that brought the death penalty in for evaluation by cinema. In addition to Christie/Evans, there was Ruth Ellis ("Dance With A Stranger"). She was guilty of murder but the question was whether she deserved the death penalty based on the facts surrounding the crime. The Derek Bentley case ("Let Him Have It") gives us another person with mental challenges who is executed for being the accomplice of the actual murderer, Christopher Craig. Craig was a juvenile and therefore not eligible for execution. Bentley was of age, and therefore hung, even though the jury recommended mercy. It is interesting that the Home Minister during that time was Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, a supporter of capital punishment who was the Deputy British Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials and Attorney General in Churchill's wartime National Government.
shareIn my opinion, Evans was guilty of the murder of his daughter. I am undecided as to whether he killed his wife
shareBeryl was molested after her death. That means, that if Evans was guilty in this murder, there would have had to been two killers who were both necrophile, living under the same roof.
That is highly unlikely.
Geraldine was found with her mother, so they were killed by the same person.
Christie was a very sick man.
On the other hand, I do not believe that Crippen killed his wife, Cora.
It's not really the point, is it? What it shows is that it's possible in this system to kill an innocent man. Therefor the system isn't a good one.
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