Britain hanged Timothy Evans for killing his baby girl. Three years later, police found the real killer's victims hidden in the same house.
10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London. In 1948, Evans, a 23-year-old Welsh lorry driver who could barely read, moved into the top-floor flat with his pregnant wife, Beryl. Their daughter, Geraldine, was born that fall.
Downstairs lived John Christie, a quiet former wartime police constable.
In 1949, Beryl became pregnant again and decided to end the pregnancy, which was illegal then. According to Evans, Christie offered to help.
On November 30, 1949, Evans walked into a police station in Wales and said his wife was dead. His story kept changing.
Police searched the house. In a small wash house out back, they found Beryl and baby Geraldine. Both had been strangled.
Evans signed a confession. Experts later said it read like a police officer's words, not his.
At trial, he took it back and named Christie. Christie took the stand for the prosecution and denied everything. The jury took 40 minutes.
The jury never heard from two workmen who used that wash house when the bodies were supposedly there. They saw nothing.
On March 9, 1950, Evans was hanged at Pentonville Prison. He was 25.
In 1953, after Christie moved out, a new tenant found a papered-over cupboard in his kitchen. Behind it were three women. Christie's wife was under the floorboards. Two more women were buried in the garden.
Christie confessed to killing Beryl Evans. He was hanged in the same prison.
Britain abolished hanging for murder in 1965, partly because of his case. In 1966, he received a royal pardon.
He told the truth in court, and nobody believed him. The killer was living downstairs.
Disclaimer: A 1966 inquiry found Evans probably did not kill his daughter but may have killed his wife; a 2003 Home Office review found Beryl was most likely killed by Christie. The pardon covered his only conviction, for Geraldine's murder.
Photos: Ben Brooksbank, The Mall, London, 1950 (CC BY-SA 2.0); Stuart Taylor, Bartle Road, formerly Rillington Place, 2018 (CC BY-SA 2.0); Willem van de Poll, London (Nationaal Archief, CC0); Ronnie Macdonald, Statue of Justice, the Old Bailey (CC BY 2.0); via Wikimedia Commons
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