A Fatal Pickup (ePub)

What happened at 10 Rillington Place was so shocking and gruesome that even today everyone over a certain age still remembers the case with a shudder. In 1950, Timothy Evans was hanged for the violent murder of his baby daughter; he was also assumed to have murdered his wife. Then, less than three years later, another tenant, John Christie, was found to have killed at least six women, hiding their bodies in the garden, under floorboards and in a concealed kitchen alcove. Christie followed Evans to the gallows.

It seemed unlikely that two murderers were living at 10 Rillington Place, and the evidence that emerged in the Christie case eventually led to Evans receiving a pardon. But there was also circumstantial evidence that Evans had indeed killed his wife and child. Crime student Edna Gammon firmly believes that Evans was guilty. In A House To Remember, she explains why.

Edna Gammon was born in Liverpool, the youngest of six children of a dock labourer; her father was killed in an accident on the docks in 1930 when she was a little girl. From the age of nine she attended Notre Dame Convent, where the nuns praised her for her English compositions and told her her skill with words would come in useful one day.

After taking an office job with Woolworths, Edna worked for many years as a secretary. She and her mother shared a fascination for true crime stories and followed each case with great interest. The two women studied every detail of the 10 Rillington Place murders at the time and kept newspaper cuttings from the period.

Her mother’s idea of writing a book about the case never saw fruition, but after her death Edna decided to write her own book on the subject, in her mother’s memory. She says her mother was always in her thoughts while she was working on the book.