Murdered by Christie 67 years ago. Now I want her to have proper burial Brother of victim in heartfelt plea
THE brother of one of serial killer John Christie’s victims wants her body exhumed – so he can be buried with her.
Peter Mylton-Thorley was just a teenager when his pregnant sister Beryl Evans and her infant daughter were murdered by Christie, a crime featured in new TV drama Rillington Place.
Peter later found out Beryl had been interred with year- old Geraldine and six other people in a pauper’s grave plot in a cemetery unsuited to her religion.
Now aged 82, he is pleading for her remains to be reburied properly with him when he dies.
In an exclusive Sunday Mirror interview, Peter, one of the few people still alive who had befriended Christie, said: “It has been 67 years and I haven’t got long left. All I want is to be buried with my sister. It would be wonderful to have that closure.”
Millions of viewers watched in horror last week as the story of Beryl and Geraldine’s deaths in 1949 unfolded in the BBC1 series, starring Tim Roth as unassuminglooking Christie.
Their bodies were found together in a washhouse outside the house. Beryl was wrapped in a tablecloth and tied with string.
Her husband Timothy was wrongly convicted of murdering Geraldine and hanged in 1950 aged 25 – while the killer evaded justice for three more years.
Bespectacled Christie murdered at least eight women, including his wife Ethel, between 1943 and 1953 while living at 10 Rillington Place in Ladbroke Grove, West London. Peter got to know him because his flat was in the same scruffy building where Beryl and Timothy were tenants. Peter, of Arundel, West Sussex, recalled: “If Beryl wasn’t in I would wait for her. Christie would invite me in and sit playing cards. Ethel would give me a cup of tea and a sticky bun.”
Peter had been sent to work in New Zealand when Christie killed Beryl after offering to perform an illegal abortion to save her the £1 fee.
Christie eventually confessed to all his crimes and went to the gallows – leaving behind a legacy which continued long after Rillington Place was demolished. Surprisingly, Beryl’s family were never told about her funeral. It was only in 2003 that Peter and his wife Lea discovered she and Geraldine had been put in a pauper’s grave.
And despite Beryl being Jewish, she was laid to rest among Catholic graves at Gunnersbury Cemetery in Chelsea.
Peter said: “It broke my heart when I found out. Geraldine is buried with her. Beryl is on the top because the police exhumed her twice before.”
He and Lea are now hoping the Archbishop of Westminster will grant their request.
Peter, who was invited by the BBC to watch the drama before it aired, said he was grateful it did not show the moment Beryl died.