60 years on, notorious crime still chills blood.

Byline: Dan O'Neill

IT'S remembered now as one of the most sensational and controversial murder cases in criminal history - and it began 60 years ago this week.

On November 28, 1949, a confused and frightened 25-year-old lorry driver from Merthyr boarded a Cardiff-bound train at Paddington Station. It was a journey thatwould end on the gallows - and help to end capital punishment.

At 10 minutes past three on November 30 Timothy John Evans, illiterate and described as "simple-minded", stepped hesitantly into Merthyr's central police station. He had come, he said, to give himself up.

"I have disposed ofmy wife. I have put her down a drain."

Disposed? Not the sort of word you would expect from an illiterate. We would find out why, later. Evans claimed that the man who shared the house where he and his wife Beryl and their 13-month-old daughter Geraldine lived had performed an abortion on Beryl.

When he got back from work he was told that Beryl had died and that "the baby is being looked after by friends".

Asearch of 10 Rillington Place, a seedy terraced house in London's Notting Hill thatwould in time be labelled "House of Horrors", discovered the bodies of Beryl and Geraldine.

Evans claimed to be unaware of his child's death until he was taken back to London. He signed a confession "because I have nothing left to live for". And when he went on trial, the chief prosecution witness was the man he believed had carried out the illegal operation - John Reginald Halliday Christie.

Christie swore that Evans and his wife had many violent quarrels and it seems now like something out of Gothic fiction to realise that five years earlier this former special policeman had already murdered two women. He walked away from the court with his wife Thelma - who would be his next victim. Yes, it really does sound like fiction.

They hanged Timothy John Evans on March9, 1950, for themurder of his child. He went to the gallows protesting his innocence, his last despairing cry, "Find Christie... he done it."

And that might have been the end, Evans just another killer who got what he deserved.

Until three years later when Beresford Brown, the latest occupant of 10 Rillington Place, decided to do some decorating.

He tore at the wallpaper - and was horrified to see the body of awoman in an alcove behind it. Police searched the house and garden and found the bodies of five other women. And the name Timothy John Evans was back in the headlines to haunt us.

For four of the women found in the house had been killed after Evans was hanged.

Was it possible that twomurderers had occupied the same house, acting independently yet using the samemethod, strangulation? The first doubts about Evans' guilt surfaced.

Christie was instantly the target of Britain's biggest ever manhunt. He was finally found, penniless and starving, wandering the streets, his trial at theOld Bailey beginning on June 22, 1953 (a memorable month, bringing the Coronation, the conquest of Everest and a first Derby winner for the great Gordon Richards).

Christie pleaded insanity, confessing to the murder of Beryl Evans but not her baby. His plea was dismissed, the judge describing his case as "a horrible one, and a horrifying one". He went to the gallows, still denying the murder of TimothyEvans' baby daughter, the crime for whichEvanswas hanged. For the law, his denial was "proof" that Evans had killed Geraldine.

But for most people he was innocent, the Christiemurderswere surely proof of that. He became a rallying point for all opposed to the death penalty. They claimed that when he talked of putting Beryl's body down a drain he was simply parrotingwhat Christie had told himwas the best method of disposal. Furthermore, they said, evidence showed that on Christie's advice he sold his furniture for pounds 40 before taking that train to Cardiff - thus ensuring that he was the logical suspect.

But they had to wait until August 1965 before the Home Secretary ordered an inquiry into the case. It began onNovember 22, two weeks after the Murder (Abolition of the Death Penalty) Bill became law. The hanging of Timothy John Evans was a powerful factor in bringing about that Bill.

In October 1966 the Queen, to quote, "granted a free pardon to Timothy John Evans who was hanged in 1950 for murdering his wife and daughter in the house occupied by the mass murderer John Reginald Halliday Christie".

A High Court Judge had found that Evanswas "probably innocent".Thepardon was unprecedented in the history of British justice.

In 1971, Richard Attenborough played Christie in the film Ten Rillington Place, portraying him as a nondescript, bespectacled, apparently harmless little man, but still managing to evoke the creepily sinister side of a mass murderer.

CAPTION(S):

The hapless Timothy Evans is taken away by police, left, investigating the gruesome events at 10 Rillington Place, centre. Evans would be hanged before Reginald Christie, right, is identified as the real perpetrator of the crimes