April 8, 1899 - John Christie
Christie's case endures not only for the killings themselves but for the wrongful execution it helped produce — a neighbor hanged for murders Christie had committed, with Christie serving as a witness for the prosecution. Operating out of a single address in Notting Hill over more than a decade, he used his position and apparent respectability to evade suspicion while the body count accumulated. The posthumous pardon of Timothy Evans became a landmark in the campaign against capital punishment in Britain, giving Christie's crimes a legal and political legacy that extended well beyond the acts themselves.
From Wikipedia
John Reginald Halliday Christie (8 April 1899 – 15 July 1953) was an English serial killer and serial rapist active during the 1940s and early 1950s. He murdered at least eight people—including his wife Ethel—by strangling them inside his flat at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London. The bodies of three of his victims were found in a wallpaper-covered kitchen alcove soon after he had moved out of Rillington Place during March 1953. The remains of two more victims were discovered in the garden, and his wife's body was found beneath the floorboards in the front room. Christie was convicted of and hanged for his wife's murder.
Two of Christie's victims were Beryl Evans and her baby daughter Geraldine, who, along with Beryl's husband Timothy Evans, were tenants at 10 Rillington Place during 1948–49. Timothy Evans was charged with both murders, found guilty of the murder of his daughter and hanged in 1950. Christie was a major prosecution witness; when his own crimes were discovered three years later, serious doubts were raised about the integrity of Timothy Evans' conviction.
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