The Gas Killer: The Story of Maniac John Christie

Winner of the Gold Dagger Award for Best Non-Fiction.

The book has been named Book of the Year by The Times, Sunday Times, Financial Times, and Independent.

John Reginald Christie turned his London apartment into a place where eight people died. His deception led to the execution of an innocent man.

In March 1953, London police found the bodies of three women inside the wall of house No. 10 on Rillington Place. Another body was discovered in the floor, and in the garden—many bones. The resident was the former police officer John Reg Pre Christie. But three years earlier, at the same address, a double murder had already been investigated, and the murderer was executed. So they arrested the wrong person back then?

The story quickly became a sensation. Journalists and writers tried to unravel the character and motives of the killer. Christie presented himself as a new type of murderer: empty, unfeeling, a product of the postwar society. He watched the women and killed them using gas.

What made him kill? How did his lies throw the investigation off track and allow him to remain free? In her book “The Gas Killer,” Kate Summerscale covers this shocking case in detail.