Yorkshire born in April 1898, John Reginald Halliday Christie endured a stern childhood, with little or no visible affection from his parents. Developing chronic hypochondria in a bid for attention, he also ran afoul of police as a juvenile, resulting in beatings at home. Christie left school at fifteen to become a police clerk, but was fired for petty theft. Next, he went to work in his father's carpet factory, but was caught stealing again and banished from home.

Wounded and gassed in World War I, Christie was blind for five months and suffered hysterical loss of his voice spanning three and a half years. Marriage, in 1920, seemed to hold his bad luck at bay for a time, but in 1934 Christie was struck by an automobile, suffering serious head injuries along with other, lesser wounds. Briefly employed at the post office, he spent seven months in jail for stealing money orders. In 1938, Christie and his wife moved into a flat at 10 Rillington Place, in London. A year later, he joined the War Reserve Police, earning a bully's reputation for throwing his weight around and punishing neighbors for minor blackout offenses.

Christie's several homicides were all committed in the flat on Rillington Place, with the early crimes occurring in the midst of wartime. His initial victim was Ruth Fuerst, an Austrian immigrant who called on Christie while his wife was visiting with relatives; he strangled her while having sex and buried her that evening, in his garden. Number two was Muriel Eddy, one of Christie's co-workers at a London radio factory. Stopping by the flat with Christie's wife away, Muriel complained of feeling ill. Her host prescribed a "cure" which consisted of inhaling lethal gas, and Eddy joined Ruth Fuerst in Christie's busy garden.

In late November 1949, a neighbor, illiterate truck driver Timothy Evans, approached police and said, "I would like to give myself up. I have disposed of the body of my wife." Following his directions, police searched the drains below Rillington Place, but in vain. A second visit found the body of Beryl Evans in a shed behind the house, together with her strangled infant daughter, Geraldine. (During the search, Christie stood talking with two detectives in his garden, while a dog rooted around their feet and turned up a skull. Christie shooed the animal away and trod the skull back under, with his visitors none the wiser!)

Upon recovery of the bodies, Evans first confessed to killing both his wife and daughter, later altering his statement to blame Christie. In his new affidavit, the trucker claimed that his wife died during an abortion, performed by Christie, after which Christie offered to arrange for the "unofficial adoption" of baby Geraldine. Detectives and a jury chose to believe Christie, described by prosecutors in court as "this perfectly innocent man." Convicted of strangling his daughter only, Evans was sentenced to death and eventually hanged.

By this time, married life was wearing thin on Christie. On the night of December 14, 1952, he strangled his wife with a stocking and wedged her body under the floorboards, afterward claiming that she had suffered spontaneous convulsions and he "could not bear to see her suffer."

With the nuisance of a live-in spouse removed, Christie's murder schedule escalated. On January 2, 1953, he brought home Rita Nelson, a London prostitute, plying her with liquor before he induced her to sit in a deck chair, covered with a canopy, which he had planted above an open gas pipe. When Nelson fell unconscious, Christie strangled her and raped her corpse before concealing it in a cupboard. The method worked so well that he repeated it with prostitute Kathleen Maloney, on January 12, and Hectorina McLennan, on March 3.

Christie left Rillington Place on March 20, 1953, and the new tenants began renovations four days later. They found his cupboard, hidden by a layer of wallpaper, with three female corpses inside. Police responding to the call soon found his wife, beneath the floor, and unearthed Christie's first two victims in the garden. Searchers found a human femur propping up the fence, out back, and in the flat a tin was found containing pubic hair removed from four different women. (Curiously, the hair matched none of Christie's known victims.)

Arrested on March 31, Christie soon confessed to the series of murders, contending that Beryl Evans traded sex in return for his help in committing suicide. At his trial, in June, the jury rejected Christie's insanity defense , and he was sentenced to die. He mounted the gallows on July 15, 1953.