Thanks, Brian,, I'll do that,,

The 2 thick Leeds girls I take it

The head older man of the Michaels family I think. So no excuse of being a teenager and not wanting to know anything before they were born.

To be honest, it's pretty grim. We didn't learn anything at all about Christie's motivation. i suspect that serial killers are only interesting because of their deeds, not because of anything interesting in their psyches. Quite the opposite. They are just an aberration and a blight on the rest of humanity.

Yes but if murder is your hobby of pleasure then you make sure that you are around for the longest amount of time so that you can enjoy yourself again.

Christie's motivation was certainly a sexual/power one, but the puzzle for me is why did he not take greater action not to be discovered? He was obviously quite intelligent and could twist anyone around his finger so his own intelligence must have told him that always doing the deed in his own home without a body disposal plan was never going to work.

A lot of serial killers are mobile and go out to do their deeds. Home killings without a way to remove the bodies never works out.

We will never know how many women he actually killed.

His job as special police constable during the chaos of the war years (and especially The Bliz) means he was in the perfect position to get away with numerous murders in plain sight.

As for his motivation he was simply a sexual psychopath - nothing more and nothing less.

There was no need to look any deeper in the series.

But at the time Christie was active , very few people had access to a car or a van. Getting around meant going by bus or train which is somewhat limiting for a serial killer. I guess the impulse to kill became greater than the logic of long term disposal of the bodies.

The policeman said that the pubic hair in the tin didn't match any of his victims. There were four little bundles of it, so that could be at least another four victims. Although I wonder how they knew it didn't belong to any of the victims when they didn't have DNA testing in those days? On second thoughts it's probably because there was no obvious clump missing from each of the victims. Sorry, just thinking out loud here.

I suppose he could have killed women when he was on duty in the war, and because he couldn't keep the bodies in his own flat he took some hair as a memento of them.

Among serial killers Christie was not alone in thinking through the messy logistics of body disposal, putting Ethel under the floorboards [ not even trying to bury her in the soil ] was a short term solution.

Far from being super intelligent beings as portrayed in cinematic rubbish like Se7en or Copycat, most serial killers are primarily dopey chancers with the advantage of luck and a useless police investigation .

Dennis Neilsen had at one time 3 or 4 bodies cluttering up his top floor bed-sit, resorting to cutting them up and flushing bits down the loo, till the enevitable happened and the bog backed up leading to a horrendous stink [ sorry if you're having your dinner ].

I am sure a psychiatrist could come up with an answer as to why some serial killers keep the bodies nearby. I suspect it is a mixture of the difficult of transporting the bodies away from the premises, a compulsion to keep the bodies close ( power?, sexual satisfaction?), and just because their brains are wired differently.

Then go back to the women's abode after making sure you are not seen with her too much before the event and no cleaning up to do.

Mr Ripper had this idea and made him far harder to catch.

So home visits and dark alleyways are the way to go in the serial killing game.

Trophy keeping is well know with murders. They retain the body part and so still have power over the victim for as long as they want. Even when sex is involved, as with rape cases, it's more to do with having power over the victim than just sexual enjoyment.

You can get sexual release by doing yourself of paying to have someone else do it but that is not what the sexual predator wants or needs. They want the total power over someone and get pleasure from the victim being made to do as the predator wants.

I did wonder how much of this was dramatisation and how much was based on testimony during the trial. For instance, did Ethel's family tell of how she came back home after Christie tried to strangle her? Did they know about that or was it just written for drama?

When he murdered Ethel, it seemed to be just out of the blue. The scenes about Ethel being hit by the new lady upstairs after an argument, to me, portrayed her murder rather fittingly as another expression of Christie's impotence, She expected him to go and "have words" with the neighbours but he obviously was unable to do that. His telling her there would be "no more trouble" was indeed correct, he removed his problem the only way he knew how to. She had caused him embarrassment and he was unable to deal with it "like a man".

I wonder if that came from Beresford Brown or his wife's testimony, or was just written in as a motive for Ethel's murder.

He didn't speak to the neighbours so they wouldn't have known anything about it. The whole thing was probably made up for dramatic effect.

In my mind Ethel should have been in the dock alongside Reg as an accessory.she wasnt the downtrodden victim the writers of this show would have us believe and only wanted to grass on him when she couldnt get her own way.repugnant woman who got what she deserved really.

Especially when you move out and leave the bodies for the next tenant to find

I thought that about a lot of it. For example - the conversation Ethel had with him about not keeping his dirty little secrets any more and letting an innocent man die (another motive for her murder) - that had to be dramatic speculation. Christie would never had admitted to a conversation like that.

Most of the domestic dialogue in the series is pure speculation, it's a drama, the writers are allowed to speculate and invent within the parameters of the known facts.
The row between Christie and his wife seemed realistic and probable, she became a risk, or he grew tired of her, she had to go, the more the merrier.

As for the pubic hair, I find it hard to believe that none of it matches any of his known victims. How much forensic diligence was really expended in the investigation when it was obvious Christie was as guilty as buggery.
Am I thinking right that Beryl's body was exhumed for the Christie investigation ?

Perhaps that's because only the stupid ones get caught?

Ive just finished watching it and I have to say that I preferred the film with Richard Attenborough in it. It was far more atmospheric but it could be that watching it in your own home doesn't give the same feeling. You can go out the room if you find it a bit heavy but you are stuck in your seat in the cinema.

I thought Tim Roth played the part well though.

Oh my word !!

But it did explore a lot about people's attitudes at the time and how easily they were manipulated in a society where there was unquestioning respect for someone like Christie, no one checked a single claim he made about his war record, health or qualifications , either his victims or the barristers in court. It showed the weakness of the death penalty and especially carrying it out within weeks of sentencing. There was no legal or judicial attempt to help Evans at all despite the fact he was obviously of limited intelligence with virtually no education and easily led by both Christie and the police. Nowadays he would be regarded as of at least diminished responsibility even if they thought he was guilty. And how vulnerable prostitutes and lower class women were because no be cared about them, social services were poor and abortion was illegal. The series captured the look, feel and concepts of the times perfectly.

Yes, i'd forgotten how basic the living conditions were too in those days.

Even today I doubt Evans would be anywhere near being treated as having diminished responsibility, OK he couldn't read or write, and had a lowish IQ, but he held down a job, he could drive , and managed to woo and marry a pretty girl.

The fact that Evans couldn't think up possible reason for Christie wanting to murder Beryl [ surely the death knell for Evans, why hadn't his counsel thought up an answer for this very possible line of questioning ???? } means he was worldly innocent and gauche rather than mentally deficient .

He knew right from wrong, and through the annals of crime plenty smart , innocent people have been fooled, coerced or blackmailed into criminality by a believable liar.

I saw a documentary on youtube about Christie where it basically said that when he was a youth he was rejected by girls and was taunted by classmates about his ineptitude with girls. This led to him becoming the narcissistic monster he became. This is not a mitigating circumstance, but it does show how events in our early lives can in some, create personality traits. He was very much a man who wanted affirmation, and not just sexual, but social, you see this in the way he bragged about his war record, and his medical knowledge. He became respected in his community and possibly he got to realise he had some power and authority, which he could easily abuse, especially with young women. He had to kill them after raping their unconciouse bodies, because it was the ultimate high for him, as killing someone is the ultimate in control.