His illiteracy, his exaggerations, and his otherness (as a working-class Welshman) cause his protests of innocence to be entirely dismissed. Over the course of time, he made five varying statements to the police which contained numerous fabrications and contradictions. In 1961, Kennedy published a book about the case and on October 18, 1966 Evans received a royal pardon exonerating him of the murder of Geraldine but not Beryl. I know that the Thorleys were less than thrilled with the final outcome and did not feel as though their story had in all respects been best served by the publishers.

Probert had learned that the furniture man from Broderick’s had been to Rillington Place and found the furniture was gone.The film relies on the same argument advanced by Kennedy that Evans was innocent of the murders and was framed by Christie. Other sources tell us Beryl was far from perfect as a housekeeper–John Newton Chance mistakenly used the unfortunate word “slut,” when I’m sure the word he really wanted was “slattern”–and she was possibly also a poor money manager, though that is questionable.

On November 30, he went to a Merthyr Tydfil police station where he told the police he had killed his wife. The quiet, flat voice Attenborough uses perfectly worms its way into the memory (and presumably has a fan in Reece Shearsmith, who has used a strikingly similar tone in several of his roles). As though such pain were not enough to have borne, he and his family have had also to live with the sensationalised, endlessly trawled over and almost always erroneously depicted events which are so very far from the truth as he alone knew it to be – alone, that is, until now, thanks to this belated but heartfelt and crucially valuable contribution.The book should be read by any and all who have an interest in the subject and by the legions of readers, and viewers, whose perceived knowledge and understanding derive from the mass of previous works, that of Ludovic Kennedy in 1961 chief among them. I can only conclude that Peter thinks it most likely that Evans murdered Beryl when blind drunk, which would point to the late evening of the 7th rather than tea-time on the 8th.