John Reginald Halliday Christie was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1898. He grew up in a household largely dominated by his authoritarian and disciplinarian father and highly protective mother and sisters, and grew up to be a sexually dysfunctional, control-obsessed hypochondriac, with an intrinsic hatred of women.
He left school at the age fifteen and joined the military during World War I were he served as a signal man. He was involved in a mustard gas attack that he claimed blinded him temporarily, and caused hysterical muteness that lasted over three years, although some believe that this loss of speech was simply a means to gain attention. His earlier sexual dysfunction and control issues precluded any normal sexual relations, and he started to frequent prostitutes from the age of 19. All these issues did not prevent his marriage in 1920 to Ethel Waddington, although he still regularly visited prostitutes.
Christie, who had become a postman, was sent to prison for three months for stealing postal orders, and two years later he was put on probation for violent behavior. He also left Ethel around this time and moved to London. By the age of twenty-nine he was back in prison on theft charges and he spent nine months incarcerated before moving in with a prostitute, then a further six months inside for assaulting her. He…show more content… He made statements about four of the murders willingly, but had explanations for all. His wife's had been a mercy killing, she had been choking to death anyway when he strangled her; and the three prostitutes had been aggressive and taken advantage of him, driving him to defend himself. His confessions were riddled with lies and evasions. When confronted with the evidence of the garden corpses, he admitted those murders too and, at one point, also admitted to the murder of Beryl Evans, although he described it again as a mercy
