'The facts of the case were so disturbing': Kate Summerscale on our obsession with true crime

When the author began investigating the case of a London serial killer in the 1940s and 50s, she found chilling echoes with current events - and was forced to confront her own fascination Sometimes, in the three years that I spent researching the murders at 10 Rillington Place, I wondered why I had chosen to immerse myself in such darkmaterial. John Reginald Halliday Christie, an apparently respectable middle-aged office worker, wascharged with murder in 1953, when the remains of six women were ...