Stephanie Howarth grew up as a child with loving parents in Herne Bay, a quaint town on the Kent coast, but when she looked in the mirror she had a sense that she was different from her family.
Her olive skin and dark hair stood out against the pale complexion of her parents and when she turned eight years old her mother and father decided to tell her why – she was adopted.
Such news could rock the foundations of even the closest family but Stephanie continued to live a happy life with her ‘lovely’ adopted parents – cherishing their affection and care.
Yet, she was forever curious about her biological family and despite fighting pangs of guilt, she began a long journey to find the truth – scouring libraries across the UK to discover more about her mother and father.
Little did she know that hidden in her adoption papers was a sinister secret linking her to one of Britain’s most notorious female killers, a celebrity executioner and a street with a dark past.
Styllou Christofi (pictured in 1953) was the last but one woman executed for murder in the UK
Styllou Christofi’s victim Hella Christofi is pictured with her husband Stavros Christofi
Stephanie Howarth (pictured as a young woman), now 69, was put up for adoption – only to later discover a family link to Styllou Christofi, who was executed at Holloway Prison in 1953
Stephanie uncovered a family link to Styllou Christofi, who was executed at north London’s Holloway Prison in 1953 after killing her daughter-in-law Hella.
Stavros Christofi, Stephanie’s father, had three children with Hella before another four in his second marriage. Stephanie was born of an affair in between the two relationships in 1956.
Stephanie told The Crime Desk: ‘I never met my birth father. It was difficult to know what I felt when I found out.
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‘It’s quite a thing to find out you’re adopted – and inevitably there will be a sad story behind it. My discovery had the extra element of hearing about murder and hanging.
‘There was a piece of paper with the names of my birth parents and the occupation and address of my birth father.
‘I went to a library in Manchester and found some notes – one of them was connected to my birth mother and a lot of things fell into place and there were family members to contact.’
She adds: ‘It’s very strange. I’m happy to tell people I’m Styllou’s granddaughter, although I didn’t used to.
‘Some people step back when it comes up – you should see their reactions, they’re shocked.
‘I’ve been told, “I wouldn’t tell anyone about that” – but it’s not something connected with me. I’m not her.’
Researching her family, Stephanie discovered that her Greek-Cypriot grandmother was no stranger to violence and had been found guilty in Cyprus in 1925 for murdering her mother-in-law – having thrust a lighted torch down the victim’s throat.
Christofi is said to have argued frequently with her daughter-in-law after arriving from Cyprus to live with her son and his family in 1953 – 12 years after Stavros had moved to London.
Reports at the time of her trial told of her resenting the fact Stavros and German-born fashion model Hella were bringing up their three children as English.
The murder in July 1954 came as Hella was preparing to take the children on a trip to her native Germany, while Stavros wanted to persuade his mother to return to Cyprus.
Styllou Christofi (pictured) was hanged at Holloway prison in north London in December 1954
Stavros had left for work at London’s Cafe de Paris on the evening of July 29 1954 and the children had been put to bed, when Christofi approached Hella from behind in the kitchen and knocked her unconscious with a blow to her head with a metal pan.
The killer then strangled her victim, removed Hella’s wedding ring and moved the body to the garden where she poured on paraffin and started a fire. A neighbour saw her setting alight to Hella’s body in the family’s garden but inexplicably did not raise an alarm.
Christofi then ran into the street to raise the alarm as the flames flared out of control.
When police were called, the neighbour who had passed by earlier – thinking a mannequin had been on fire – told officers what he saw.
A subsequent search of the home found Hella’s wedding ring in Christofi’s bedroom.
She could provide no explanation about the ring’s whereabouts, while also telling officers questioning her: ‘I wake up, smell burning, go downstairs. Hella burning. Throw water, touch her face. Not move. Run out, get help.’
At her Old Bailey trial starting in October 1954, Christofi’s lawyers argued defence by insanity but this was rejected by a jury who found her guilty of murder and she was hanged at Holloway prison on December 15 that year.
Fingerprint experts are pictured examining the Christofi family’s home in Hampstead
Ruth Ellis (pictured) was the last woman to be hanged for murder in the United Kingdom
Ruth Ellis shot David Blakely dead outside the Magdala pub in South Hill Park, Hampstead
While Stephanie never knew her biological father, she has at least learnt family stories about him – including his brush with Hollywood star Marlene Dietrich when she visited central London’s Café de Paris, while working as a maître d’ in the 1940s and 1950s.
Ms Howarth said: ‘My father found himself taken away in a taxi with Marlene Dietrich.
‘She was pursued by photographers and asked him to fold her coat over her to hide.’
But there were further twist and turns for Stephanie to discover in her family story – this time linking her grandmother to one of Britain’s most infamous female killers, Ruth Ellis.
Coincidentally, both Christofi and Ellis carried out their murders in the 1950s in the very same street – South Hill Park in Hampstead, north London.
Hella’s death was just 11 months before Ellis shot her lover David Blakely outside the Magdala pub in Hampstead, just 100m from Christofi’s home.
South Hill Park has subsequently become the address of celebrities including Bill Oddie, Terry Gilliam, Jonathan Ross, Frank Skinner and David Baddiel – with comic Skinner darkly remarking on his podcast how it looks on the map like the shape of a noose.
Albert Pierrepoint, the hangman who executed both women at Holloway prison, later commented sympathetically on how the Greek-Cypriot woman’s death was downplayed by contrast.
Stavros Christofi, pictured outside his Hampstead home following his wife’s murder in July 1954, had moved to England from Cyprus 13 years earlier
Investigators are seen at the scene in South Park Hill in Hampstead, north London, in July 1954
Ellis was hanged by Pierrepoint on July 13 1955 – seven months after the same fate at the same jail for Christofi, on December 15 1954.
The executioner was asked after Ellis’s death: ‘How did it feel to hang a woman, Mr Pierrepoint?’
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He gave the riposte: ‘Why weren’t you waiting to ask me that question last year, sonny? Wasn’t Mrs Christofi a woman too?’
Pierrepoint, writing in his 1974 biography, Executioner: Pierrepoint, noted how Ellis as a ‘blonde night-club hostess’ captured more intrigue than ‘a grey-haired and bewildered grandmother who spoke no English’.
Speaking of the grandmother she never met, Stephanie expressed some sympathy for the difficulties faced back in those post-war years arriving in Britain.
She said: ‘She came over all alone – probably illiterate. She didn’t speak English – all the way she went through the court system.
‘She came from a tiny community in Cyprus, Greek Orthodox, very strict. Policing came in the families there.
Stavros Christofi, husband of murdered Hella Christofi, is pictured outside his Hampstead home following her death in July 1954
Albert Pierrepoint was the hangman who carried out the executions of both Ruth Ellis and Styllou Christofi at Holloway prison in north London
Ruth Ellis was condemned to death for shooting her violent racing driver boyfriend David Blakely (above) following a trial that lasted less than two days
The Magdala in north London closed in 2016 but reopened in 2021 as a pub and restaurant
The Daily Mail’s report of Ruth Ellis’s execution in July 1955
‘I don’t think people quite realise what happens with hanging, just how absolutely brutal it is.’
Christofi and Ellis were both buried in unmarked graves at Holloway then exhumed in 1971 along with three other female murderers of the 20th century.
These included Edith Thompson, executed in 1923 for the murder of her husband Percy.
Also interred at Holloway then disinterred at the same time were ‘baby farmers’ Amelia Sach and Annie Walters, who had been hanged at the jail in February 1903 after being found guilty of murdering infants in East Finchley, north London.
All were transferred to Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey in 1971 except for Ellis, whose remains were returned to her family.
Thompson was exhumed in 2018 and buried in her family plot beside her mother.
It has been Ellis’s case that drew the most attention, not only in headlines at the time but in subsequent film and TV recreations.
These have included the 1985 movie Dance With A Stranger, starring Miranda Richardson, and last year’s ITV docudrama series A Cruel Love with Lucy Boynton in the leading role.
Now, looking back after her research into the Christofi case, Stephanie added: ‘All I wanted to do was found out why I looked like I did, what the situation was.
‘I’m not sure if I ever really found what I was looking for but I know that my olive skin is inherited from the Greek side of the family.
‘It has been commented on that I have a Greek look about me, particularly in that photograph.
‘I still wonder whether I look like my birth father or even my birth grandmother.’
