To the English America is an extreme, enormous, egregious fantasia of Croesus we cannot help but begrudgingly admire. The American Dream; it is a veritable fairytale Manichean. For all that shining light there be darkness, and boy do you have it; of course it is the guns and quotidian carnage, but darker still is your profligacy of serial killers – and they really do shake us. We strive to believe that all those lurid maniacs are the figments of novels, movies, sensational news, that they are alien to our shores, and in believing so we are sanctimonious. If there is endemic condition that breeds such monsters, we might try to identify with it via the tale of the Donner Party: a cognate tribe, exuberant, enchanted by some spirit of that land - their project ending in grim and grizzly fashion, in madness. When we learn of there that a middle class teen has turned rampaging-gunman, slaughtered his classmates, something jars the more, for it is the fabled land of opportunity. Now turning to our seemingly staid land, of which a good few of you will hail; it has its own monsters that have proven to be, if the far rarer, as disturbing as many America has spawned. Here is one offering then for you, whose interest in the atrocious specimens of our Western creed, has neglected to consider of our neck of the woods. Welcome to the sordid world of Frederick and Rosemary West.
The locus in question is the small provincial city Gloucester, of that shire, South West of England, situated on the River Severn which empties into the abominably tidal Bristol Channel (a truly murderous body of water – second only in draught to Bay of Fundy). Gloucester is an unremarkable place now; less so than before the crimes, and much less so than when a minor hub of the maritime. It was far less important than the nearby downstream city port of Bristol which was truly significant, of colonial venture and trade that fed the nation with colossal plunder, of raw commodities, the delectables for the bourgeoisie. Those sailors’ romantic depiction, be them of the proud Royal Navy, the more ambiguously heroic picaresque, is belied by their recorded nature as a variously brutish ilk, largely unaccountable for their misdeeds, which one can imagine were at times perfectly awful. Their ancestors and their spirit reside here still, though this is a much diminished echo, of no discernable trace to the outsider; but one can wonder what legacy persists.
Gloucestershire and the surrounds conjure an image of indecorous and parochial strangeness amongst the more worldly cohabitants, much as does many rural parts of the Nation. The bucolic locals are a source of some pejorative amusement somewhat alike the Appalachian hillbillies, a meme that needs no further elaboration here. There certainly were and probably still are, though to a much lesser degree now, pockets of society hereabouts that would alarm the conscientious general public. But that remote rural communities should engage the more in vile and unnatural practises should be contrary to the paradigm of commonweal, indeed, it is in urban areas also that we make appalling finds. There is something though of remote communities that betokens a certain depravity, of the ignorant, superstitious ‘heathen’ mentality, that fits nicely into the prejudices of the urbanites, who like to indulge in idealistic priggishness. (There are plenty of films that oblige and promote these perceptions – vis Straw Dogs.)
It is a foul, cool, drizzly, summer’s day in Gloucester 1972 (of the British climate, the WW2 GIs were informed it was something like Boston – but St Johns Nova Scotia is more the case). Britain back then was a sorry place, beset by social unrest, blighted by hideous concrete edifices like the fruitbodies of cultural decay, as emblems of the postwar quasi-socialism, and a form of poverty quite alien now. The combination of such dismal architecture and dismal climate was complimentary - truly depressing. But there was much music and much needed hedonistic escape; a grimy, drug-fuelled, sexually dissipated culture, with incipient feminism yapping at its heels – a time when rape wasn’t quite rape at all, not to the authorities, nor the perpetrators, not even to many of the victims (perhaps not so in hindsight though?).
The young runaway girl walks a hostile road in this glum, unpropitious refuge city. She is a callow, nervous seventeen year-old, a beacon of her poverty and family dysfunction (sexual attentions from home, familiars). Fred and Rose are approaching in a transit van, on some errand perhaps, but they generally cruise with sinister interest. She is like a lure to a rapacious fish - exactly their kind of prey.
Now on the other side of the road, walking towards them, Fred spots her first, alerts young Rose and both are enrapt. Their pulses race; they close in with baited breath. As they slow down, they complete some cursory checks; but there is now no risk here really, no one else present to be remotely concerned, not of a down and out, stranger youth, who looks like she may be that easily despised creature, a prostitute. Committed now, they turn in the next available side street. Rose is the face the girl will see first, as is their M.O.
They pull over and a concerned looking Rose asks the girl if she is lost, if she wants a lift somewhere? The girl is without money, without wherewithal. She is in a quandary: guilty of her circumstance she feels reflexively obliging; but she is wary of these people (the woman looks about her age, and motherly; but the man, her instincts suggest is of a familiar and odious sort, after her sexual treasure). Her judgement is an alloy of a suspicion of strangers and a naive sense of perceived manners, that she is not one to refuse kindness. Her needs must and in she gets - she is a Darwinian fail.
Now they have her they enquire more about her circumstances. Rose is leading this, Fred weighing in with his reticent blandishments, keeping his appalling ambitions hidden. Here is a nice, pretty girl without a friend in the world, in a strange place, and surely she needs some friends, and here they are. She can see the man’s face in the mirror; he looks odd (simian is the term, unknown to her), dirty, and he smells bad. Again, she thinks of like people and what they are inclined to desire. It is an indignity to have to rely on such people, but then she is no picture of hygiene herself or decorousness.
Fred and Rose are well honed in this act. Their finale is offering such a prospect bed and board and a ‘job’, and here is a little money upfront. Though she now has instinctive pangs of apprehension of this arrangement there is no turning back; she is resigned to taking her chances with these strange people, perhaps dimly aware of her dire fate as so many a truly fallen women is, as a cornered prey animal is resigned to die.
The girl is subjected to an unimaginably awful ordeal of abject sadistic abuse. Her skeleton is discovered only when the full horror of the West’s reign of depraved slaughter is revealed. And that was the pattern which it turned out to be for a number of girls and young women.
Frederick Walter Stephen West (29 September 1941 – 1 January 1995) came from a poor farming family, the second of six children, to Walter Stephen West and Daisy Hannah Hill, the village of Much Marcle, Herefordshire (probably the only noteworthy inhabitants of there – one doubts there is a plaque).
It was here - the demonic antithesis of Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm - that was the hearth of his deviant instruction, courtesy of his crudely perverted father. His learning was of bestiality, lascivious wile, that these ‘ways’ were quite normal, with the fatherly advice by way of qualification: ‘Do what you want, as long as you don’t get caught’. It was to become Fred’s brutal credo.
It is to be regarded that the family was incestuous; accounts of Fred and his mother are well known, and so it is reasonable to believe that all manner of family conjugation ensued - you will have to read around, imagine the repulsive, to satisfy further interest.
Fred left school at 15 and became a farm labourer. He is known to have suffered a traumatic injury subsequent to a motorcycle crash aged 17, and this is cited as having altered his mentality to a degree, but any theory that this was a formative event is highly speculative. He again suffered head trauma from a fall - perhaps after two such injuries he was less the master of his inclinations.
His life became one of petty crime; simple, pathetic thievery of the errant Gypsy or traveller, resulting in little more than the obligatory court summonses and fines. That was his rap until, in 1961, he was charged with impregnating a 13 year old, convicted of child molestation; spared a custodial sentence on account of his purported brain injuries. This then was the first known chapter, or baby step, in his terrible career.
Fred abandoned the farmyard life; he sought to escape the daily tedium and was perhaps tired of – even disgusted by – the filially sexual environment, and so off he went questing after new pastures, and limitless they must have seemed to a peregrinating Fred. He needn’t have gone too far – and may have committed gross indecencies wherever opportune - but at one point ended up in Lanarkshire, Scotland, pursuing a teenaged prostitute with whom he established a clumsy relationship. He was now 21.
Catherine ‘Rena’ Costello was pregnant by another, an absent Pakistani. The child Charmaine was claimed by them to be adopted, a claim that may have been framed to assuage racial prejudices of the era, and general unwanted attentions. Fred worked then as an Ice Cream van driver – with great access to many a young girl - and in this capacity managed to run over and kill a four year old boy; although, this was ruled an accident (and why shouldn’t a serial killer cause such accidents!).
Fred and Catherine married in November 1962, Costello pregnant with his child Anne Marie. Then another woman, Isa McNeill, a friend of Costello’s, likely another prostitute, was recruited into the family, to care for the two children.
The sprawling family moved back to Fred’s purlieu, to a caravan park in Bishop’s Cleave, Gloucestershire; in part because Fred feared retribution for his killing of the child. Here, a new face, Anne McFall, another of Costello’s friends - another prostitute! - came into the homestead. Fred worked all manner of low paid odd jobs and was rewarded each afternoon with a trio of prostitutes. Perhaps this was utopia for this base individual, but for them it was most likely a degenerate menagerie with Fred as keeper, importunate, if not rapine. The mother and wife Costello, and McNeill moved back to Scotland (while McFall remained, as Fred’s lover), which suggests things had gotten seriously out of control.
Costello came back from time to time to visit the children, but left for good. Around this time, McFall had fallen pregnant and she disappeared in August 1967 (her remains were discovered in 1994; she had been dismembered).
Rosemary (29 November 1953 –), was born in Barnstaple, Devon, to William Andrew, and Daisy Gwendoline Letts (after a difficult pregnancy) during which Gwendoline suffered from depression and was given ECT; and some have argued that this may have caused prenatal injury to her daughter, and of course, that this may have been a factor in Rose’s terrible outcome, etc.
Rose grew up in a deeply unstable family environment; her father, a paranoid schizophrenic, was prone to violence and, it is accepted, acts of sexual abuse. She was a moody teenager of low intelligence, who performed poorly at school, was highly sexed, promiscuous. Her provenance was as dreadful as Fred’s and they were a fair match. (It was only a matter of time before they found each other and their deranged love blossomed.)
Growing up with a paranoid schizophrenic must be deeply unsettling for a child, who must rely on someone without clear and consistent sanity, and how it materialised is purely conjecture; but there is something about radios and other devices that communicate sounds and images that is often found to be a common theme with schizophrenics, and it has been recorded that William Letts worked in the realm of communications in the forces (sources are very vague about this). It is an aside, but any reader must remember how, as an infant, how confusing a television set was, a radio also; combined with a parent who felt likewise must have been hopelessly disturbing.
Rose’s parents separated when she was still a teenager, and she lived with her mother until, aged 16, she moved in with her father close to Fred’s abode, in Bishop's Cleave.
It was around November 1968 that Rose met Fred while waitressing in a local café, him reportedly gazing upon her through the window, with the desired effect, that she had recognised her paramour. Her father disapproved of the relationship - as many fathers do, when their daughters are to be taken from their possession - and threatened to call social services, which would have had no legal basis to get involved and no interest whatsoever. William even came and threatened the West family directly; and that must have been quite a spectacle: an enraged, pervert schizophrenic, railing at a family of similarly despicable ilk.
But Rose and Fred’s relationship was solid; as of some hideous romance that might feature in a novel by the likes of the Marquis de Sade. Rose came into the fold and assumed the role of caring for Anna Marie and Charmaine in the grotty little caravan of iniquity. Their life here can only be imagined in the vein of their subsequent activities, as in the prototype.
Fred was a shabby, runagate, magpie, and quite likely already a murderer to boot, but he did have a fairly good work ethic. By now, one position he was in was in a slaughterhouse, which seems apt, but Fred’s work ethic aside, his thieving ethic precluded any regular employment and so such low grade and frankly repugnant work was inevitable, irrespective of whether it was desirable to him.
The family moved to 25 Midland Rd, in Gloucester. They were doing ok; at least keeping their heads above the water. The fulcrum of the homestead was sex as much as a junkie’s lair concerns junk - it was an orgy lair. This pure ‘whitetrash’ existence here in the U.K. may surprise Americans who imagine the vile themes of such films as Deliverance, are impossible in such a nice country as ours; but of course this is just benign ignorance.
Even the lowest sections of society are possessed of inherent sapience, with which to survive, and the murderer and crook must possess the more to remain at large. It did not require a huge march of reason on Fred’s behalf to reckon that a nymphomaniac in the house was potentially a commodity; and he cared not for any vows.
Rose would have been around eighteen by now. Her approach to prostitution was worthy of the epithet ‘canine’. In a neighbourhood of dogs a bitch on heat is an instant hit and so was she. She didn’t need much marketing, just some word of mouth, and the dogs would have sniffed here out in no time. She advertised in some magazines in a circumlocutory manner (that tragic ‘masseur’ canard), but in some magazines her services were laid bare, lurid promises that were genuine, and much wanted by the providers and customers alike.
The Wests moved to 25 Cromwell St and created the same sleazy household; it was a den of iniquity for them and a brothel for the insalubrious community; a revolting kindergarten for the kids. His various trades (by now building work – patio-laying of course) and hers were burgeoning. It is said that Rose’s father William came here to abuse Rose and that he abused the children – if so, Fred was likely obliging.
Fred’s pilfering inevitably resulted in conviction, a short stint, which surely had no diminishing effect on his depraved ambitions – not that they were known to his prosecutors thus far. It was shortly before his release that Rose became a murderer too and the partnership was born.
Rose had given birth to Heather in 1970 and with three children to care for, a boyfriend in jail and newly arrived money problems, her temper flared frequently. She resented having to take care of Rena's children and treated them badly. According to Anna Marie, both sisters were subject to frequent beatings, but Charmaine infuriated Rosemary by her refusal to cry no matter how severely she was beaten, and perhaps her complexion and otherness contributed to the vitriol. Charmaine disappeared in June 1971. Rosemary explained this by claiming that Costello had called and taken her back to Scotland. When Rose murdered Charmaine, she had created both a problem and an opportunity for Fred regarding his first wife Rena. It was just a matter of time before Rena came around looking for Charmaine. In fact, in August of 1971, Rena sought out Fred's father, in hopes that he could tell her what happened to Charmaine, and no doubt he had little to say, irrespective of his possible knowledge.
Since Fred was in jail when Charmaine was murdered, his involvement probably extended to burying her body under the kitchen floor of their home on Cromwell St where it lay undiscovered for over 20 years. Before he buried Charmaine, he took off her fingers, toes and kneecaps. (Fred would hold this criminal secret over Rose for the rest of her life.)
Fred saw that he had no choice but to kill Rena. In all likelihood, he probably got her very drunk and then strangled her. He then dismembered her body and mutilated it in the same way that he had Anna McFall's body: he cut off Rena's fingers and toes. Then he put her remains into bags and buried her in the same general area as he buried Anna McFall.
In June of 1972, Rose had another daughter by Fred. They named her Mae West. This time, the child was legitimate, Fred and Rose having married in January of that year at the Gloucester Registry Office. It is reported that Rose’s father returned for sex with her and even Anna Marie; but this seems too farfetched.
The Wests had established their haunt and its purpose was of course a brothel, also, a lodge for vulnerable girls; a venue to abuse any such girls as they could acquire; a bone depot. The house was being modified in abominable fashion, Fred working the cellar; expanding it and adding ‘fixtures’, making it a quite accommodating torture chamber, one that would elaborate as his and her sadistic, sexually depraved appetites grew in size and variety. His instinct for home improvements cannot be faulted; he wanted to make things right - just as any good family man is wont to.
In October 1972 the Wests picked up 17-year-old Caroline Roberts at night on a secluded road and promptly hired her as the children’s nanny after she informed them that she wished to escape her stepfather (exactly their kind of prey!); a week later she moved in.
Rosemary’s prostitution required some explanation to the new recruit, so it was her work as a ‘masseuse’ that was proffered when Roberts had inquired about the men frequently visiting her. While there, according to Caroline, Fred had informed her that if ever she needed an abortion he was well equipped to perform it. She became suspicious when Fred boasted that many of the women he had treated were so overjoyed that they would offer him sexual services as a reward. Inevitably, she was entreated to join the sexual cabal, and wisely rejected and left a few weeks later.
Caroline must have been of particularly low intelligence, for on 6 December 1972 the Wests picked her up again, and having apologized profusely for what had happened, invited her to their home to make amends with a ‘cup of tea’. Back at 25 Cromwell Street, soon after they made her welcome again, it was time to pounce. According to her account, Rose started kissing her, bound her heavily with bondage tape, and both Fred and Rose raped her. When she screamed, Rosemary smothered her with a pillow and she was bound even further around the neck. Fred threatened that they would keep her locked up in the cellar and let Rosemary's ‘black’ male visitors ‘use’ her and that when they had finished they would bury her under the paving stones of Gloucester. When it had finally dawned on her that she was likely to die, she submitted to the ministrations of the pair. Fred allowed Roberts to leave the next day only after she promised she would return as their nanny.
Here we might reflect on how truly awful such an ordeal must have been and so we must eschew the seemingly harmless renditions in film and fiction of which we can discount any real harm. Thankfully, no footage of the events in the dungeon of the Wests exists, for many a sick mind would seek it out. It must have been truly terrifying; an experience that bores into the deepest recesses of the human psyche’s apprehension of the worst that man can do. No doubt, she was a ruined person thereafter. This author can only guess at such an ordeal; something this author is glad the authenticity here reveals remiss.
Roberts reported the rape to police but withdrew that accusation when the case came to court. (One wonders whether the trauma was too great to confront; whether she was resigned to her horrible lot in life.) The Wests however pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of indecent assault and were fined £50. To them, this must have been hugely propitious; the victim here unwilling to stand up, the court dismissive.
After this inconsequential run in with the law there was every incentive to advance their career. Fred’s father in law came to take Rose away from all this, perhaps now seeing that there was something truly untoward, even by his standards. Fred remonstrated and that was the end of his involvement.
Gloucester had become host to a large population of West Indians and that led to a boost in business for Fred and Rose’s sex emporium. It burgeoned and diversified, and, one could say adapted to tastes – latent and changing – to include bondage, sex instruments, acts of sadism, lesbianism, and whatever category of kinky/aberrant activity that could be conceived. Fred was participant, voyeur and photographer/cameraman; the pictures to appear with ads in magazines for ‘swingers’, aside from his choice collection.
Fred and Rose should have come across as worryingly strange neighbours, but it seems that their neighbours were also strange. They became friendly with a new one, Elizabeth Agius, who babysat for them several times. At one stage Fred mentioned that the couple had been cruising around looking for young girls, ‘young virgins’. He also revealed that his cellar was a ‘torture chamber’, in which to ‘entertain clients’. What on earth did Agius think? Did this go unreported? Well, it is reported that Agius was propositioned, drugged and raped by Fred, which seems utterly ridiculous, but sadly, in light of the West’s form, quite possible; but perhaps Elizabeth was mentally deficient to some degree.
In early 1973 the Wests took eight-year-old Anna Marie to the cellar where they bound and gagged her before Fred raped her while Rosemary watched. The subsequent pain was so severe that the girl could not go to school for several days. She was warned that she would be beaten if she ever told anyone about this. It was perhaps a ceremonial induction. So the story goes.
In August 1973 the first son, Stephen, was born. Here was a rightful heir to Fred’s legacy, as time would tell – how could someone begat from such a household be much different?
The address was becoming notorious, amongst the wrong sorts of people; the police should have had intelligence about such outfits and raided it, or maybe they knew but did not want to know any more. Anyhow, it was becoming known as a refuge, where anything was permissible. And so, the waifs and dregs showed up, and most had their fill of drink, drugs and carnal fun and moved on, perhaps indifferent, perhaps too shocked to even acknowledge their association with the place – best put out of mind.
The victims were perhaps the select group, or those whose family circumstances were compromised – exactly their sort of prey. This sort of dissolute venue where anything goes may have been very enticing to young, antisocial, chancy people, who saw debauchery as, not only a way to access sexual adventure, but to have done something quite sensationally wicked. This sort of environment exists in numerous places in big cities, in private homes, who knows where else? But the experience of really grimy debauchery now, is either the usual prostitution – in many different guises – which male youngsters are often too timid to enjoin; the sham outfits which promise some engagement, but leave the customer robbed; certain clubs, in which, peculiar, and often quite pedestrian people, in quite outlandish costume congregate and get a bit crazy, in a highly controlled environment. The West’s place was the devil’s lair.
For some time, the Wests had been carrying on a ‘friendship’ with the seamstress Lynda. Eventually, she moved into 25 Cromwell St, again, to take care of the children. She was another troubled soul and receptive to lascivious insinuation. Something went amiss in the relationship and she was murdered. Fred dismembered her and buried her in a pit in the garage. True to his ritual, he removed her fingers, toes and kneecaps. When Lynda's family came looking for her, they were told that she had stayed there but had left; and this must have seemed sadly plausible of this, another runaway.
Emboldened by their continued success they went further afield and abducted 15yr old Carol Ann Cooper, a resident of a children’s home in Worcester, as she walked home from a cinema. She was held captive in the cellar and tortured in slow and excruciating fashion before her merciful release. It can be imagined that the perpetrators’ pleasure was commensurate with the victim’s pain – but who would want to?
Fred continued to work on the house, modifying and increasing the cellar and making space in the garden for the obscene graveyard, overflow for the anticipated burden. Now this reminds one of that hideous individual H. H. Holmes, who had modified his large abode for the killing, dismembering, disposal of victims, on a semi-industrial scale; quite as though he had planned for all his murders in advance.
A little over a month later, the most prominent victim on the Wests, 21yr old University student Lucy Partington (cousin of renowned author Martin Amis) had gone home to her mother's house in Cheltenham to spend the Christmas holiday. On December 27, she went to visit her disabled friend and left to catch a bus shortly after 10 P.M. She had the misfortune of being scouted by Fred and Rose; they probably attacked, knocked her out without much ado – she was not a woman stupid enough to be gulled by such obviously rotten and dangerous people. Like Carol Ann Cooper, she was tortured - for approximately a week - and then murdered, dismembered and buried, in one of Fred's construction projects. He cut himself while dismembering Lucy and had to go to the hospital for stitches on January 3, 1974.
Lucy, like Carol Ann Cooper, was reported missing, but there was nothing to tie the two girls to the Wests. Nothing about the whereabouts of the girls so far was of much interest to the authorities as might have led to a connection, a suspected serial affair. No effective system akin to the FBI’s existed here back then, nothing to collate, collaborate deduce, but, there was so little to go on anyhow. It is possible that there was a lack of will to deal with the multitudes of troublesome runaways, but likely it was an inability to cope.
Between April of 1974 and April of 1975, three young women – Therese Siegenthaler, 21, Shirley Hubbard, 15, and Juanita Mott, 18, met the same fate as Carol Ann Cooper and Lucy Partington. Their tortured and dismembered bodies were buried under the cellar floor of the West's house. The evidence of their treatment is along the same lines of bondage, excruciating suspension, (prolonged torture) and confessed myriad sexual abuses, then, when the monsters were tired of their playthings, the much longed for eschatological relief.
Incredibly enough, with the increasing charnel house in his cellar, Fred continued to attract the police with continuing thefts and fencing of stolen goods. It was necessary for Fred to keep stealing to pay for his home improvement projects, these, to accommodate the increasing activity.
In 1976, the Wests enticed a young woman, designated as Miss A by the courts, from a home for wayward girls. At Cromwell Street, Miss A was led into a room with two naked girls who were prisoners there. She witnessed the torture of the two girls and was raped by Fred and sexually assaulted by Rose. One of the naked girls Miss A saw was probably Anna Marie, Fred's daughter who was a constant target of the couple's sexual sadism. As if Fred's rape and torture of his daughter was not enough, he brought home his friends to have sex with her.
In 1977, the upstairs of the house had been remodelled to allow for a greater number of lodgers. One of them was Shirley Robinson, 18, another prostitute, a hopeless, delinquent offering. Shirley developed relationships with both Fred and Rose, and she became pregnant via Fred. Meanwhile Rose was pregnant with the child of one of her ‘black’ clients.
While Fred was pleased that Rose was carrying the mixed-race child, Rose was not so comfortable with Shirley carrying Fred's. Shirley foolishly thought that she could displace Rose in Fred's life and, in the process, jeopardized her own existence. Rose made it clear that Shirley had to go; that her death was a possibility. Obvious was her fate, she did go.
Seven months later Rose gave birth to Tara, now in December of 1977. Shirley joined the rest of the luckless congregation buried in 25 Cromwell Street - she had been warned, but was inexplicably drawn to the fatal household. The cellar being full, Shirley was put in the rear garden along with her unborn child, in the ‘burbs, relatively speaking. Of course Fred had dismembered Shirley and their unborn baby.
In November of 1978, Rose and Fred had yet another daughter who they named Louise, making a total of six children in the bizarre and unwholesome household. Fred then impregnated Anna Marie, ectopically, and that had to be terminated; though without investigation.
The Wests murdered a troubled teenager named Alison Chambers after they raped and tortured her. Like Shirley, Alison was buried in the cemetery in the garden.
The children were aware of some of the goings on in the home. They knew that Rose was a ‘prostitute’ and that Anna Marie was being raped by her father. When Anna Marie moved out to live with her boyfriend, Fred focused his sexual advances on Heather and Mae. Heather resisted her father and was beaten for it; beatings and sex go together in the mind of a sexual maniac.
In June of 1980, Rose gave birth to Barry, Fred's second son. Then again, in April of 1982, Rose gave birth to Rosemary Jr, who was not Fred's child – although, there was so much sexual shenanigans, he couldn’t have been too sure of the origins, unless the child was obviously of mixed race.
In July of 1983, Rose gave birth to another daughter who they named Lucyanna. She was half-black, like Tara and Rosemary Junior. Rose became increasingly irrational and beat the children without provocation. The stress of so many children in the household took its toll on Rose's already bad temper. If fear of apprehension wasn’t an overriding effect on her vile temperament, guilt almost certainly also wasn’t.
In 1986, the wall of filial silence that had protected the Wests’ was broken. Heather told her lesbian girlfriend about her father's advances, her mother's affairs and the beatings she received. The girlfriend told her parents, who were friends of the Wests (quite an unbelievable scenario), and Heather's life was in jeopardy. After her parents murdered her, they told the children that she’d left home. Fred asked his son Stephen to help him dig a hole in the rear garden, where Fred later buried the dismembered body.
Life went on. Rose the madam, kept incorporating prostitutes who strayed into her web; also women whom both the sexually ravenous perverts could trust to participate in the various ménages, which are tempting to imagine; in reality, whatever went on in chez West’s dungeon of delights was probably somewhat grotty and deranged, amusing to envision if not for the true horror perpetrated by those two actors. One such woman, Katherine Halliday, who became a fixture in the West household and saw first-hand all the bondage materiel, of suits and masks, whips, chains, things out of a devil’s playpen, and with a modicum of good reasoning, quickly broke off her relationship with them (one wonders where she is now).
The West's long run of luck was coming to an end. It seems Heather’s girlfriend finally went to the police and apprised them of what had been going on. This petition would have seemed quite extraordinary – perhaps the more so coming from a lesbian – but at last, there was information worthy of inquiry, and it was assigned to a very talented and persistent Detective Constable named Hazel Savage. Hazel knew about Fred from his days with Rena and remembered the stories that Rena had told her about Fred's sexual perversions. Perhaps she was too junior then to a make notice of this; now there was just too much of a theme. A good detective is attuned to the community and the characters of interest, they build a picture of suspicion, the pieces come together and there is a case to be solved.
On August 6, 1992, police arrived at 25 Cromwell Street with a search warrant to look for pornographic material and evidence of child abuse. They found mountains of the former and arrested Rose for assisting in the rape of a minor. Fred was arrested for rape and sodomy of a minor.
Hazel Savage went to work interviewing family members and ‘friends’ of the Wests. When she talked to Anna Marie, she heard for the first time the shocking story about how she had been so severely abused. Anna also expressed her concerns about Charmaine, who Hazel had known of via Rena.
Hazel had all she needed to bring child abuse charges, but she needed to further investigate the disappearance of Charmaine, Rena and Heather. Hazel was not satisfied that Heather had disappeared without a trace. Insurance and tax records showed that Heather had not been employed nor had she visited a doctor in four years. Either she had left the country or was dead.
The younger children were taken from Rose and put into council care. With Fred in jail and the police closing in on her, Rose took an overdose of pills and attempted suicide. Her son Stephen found her and saved her life. She would escape from her loneliness by stuffing herself with candy and watching Disney videos; perhaps now feeling the raw repercussions of her misadventure.
Fred didn't do much better in prison; he was very depressed and sorry for himself. Actually, his luck was holding – for the time being. The case against the Wests collapsed when two key witnesses decided not to testify against them. But the seeds of their discovery had been sown. The strange, inexplicable disappearance of Heather was firmly implanted in Hazel Savage's mind.
Detective Superintendent John Bennett took charge, and it is he who is most associated with the case. The media were also on the case – it was becoming sensational. A warrant to search Cromwell Street house was signed, but the logistics of digging up the substantial premises were a problem.
The investigation was greatly advanced when Fred confessed in creepy publicised recordings to killing his daughter Heather. After human bones were discovered, other than Heather's, there was a lot to answer. Rose, informed of Fred's confession, claimed that Fred had sent her out of the house the day of Heather disappearance and that she had no knowledge of her death – she would betray him.
The police set about the grim task of digging up all the property. Fred had been released temporarily until there was sufficient evidence to hold him, but he knew he wasn’t going far; in fact, he was present as the police dig up the garden, and here he saw the discovery of his terrible crimes.
The police found the remains of a young woman dismembered and decapitated. Then another victim was found, then another. When the police heard about the disappearance of Shirley Robinson, the scope of the investigation widened.
To protect Rose, Fred claimed his responsibility to the police for all the murders himself. He was charged with the murders of Heather, Shirley Robinson and the as yet unidentified third woman. Furthermore, an investigation was opened into the disappearance of Rena and Charmaine. Fred, now broken and deranged gave all up, the activities in the ‘dungeon’, murdering the girls, but not rape. No, it wasn’t rape, but some form of ‘misunderstanding’, for, these girls, he maintained, wanted to have sex with him. It had just gone terribly wrong – a claim many cornered serial killers make.
As Fred glibly chatted about his murders, the police tried to tackle the evidence. Identifying bodies was very difficult. Nine sets of bones discovered in the cellar. Fred was great at self-incriminating, but his memory was vague (perhaps he had really lost his mind by now). Of the so many women who had gone missing every year extensive work had to be done to match up missing person's reports with the remains.
As the case developed, Rose totally abandoned Fred to save herself. She tried to position herself as the victim of a murderous man, but she was not going fool the police, who had woken up to the true nature of this family affair.
In due course, the bodies of Rena, Anna McFall and Charmaine were found as Fred continued to cooperate. On the Mary Bastholm case, Fred decided to quit cooperating and her body was not found; as well be the case for many others.
At their joint hearing, Fred attempted to console Rose, but she avoided his touch. She told the police he made her sick. Their partnership was over; their love was abandoned.
Rose's rejection devastated Fred, broke his sick, cruel heart. On December 13, 1994, he was charged with twelve murders. Fred had written to her, ‘We will always be in love...You will always be Mrs West, all over the world. That is important to me and to you.’ But Rose went her own despicable way. Just before noon on New Year's Day at Winson Green Prison in Birmingham, when the guards were having lunch, Fred hanged himself with strips of bedsheet.
Despite the paucity of evidence directly linking her to the murders, Rose went to trial on October 3, 1995. A number of witnesses - including Caroline Owens, Miss A, and Anna Marie - testified to Rose's sadistic sexual assaults on young women. The goal of the prosecution, led by Brian Leveson QC, was to construct a tight web of circumstantial evidence of Rose's guilt. The defence, led by Richard Ferguson QC, tried to show that evidence of sexual assault was not the same as evidence of murder, that Rose did not know what Fred was doing when he murdered the girls and buried them in various places, that she was somehow too disturbed, too stupid and unawares – a hopeless ploy.
Ferguson made the mistake of putting Rose on the stand; for, though she was a devious, vicious, hardened killer, accomplished in seducing victims, she was far too stupid for the legal minds and their cross examination. Her defiance came through very clearly to the jury. Furthermore, the prosecution learned to extract damaging testimony from her by making her angry. She left the jury with entrenched beliefs that she had treated the children badly and that she was completely dishonest, that she was a wholly perverted creature with murderous tendencies in line with her partner in crime, whose silence was of no avail.
The defence played the recordings of Fred West describing how he had murdered the victims when Rose was out of the house. But Fred was proven on many accounts to be utterly unreliable.
The most dramatic evidence was given by Janet Leach, who was called as the ‘appropriate adult’ witness, to Fred West's police interviews. Privately, Fred had told her that Rose was involved in the murders – and that Rose had murdered Charmaine and Shirley Robinson without him – but that he made a deal with his wife to take all the blame on himself. Janet’s stress from the ordeal of her confession led to a stroke; it was the death of Fred that finally released her secrets.
In his summary, Leveson called Rose the ‘strategist’ and the dominant partner: ‘The evidence that Rosemary West knew nothing is not worthy of belief.’ Ferguson, in his summary, stressed that the evidence only pointed to Fred.
The jury took very little time to find Rose guilty of the murders of Charmaine, Heather, Shirley Robinson and the other girls buried at the house. The judge sentenced her to life imprisonment on each of ten counts of murder.
• Charmaine West (born 22 February 1963).
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• Catherine Bernadette "Rena" West (born 14 April 1944).
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• Lynda Gough (born 1 May 1953).
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• Carol "Caz" Ann Cooper (born 10 April 1958).
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• Lucy Katherine Partington (born 4 March 1952): Killed December 1973.
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• Therese Siegenthaler (born 27 November 1952): Killed in April 1974. A student in South London who left to hitch-hike to Ireland and disappeared.
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• Shirley Hubbard (born 26 June 1959).
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• Juanita "Nita" Marion Mott (born 1 March 1957).
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• Shirley Anne Robinson (born 8 October 1959).
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• Alison Chambers (born 8 September 1962).
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• Heather Ann West (born 17 October 1970) Killed June 1987.
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During questioning after being arrested, Fred West confessed to murdering up to 30 people, but the police believed the pair may have killed only 13. As well as the 12 confirmed, they believe that West also killed 15-year-old Mary Bastholm in January 1968, but to date, no body has been found. West's son, Stephen, has said he firmly believed the missing Gloucester teenager was an early victim of his father, as Fred West had reportedly boasted, while on remand in prison during 1994, of committing Miss Bastholme's murder.
There wasn’t forensic evidence to link Fred West to the murder of Anne McFall –he always denied killing her, in contrast to the other murders – the state of the body (missing finger and toe bones, as was the case with the other bodies) and the dimensions of the grave site matched aspects of West's modus operandi.
The West murders are considered perhaps the worst in modern history in the U.K. It is the sheer depravity of this couple that really caused soul searching; for how could such an appalling litany of crimes occur without some attention from the authorities? How is it that two people could operate so freely in their pursuit of rape, torture, murder without fear of detection? It is of course very hard to believe that such people exist; until it is discovered they do, and we have to rethink what people are really capable of. Most people who would encounter the likes of Fred and Rose would realise that these were quite odious types, people to avoid, put out of mind, as one shirks from the experience of those who conjure repugnance; and it is so much easier to avoid further contemplation for the sake of one’s selfish sanctity. But this abnegation of the inquiry that is so often the boon of the serial killers. One hopes no such people will cross their path and that it is better to pursue happier interpretations of fellow man’s intentions. May both Fred and Rose rot in hell!
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