Rosemary West was convicted at Winchester Crown Court on November 22, 1995, of ten murders. The victims were young women and girls who died between 1971 and 1987. Two belonged to her own household: her stepdaughter Charmaine, who was eight, and her eldest daughter Heather, who was 16. Most of the others were teenagers or women in their early twenties who had lodged at the Wests' house at 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester, or who had disappeared from bus stops or while hitching rides. Nine sets of remains were found at Cromwell Street in the spring of 1994. Charmaine's were found beneath the kitchen of the couple's earlier home on Midland Road.
Her husband, Fred West, was charged with 12 murders, the ten joint counts and two more of his own. He was found hanged in his remand cell at Winson Green prison in Birmingham on January 1, 1995, before any trial, and so was never convicted of anything in this case. Rose West stood trial alone. She denied all ten murders, and she has never admitted them. The judge sentenced her to life on each count, and in 1997 the Home Secretary ruled that she should never be released.
Rosemary Pauline Letts was born in 1953, according to the European Commission of Human Rights, which dealt with her complaint in 1997. Little reliable detail about her childhood has been reported. Her own former solicitor, Leo Goatley, and the criminologist Jane Carter Woodrow, who wrote a 2012 book about her, have both said that she and Fred West had suffered abuse as children, CNN reported in 2021. Goatley later said that she refused, even when it might have helped her defense, to talk about her own abuse as a teenager, and he linked her wooden manner in court to that refusal, according to a Law Society Gazette profile of him.
She met Fred West in 1969, when she was 15 and he was 27, according to CNN. She became pregnant about a month after her sixteenth birthday. Their first child, Heather, became the eldest of the children Rose West would raise. Fred West already had a daughter, Charmaine, from his first wife, Catherine "Rena" Costello, and a daughter by Rena as well. Rose West later married him; the Irish Times described her in 1997 as a mother of eight.
By 1971 the couple were living at 25 Midland Road in Gloucester. Charmaine West, Fred's stepdaughter from his first marriage, was about eight. She disappeared that year. CNN, in its 2021 review of the case, dated her death to June 1971. Fred West was in prison at the time, as a Press Association summary of the victims noted, which is why her death is the one most clearly tied to Rose West alone.
No one reported Charmaine missing. Her school took her off its register in 1971, Tes (the Times Educational Supplement) reported in 1995, after her parents said she had gone to London to live with her natural mother; the school accepted that. Her mother, Rena Costello, also disappeared in 1971; the Press Association put her death at about August of that year. Rena's remains were found in a field at Kempley, about 17 miles from Gloucester, in April 1994, after Fred West led police there. Her death was charged against Fred West alone.
Charmaine's remains were found on May 4, 1994, beneath the kitchen at 25 Midland Road, CNN reported. The jury at Winchester convicted Rose West of her murder.
In 1972 the family moved to 25 Cromwell Street, a large house in central Gloucester that would be their home until 1994. They let rooms to lodgers. Rose West worked as a prostitute from the house; lodgers later said she saw men in a ground-floor room the children were told to keep out of, according to the Press Association, and she advertised in a local magazine, according to a 2019 television documentary reviewed by the Irish Times.
In 1972 the couple attacked a young woman who had worked for them as a nanny. She was abducted, sexually assaulted and held before she got away, according to her own account as summarized by the Irish Times in 2019. She reported the attack but declined to testify, and the Wests were instead fined for indecent assault, the Irish Times reported. More than 20 years later she gave evidence for the prosecution at Rose West's murder trial.
The household's eight children were taken to hospital 31 times in 20 years, the 2019 documentary said. The West children went through 12 schools in 26 years, Tes reported, and teachers found them well turned out and good attenders. The independent review of the agencies' dealings with the family later found that, on the information they had, no child protection service could have predicted what was happening in the house.
Lynda Gough was 19. She had moved into Cromwell Street as a lodger and was killed in April 1973, the first person known to have died at the house, according to the Press Association. Her remains were found in the bathroom area.
Carol Ann Cooper (spelled Carole Ann in some reports, and known as Caz) was 15. She had been placed in care after her mother died in 1966. She was reported missing in November 1973 after a day visiting her grandmother. Her remains were found in the cellar about two decades later.
Lucy Partington was 21, a university student home for Christmas. She disappeared from a bus stop on December 27, 1973. Her remains were found at Cromwell Street 20 years later.
Therese Siegenthaler was 21, a sociology student from Switzerland who had set out hitchhiking and told her family she was going to Ireland. She disappeared in April 1974. When her letters stopped, her family reported her missing to Scotland Yard.
Shirley Hubbard was 15 and worked in a shop in Worcester. She disappeared from a bus stop in November 1974.
Juanita Mott was 18 and had lodged with the Wests. She disappeared in April 1975 after accepting a lift. Her remains were not found until the 1994 search.
Shirley Robinson was 18. She had lived at Cromwell Street for some time and was heavily pregnant with Fred West's child when she died in May 1978. Her remains were found in the garden.
Alison Chambers was 16 by most accounts (17 in one Press Association report). Born in West Germany, she had spent much of her life in Swansea and had moved to Gloucester, where she was training at a solicitors' firm. Her remains were also found in the garden; they were the second set uncovered at Cromwell Street in 1994.
Heather West, the couple's eldest child, was 16. She was last seen on June 19, 1987. No one reported her missing. Her remains were found in the rear garden, under the patio. Hers is believed to have been the couple's last killing, CNN reported.
Many of the young women had been in local authority care or had run away from home, and their disappearances went largely unnoticed, CNN said. The remains of Siegenthaler, Hubbard, Partington, Mott and Cooper were found in the cellar. Rose West was convicted of all ten deaths.
The case began in 1992 with a conversation. A schoolgirl told a passing police officer in Gloucester that she was worried about a friend from the West family, and the officer took her seriously, Tes reported. In August 1992 the Wests' five youngest children were taken into local authority care over allegations of child abuse.
In care, the younger children kept repeating what they called a family joke: that their sister Heather was buried under the patio. Their social workers believed them, Tes reported, and in the summer of 1993 they told the police. Detective Constable Hazel Savage of Gloucestershire Constabulary pursued it, according to the Press Association. About six months later, early in 1994, police obtained a warrant to search 25 Cromwell Street.
On February 25, 1994, after first claiming that he had seen her, Fred West admitted killing Heather, CNN reported. He and Rose West were arrested that day. Human bones were found in the garden, and more under the patio. On February 26 he admitted two more killings. On March 4, 1994, he wrote to his solicitor that he wished "to admit to a further (approx) nine killings expressly Charmaine, Rena, Lynda Gough and others to be identified," CNN reported from the note.
Within 11 days police had found the remains of nine young women at Cromwell Street, in the cellar, the bathroom area and the garden. The search there lasted 55 days. In late April it moved to 25 Midland Road, where Charmaine was found on May 4, and to Kempley, where Fred West led officers to the remains of Rena Costello in April and to those of Anne McFall, a former nanny to his children who had been pregnant when she disappeared in 1967, in June.
By January 2, 1995, Rose West stood charged with the murders of nine women, according to an LBC radio report preserved by Learning on Screen. Gloucestershire Constabulary later said the inquiry had also traced 110 missing people who were found safe and well, CNN reported.
Gloucestershire County Council commissioned an independent review, carried out by the Bridge Child Care Consultancy, of how its agencies had dealt with the West children. Reported in late 1995, it largely cleared the agencies. It said that no child protection service could, on the information it held, have predicted that the family was at the center of multiple murders, Tes reported. It urged teachers, doctors, social workers and police not to dismiss the comments of children lightly, however strange, and it called for better communication between agencies and a national system for tracking pupils who move between areas. One newspaper said the report raised more questions than it answered, CNN noted.
Fred West was found hanged in his cell at Winson Green prison in Birmingham on New Year's Day 1995. He was 53. His solicitor, Tony Miles, read a statement the next day and said media attention could affect his wife's case, according to the Learning on Screen record of the LBC broadcast. Rose West's solicitor, Leo Goatley, said the same day that the case against her might be reviewed. The Conservative member of Parliament for Gloucester, Douglas French, said on January 3 that his constituents wanted her trial to go ahead.
Goatley had first met the Wests in 1992, through the duty solicitor scheme, during the child abuse inquiry, and he went on to act for Rose West for 12 years. He later said he had been shocked when she was accused of murder at a Gloucestershire police station, especially when news came that her husband had admitted killings, the Law Society Gazette reported.
While on remand she was held at Pucklechurch, near Bristol, where a nun who prayed with prisoners befriended her and gave her plastic rosary beads that she kept through her trial, Goatley said in a 2019 interview published by the University of Law. After committal she was moved to Durham.
The committal hearing took place early in 1995 at the magistrates' court in Dursley, Gloucestershire, before Peter Badge, the Chief Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate, who was to decide whether the case should go to the Crown Court. By then she was charged with ten murders dating from 1971. The writer Andrew O'Hagan, reporting for the London Review of Books, described her arrival in a white van with a police motorcycle escort, and a crowd outside that jeered and threw eggs. Reporting restrictions limited what could be published, and she was committed for trial.
The trial was held at Winchester Crown Court in the autumn of 1995, about ten months after Fred West's death, before Mr Justice Mantell. Brian Leveson QC, later a senior judge, led the prosecution; the University of Suffolk listed the conviction among the most significant cases of his career at the bar. Leo Goatley was her solicitor. The trial lasted 31 days.
The jurors were taken to see 25 Cromwell Street; a Gloucestershire Police photograph dated October 19, 1995, shows an officer guarding the house before their visit. The jury heard a recording of one of Fred West's police interviews, in which he described Heather's death and burial. Chris Summers, then a reporter for the Gloucester Citizen, told CNN that West sounded "very, very matter-of-fact."
The young woman the Wests had attacked in 1972 gave evidence for the prosecution, the Irish Times noted; the 2019 documentary credited her testimony and the forensic evidence with securing the conviction. A former neighbor who had had a relationship with Rose West told the court that she kept returning to Cromwell Street "like a moth to a flame," in Summers's account to CNN. A former lodger who had moved into the house at 16 and left about a year later also testified for the prosecution, Clyde 1 reported in 2024.
Rose West contested every count and denied the allegations against her throughout, Goatley said. Several prosecution witnesses had been paid or promised payment by the press. The defense cross-examined them about their media contracts, and the judge went through the contracts in his summing-up, the European Commission of Human Rights later recorded. Goatley said he worried that the jury might have been influenced, since journalists were offering large sums and some witnesses stood to gain depending on the outcome, the Law Society Gazette reported.
On November 22, 1995, the 31st day of the trial, Rose West was convicted on all ten counts of murder. She showed no outward reaction, CNN reported. Mr Justice Mantell sentenced her to life imprisonment on each count, ten life sentences in all, and said he hoped she would never be released, the Press Association reported.
Fred West's brother Douglas West told ITN that day that Fred had told investigators what they wanted to hear. Peter Bastholm, whose sister Mary had disappeared in 1968, said Fred West had taken a lot of secrets to his grave, "not only in our case but some other families as well."
Rose West applied for leave to appeal against her convictions. On March 19, 1996, the Court of Appeal refused leave and reserved its reasons, which it gave in open court on April 2, 1996, according to the European Commission of Human Rights. The court found that the effect of the media coverage was essentially short-lived; that the defense had been able to cross-examine witnesses about their contracts with the press; that no substantial inconsistencies in their evidence had been shown; and that the judge had dealt with the contracts in his summing-up.
On the argument that the publicity made a fair trial impossible, the court said that to accept it would mean that "if allegations of murder are sufficiently horrendous as inevitably to shock the nation," the accused could not be tried, and "That would be absurd," as quoted by openDemocracy in 2013. The court took the view that jurors can follow the judge's direction to decide on the evidence alone. Goatley defended his client in public and was criticized for it by the then Lord Chief Justice, Lord Taylor, the Law Society Gazette reported.
She then complained to the European Commission of Human Rights that pretrial coverage, press payments to prosecution witnesses and weak contempt-of-court safeguards had denied her a fair trial, and that she had been at a disadvantage at committal because legal aid limited her to junior counsel. On October 20, 1997, the Commission declared the application inadmissible because it had been lodged outside the six-month time limit, counted from April 2, 1996. It did not rule on the merits.
In July 1997 the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, decided that Rose West, then 43, should never be freed. "A whole life tariff has been set in her case in line with the recommendations of the trial judge and the Lord Chief Justice," a Home Office spokeswoman said, according to a Press Association report in the Irish Times.
Leo Goatley's work for her continued until 2004 and included a 2001 application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the University of Law reported. No later appeal or referral of her convictions has been reported.
The European Commission's 1997 decision records her at HM Prison Durham. She later spent about a decade at Low Newton, in County Durham. In June 2019 she was moved to HMP New Hall, a women's prison near Wakefield in West Yorkshire, the Yorkshire Evening Post reported; she was then 65.
In 2021 NationalWorld reported that she had apparently changed her name by deed poll.
The latest strong report found places her at HMP New Hall from June 2019, serving her whole-life sentence. No death, release or new court proceeding had been reported as of October 20, 2026.
25 Cromwell Street was demolished, and the council built a walkway on the site, the Gloucestershire Police Archives and Clyde 1 reported. Gloucestershire Police's own archive holds photographs of the dig, the prosecution file being prepared and the press outside the Winchester court.
The case has been revisited many times. ITV marked the 20th anniversary in 2014. A 2019 television documentary presented by Trevor McDonald argued that the agencies of the 1990s, with shared databases and better training, would be unlikely to miss such a case now, the Irish Times reported.
Leo Goatley has continued to speak about the case. He described Fred West to CNN as "a sadist and a voyeur" and Rose West as "his willing apprentice," and said in 2021 that he believed she knew "an awful lot more than she's letting on." He wrote a book, Understanding Fred and Rose West: Noose, Lamella and the Gilded Cage, drawing on his conversations with her. He has argued that a criminal trial does not resolve the wider questions, and that "closure" for families seldom matches reality.
Police and others have long suspected that the couple's victims were more than the 12 deaths charged, CNN reported, and Goatley has said that officers were never satisfied the full extent of the crimes had been uncovered. No remains have been found since the 1994 searches. None of these suspicions has been tested in court, and Rose West has not been charged with any other death.
The case most often raised is that of Mary Bastholm, 15, who disappeared in Gloucester on January 6, 1968, and has never been found. She worked at a café where Fred West was a regular customer and where he had done building work in the basement. Rose West, who met Fred West the following year, has not been publicly linked to her disappearance. Fred West was said to have privately admitted her death in 1994, LBC reported, though he told many lies at the time. In May 2021, after a documentary team brought new information to the police, Gloucestershire Constabulary excavated the cellar of the building, then the Clean Plate café on Southgate Street. Assistant Chief Constable Craig Holden had called it "new and potentially important evidence." On May 27, 2021, police said no human remains or items of significance had been found, and that the rest of the cellar had been undisturbed since before 1968. "Everyone working on this is disappointed that we didn't find Mary," Holden said. Her family asked for privacy.
Two other deaths belong to Fred West's case and not to hers. He was charged with the murders of Rena Costello and Anne McFall, whose remains were found at Kempley in 1994, and he died before trial. Accounts differ on whether he admitted Anne McFall's death: the Press Association said he told visitors after his arrest that he had stabbed her in an argument, while LBC said he never admitted it.
Proven by final judgment: Rose West's ten murder convictions of November 22, 1995, which stand after the Court of Appeal refused leave in 1996.
Charged but never tried: Fred West's 12 murder charges, including the ten joint counts and the deaths of Rena Costello and Anne McFall. He was never convicted.
Details that vary between sources: Alison Chambers's age (16 or 17); the spelling of Carol Ann Cooper's first name; whether Fred West admitted Anne McFall's death; and the new name Rose West is said to have taken by deed poll. Some later accounts say that Fred and Rose West were "jailed" together in 1995, or that Charmaine's remains were found at Cromwell Street; both are wrong.
1953: Rosemary Pauline Letts is born.
1967: Anne McFall, a nanny to Fred West's children, disappears (charged against Fred West alone).
January 6, 1968: Mary Bastholm, 15, disappears in Gloucester (never found; never charged).
1969: Rose, 15, meets Fred West, 27.
About June 1971: Charmaine West, 8, is killed at 25 Midland Road while Fred West is in prison; her school is told she has gone to London.
About August 1971: Rena Costello dies (charged against Fred West alone).
1972: the family moves to 25 Cromwell Street; the couple abduct and assault a former nanny and are later fined for indecent assault.
April 1973: Lynda Gough, 19, is killed.
November 1973: Carol Ann Cooper, 15, disappears.
December 27, 1973: Lucy Partington, 21, disappears from a bus stop.
April 1974: Therese Siegenthaler, 21, disappears.
November 1974: Shirley Hubbard, 15, disappears from a bus stop.
April 1975: Juanita Mott, 18, disappears.
May 1978: Shirley Robinson, 18, is killed.
June 19, 1987: Heather West, 16, is last seen.
1992: a schoolgirl's concern reaches the police; in August the five youngest children go into care; abuse charges against both parents are later dropped.
Summer 1993: social workers tell police about the "family joke" that Heather is under the patio.
February 25, 1994: Fred West admits killing Heather; he and Rose West are arrested.
February to April 1994: nine sets of remains found at Cromwell Street over 11 days; 55-day search.
March 4, 1994: Fred West writes that he wishes to admit about nine more killings.
April 1994: Rena Costello's remains found at Kempley.
May 4, 1994: Charmaine's remains found beneath the kitchen at 25 Midland Road.
June 1994: Anne McFall's remains found at Kempley.
January 1, 1995: Fred West is found hanged at Winson Green prison, Birmingham, before trial.
January 2, 1995: Rose West is charged with nine murders.
Early 1995: committal hearing at Dursley; ten murder charges.
October 19, 1995: jurors visit 25 Cromwell Street.
November 22, 1995: convicted of ten murders at Winchester Crown Court; ten life sentences.
December 1995: the Bridge review of the agencies is reported.
March 19, 1996: Court of Appeal refuses leave to appeal; reasons given April 2, 1996.
July 1997: Home Secretary Jack Straw sets a whole-life tariff.
October 20, 1997: European Commission of Human Rights declares her complaint inadmissible.
2001: application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
June 2019: moved from Durham to HMP New Hall, West Yorkshire.
May 2021: police excavate the former café cellar in the search for Mary Bastholm; nothing found.
October 20, 2026: serving her whole-life sentence; no later development found.