STORIES
Gloucester's House of Horrors – Fred was into bondage, torture and murder
It was a slow news day at the ‘Gloucester Citizen' on Thursday 24 February 1994. As reporters discussed local news stories, someone from the paper's circulation department came up to the newsroom to pass on some information: one of the newspaper delivery boys had seen policemen digging up the back garden of a house in a side street not far from the city centre.
The journalists were galvanised into action. They quickly discovered that the house in question was number 25 Cromwell Street and looking it up in the local electoral register they found the householders recorded as Frederick and Rosemary West. The names meant nothing, but when checking in the cuttings library, a reporter found a news story from 1993 that referred to the delight of a local couple (Fred and Rose West) who had been cleared of sexually assaulting a young girl after key witnesses in the trial declined to give evidence.
Gloucestershire Police would only say that they were investigating the disappearance of the West's daughter. A Citizen reporter then went to the city's registry office and found a birth certificate belonging to Heather West, born locally on 17 October 1970. Police confirmed the name but at the time nobody realised the dig would trigger one of the biggest police inquiries Britain had ever seen. Heather had disappeared in June 1987, shortly after leaving school, but had not been reported missing by her parents. They claimed she had left home to work at a holiday camp in Devon . But an in-joke began to develop among the remaining West children. They would mutter about Heather being “buried under the patio” at 25 Cromwell Street .
In the summer of 1993, when allegations of sexual impropriety were made against the Wests, their six younger children were taken into council care. This soon reached Detective Constable Hazel Savage, a veteran Gloucester police officer who had had dealings with the petty criminal named Fred West going back over 20 years. She decided to follow up.
Ms Savage discovered that Heather's national insurance (medical aid) number had never been used, indicating that she had never worked or claimed benefit since her disappearance. The girl had simply vanished. More investigation strengthened Ms Savage's belief that foul play was involved and in February 1994 she finally persuaded her superiors to sign a search warrant and dig up the garden in Cromwell Street .
When police arrived to begin the search, Fred West was away at work. His wife and eldest son (Stephen) contacted him at 1.50pm and he said that he would be straight over, but he did not arrive home until 5.40pm that day. It has never been explained what West did during those four hours. He himself claimed he pulled over during the drive home, and passed out, blaming fumes from the house painting that he had been doing. Criminologists have speculated that he may have spent time disposing of incriminating evidence, including grisly souvenirs from the bodies of his victims, or even visiting his own private burial ground somewhere in South Gloucestershire.
As police toiled in their back garden, Fred and Rose West stayed up most of that night discussing what to do, and they made a pact. Fred told her that he would ‘sort it out' with the police, and that she had nothing to worry about, as he would take all the blame.
On 25 February Fred West was taken to Gloucester Police Station for questioning. He immediately admitted that he had killed Heather, but told Ms. Savage, “The thing I'd like to stress is that Rosemary knew nothing at all.”
Then police diggers discovered human remains in the garden and the case grew from a local one to a nationwide, and then worldwide, news sensation. West now began a damage limitation exercise. He agreed to point out exactly where he had buried the bodies of two other girls (Shirley Robinson and Alison Chambers) who had disappeared in the 1970's. But he said nothing of the six other bodies buried beneath the cellar and bathroom of 25 Cromwell Street , probably because he did not want to see his beloved house torn apart. Later, he confessed to a prison confidante and made a sketch of the cellar and bathroom, showing the location of six more bodies. But he was unable to identify many of his victims.
Frederick Walter Stephen West was born in Much Marcle, Herefordshire, on 29 September 1941 into a poor family of farm workers. His parents sexually abused him as a child and the experience obviously warped him. He suffered severe concussion in a motorcycle accident in 1958 and from then on his personality changed. After a spate of petty crimes he made his 13-year-old sister pregnant and was banished in disgrace from his parents' rural home in November 1961 to live with an aunt until the spring of 1962. His sister aborted the unwanted child.
Fred married Catherine (‘Rena') Costello, a local prostitute, in November 1962 and they moved to Glasgow . Here Rena gave birth to a girl, Charmaine (fathered by a Pakistani bus driver) in March 1963; and a second child, Anna Marie, was born to the couple in July 1964. At this time Fred also had a girlfriend, Anna McFall, with whom he and his wife often made up a sexual threesome. Note that Fred West was totally possessed by a strong and seemingly insatiable sex drive.
West was certainly no intellectual, but he had a rough, garrulous charm that worked on many women, who warmed to his infectious sense of humour. In November 1965 he accidentally ran over a four-year-old boy in his ice cream van and moved away from Glasgow to Gloucester where he took a job in an abattoir. But with their marriage now under strain, Rena left him and when she returned in 1966 she found him still living with Anna McFall. West murdered the heavily pregnant McFall in August 1967 and buried her body in a field near Much Marcle. Rena then returned to him and their children for a while before leaving him again. In 1968 he met 15-year-old Rosemary Letts, born in Gloucester on 13 November 1953.
They shared a common bond as Rose has stated that as a child she was sexually abused by her father. Rosemary soon became pregnant by Fred, something she concealed from her strict and disapproving parents until West was serving a short prison term for unpaid fines. She then left her family and moved with Fred into a house in Midland Road , Gloucester . Here she gave birth to their daughter Heather in October 1970. Rose often neglected the other children and Charmaine died in 1977 while Fred was again in prison. Detectives believe Rosemary may have murdered Charmaine. In any case Fred dismembered the body on returning from prison and buried it under the floor tiles.
Then Rena returned to Gloucester in August 1971, looking for her children. West strangled her late one night as she lay drunk and disposed of her body by cutting it up and burying the remains in a field near his childhood home. Over a four-year period, he had dispatched both his lover and his wife.
Fred West then committed bigamy by marrying Rosemary Letts on 29 January 1972. He had never divorced Rena, who was of course now dead. Rose gave birth to another girl, named Mae in June 1972 and the family moved to a new home at 25 Cromwell Street , an unimposing three-story house in the English midlands. West was no model husband: he encouraged Rose to prostitute herself and watched her with clients through a peephole in their bedroom wall. This was done partly to supplement the rent, but mainly to cater to Fred's vicarious thrills.
West was a gifted handyman, and adapted the cellar as a bedroom for his children as he soundproofed and extended it. In the upstairs front room in December 1972, the Wests together attacked and raped 17-year-old Caroline Owens, whom they had taken in as a nanny. They were arrested for this offence and went to trial in January 1973 but were released after being fined.
A pattern then emerged which allowed Fred West to give vent to his sexual and sadistic urges: young females would come into their home as lodgers or to care for the children and they would be abused, tortured and then murdered. First was Lynda Gough in April 1973; followed by Carol Ann Cooper (15), abducted and murdered in November 1973. Lucy Partington (a 21-year-old relative of author Martin Amis) was kept alive for a week before being dispatched in January 1974. She was picked up as she waited for a bus near Cheltenham one night in late December 1973. It is certain that she would not have accepted a lift from Fred West if he had been on his own. She got into the car only because his young wife Rose accompanied Fred.
The bodies were dismembered and disposed of under the cellar floor as West constantly extended and renovated the building. Therese Sieganthaler was killed over Easter weekend in 1974 and Shirley Hubbard in November that year. Into the cellar floor went their bodies, to be joined by that of Juanita Mott in April 1975.
Bondage now became a major thrill for the murderous couple. Juanita Mott was gagged with a ligature made from two white nylon socks, a brassiere and two pairs of tights. She was then trussed up with lengths of rope looped around her arms and thighs, wrists, ankles and skull, horizontally and vertically, backwards and forwards across her body until she could only wriggle like a trapped animal. She was then suspended from the cellar beams with a seven-foot long rope and subjected to unspeakable torture until she died.
Incredibly enough with this charnel house in his cellar, Fred West continued to attract police attention by continuously stealing and fencing stolen goods. It was necessary for him to keep stealing to finance his numerous home improvement projects, which in turn were necessary to conceal the murdered victims of his monstrous lust.
There was then a three-year hiatus (unless further victims were killed and buried elsewhere) before lodger Shirley Robinson, eight months pregnant with Fred's child, was murdered in May 1978 and her body buried in the garden. Then in September 1979 Fred and Rosemary abducted, tortured and killed Alison Chambers.
Rose was often pregnant over this period and gave birth to Tara (December 1977), Louise (November 1978), Barry (June 1980), Rosemary Junior (April 1982) and Lucyanna (July 1983). Only Barry and Louise were fathered by Fred. Rosemary Jnr. and Lucyanna were mixed-race children, born to one of Rosemary's regular African clients. Fred's daughter Anna Marie was also subjected to sexual abuse from her parents, and also pimped out to his friends to be used as a sex toy. We can only imagine the psychological damage done to her by this treatment. The last known victim at Cromwell Street was Fred's daughter Heather, murdered and buried under the patio in June 1987. She was 16 years old and had dared to defy her father by finally refusing his persistent sexual advances.
Detectives were convinced that Rosemary West was involved in some of the murders. But she denied everything and feigned shock at her husband's lurid confessions. She was bailed to a police safe house in Cheltenham, where she lived with Stephen and Mae, but remained under suspicion. Police electronically bugged the house but she never said anything to implicate herself. On 18 April 1994 she was finally charged with a sex offence (the murder charges would come later), and taken into custody.
Throughout the spring and summer of 1994 the world's media flocked to Gloucester to feast on the revelations coming out daily from 25 Cromwell Street, which became known as the ‘House of Horrors.' Reporters at the ‘Citizen' were kept busy also.
As the case developed, Rose abandoned Fred in a bid to save her. She posed as the victim of a dominating and murderous man, but she was not particularly convincing when all the evidence stacked up. The bodies of Rena, Anna McFall and Charmaine were found as Fred continued to co-operate with local police. At their joint hearing on 30 June 1994, Fred attempted to console Rose, but she avoided his touch and told police that the sight of him made her sick. West was completely devastated by her rejection.
Fred West never stood trial for the eleven murders he was charged with. He hanged himself in his cell at Birmingham's Winson Green Prison on 1 January 1995. He knew that fellow inmates whilst serving a life sentence for his terrible crimes would hound him, and the rejection by Rosemary possibly pushed him over the edge of what remained of his sanity. I doubt if anyone mourned his passing, for Fred West was truly a two-legged monster, totally devoid of remorse for what he had done or compassion for his victims.
Rosemary went on trial for ten murders at Winchester Crown Court in October 1995. The evidence against her was largely circumstantial and unlike Fred, she had not confessed. In one of the most sensational murder trials in British criminal history, there were many moments of high drama and much distressing evidence. Anna Marie West (now Mrs Leach) was a memorable witness, tearfully describing how her parents had sexually abused her from the age of eight.
Another prosecution witness, former beauty queen Caroline Raine, told the court of a night in 1972 when Fred and Rose abducted and sexually assaulted her as she hitch-hiked across Gloucestershire. This was key evidence. Prosecutor Brian Levenson, QC, suggested to the jury that this was a blueprint for how the Wests were to pick up further victims. Caroline was allowed to live and the Wests were later prosecuted and fined for what they had done. Clearly they then made up their minds that future victims would not be able to walk away from 25 Cromwell Street.
The end of the trial convinced all the jurors that Rosemary West was guilty. She was convicted of all ten-murder counts by a unanimous decision and sentenced to life. She was later informed by the then Home Secretary Jack Straw that she would never be set free for the rest of her natural life. On this occasion, a life sentence meant exactly that. After several years in the infamous women's maximum-security wing at Durham Prison, Rose was moved to the new Bronzefield Jail near Ashford in Middlesex in November 2005. She has refused counselling and never discusses her case with fellow inmates.
In October 1996, the ‘House of Horrors' at 25 Cromwell Street was demolished and the site was made into a simple pathway. Hopefully, the shades of the Wests' victims are appeased. Meantime at the ‘Gloucester Citizen', it is back to business as usual. A reporter said, “Fred and Rosemary West brought untold shame down on the city of Gloucester, and I suspect they will never be forgiven for that.”
(Research, bbc.co.uk/crime/caseclosed/fredwest; crimelibrary.com)
IF YOU need a check on my True Crime series of stories, published in the Hua Hin Observer, here is a complete list to date:
April 2002 -The Green Bicycle case, 1921. May 2002 - The Craig/Bentley Case, 1952. June 2002 - The A6 Murder Case, 1961. July 2002 - Murder of the Earl of Errol, 1941. August 2002 - The O J Simpson murder trial, 1995. September 2002 - The Aileen Wuornos case, 1989. October 2002 - The Ronald Opus case, 1993. November 2002 - Madame X, 1929. December 2002 - The Spree Killer, 1984. January 2003 - Shootout at Smiths' Club, 1966. February 2003 - The Christine Dryland case, 1991. March 2003 - Poisoned Pie in Essex, 1982. April 2003 - The Heydrich assassination, 1943. May 2003 - The Diana Davidson Murder case, 1969. June 2003 - The death of Alkibiades, 404 BC. July 2003 - The headsman of Colmar, 1780. August 2003 - The Ruth Ellis case, 1955. September 2003 - The Mel Jones Murder case, 1975. October 2003 - The Bluebeard of the bath, 1915. November 2003 - Murder in a combat zone, 1966. December 2003 - The Barn Restaurant murder case, 1972. January 2004 - The assassination of JFK, 1963. February 2004 - Judge Falcone and the Mafia, 1992. March 2004 - Gilles de Rais/Bluebeard, 1404-1440. April 2004 - The hand in the sand case, 1885. May 2004 - The body in the bag, 1979
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