Rose West, wife, mother, serial killer.
So far they’ve unearthed three sets of remains.
This is humanity, if you can call it that, at its worst.
Her terrible crimes are often overshadowed by her murderous husband, Fred. But exactly what role did she play in their twisted relationship?
She’s an evil wicked woman.
What appeared to be some human hair was discovered, and underneath this were human remains.
What drove this woman to commit some of the most barbaric murders the country has ever seen?
They said, “When we finish with you, we’re gonna kill you and bury you under the paving stones across [town 00:00:46].”
From the outside, she appeared to be the very model of normality, but the events that unfolded at number 25 Cromwell Street truly were crimes that shook Britain.
Hidden behind smoked glass and under heavy escort, Rosemary West was inside the court’s building within five minutes.
October 1995 and Winchester Crown Court was prepared for what was built as the trial of the century.
There were authors there. There were courtroom artists. There was the international media. It was an absolute media scrum. That didn’t detract from the seriousness of it all. This was a woman on trial for her liberty.
In the dock, a 41 year old woman who faced 10 charges of murder. One of the victims included her own daughter. Her name was Rosemary Pauline West.
We were not spared any of the graphic details about what had become of these poor girls. There was the pathological evidence, which all pointed out to some former sadistic behavior against them whilst they were still alive, culminating in their death.
The look on the jury’s face was disbelief, even in the overview and the open end speeches, the content of what was to follow was abhorrent.
Rosemary West teared in the dark. She seemed to show little emotion to most of the evidence. The time that she did show tears or drop her head, was when there was reference to Heather, her daughter. Whether this play acting, where it was real, it was very hard to tell.
The events that led to Winchester Crown Court that October began years earlier when Bill and Daisy Letts gave birth to their fifth child, a girl who they named Rosemary.
Rose was born 29th of November 1953, in a little seaside town in North Devon called Northam. It was very picturesque, quite remote in the winter, but in the summer absolutely idyllic.
Growing up in Northam I’ve got lovely memories, beautiful memories really. It is all farmland, fields. We had the sea, and we just … well I just got up on school holidays. We lived out in the farm full of mud and sand and it was always a big meal on the table. It was great.
This idyllic environment belied a harsh home life for the Letts’ children who grew up in conditions that were far from serene.
Rose is fairly brought up in a very dysfunctional house. Her father Bill Lett was a very strange man.
Rose’s father was a despot in his own home, so people would see this very charming man, but behind closed doors, he was very violent to his wife, Daisy. He was violent to some of the children. Rose was to some extent protected from that, because he knew she was slightly slower than the other children. She could never keep up, and the other children would call her Dozy Rosie.
There were a number of difficulty in the family, a number of abusive experiences that she had that I think are useful in helping understand how she developed as a young girl and then as an adolescent, and made a vulnerable develop into the offender that she became. Then you have a mother who suffered from severe depression. Her mother was apparently been treated with electric convulsive therapy when she was pregnant with Rose.
We lived next door to the Letts family and we all knew that the children … well they didn’t have a good life. They never went out very much at all. They were never allowed to get dirty them children, no. No. That’s why they just walked around the garden. They didn’t play in the garden. They just walked around, also with stiff arms and just walked around. But in the end, I don’t think anybody bothered with the kids, really. They weren’t allowed out of that wall.
As well as the violence at home, young Rose was also the victim of sexual abuse.
I think Rose’s sisters just wanted to get away from there. Rose curiously … Rose accepted the regime and was the subject of terrible sexual abuse from Bill Letts. While I took a proof of evidence from her, it was a sanitized version of her early life that she gave, where the darkest sinister side was dealt with by symbols, almost. This man in a dark cape and dark hat, almost a shadow following her as a child when she’d walked. That was about as near as she’d get.
It might be a case that she learned to placate her father through the sexual abuse that happened. She might also have particular ways of dealing with her father that mean that she escapes his brutality.
When Rose was 13, the family left Devon and moved to [inaudible 00:07:24] of Bishop’s Cleeve, some 15 miles from Gloucester. It was only a few years later that in 1969, young Rose Letts would meet Fred West for the first time.
Rose was waiting at a bus stop when she met Fred. Fred had … she said had suffered gangky green teeth. He was smelly, but she said he could charm the birds of the trees. When it came to meeting Fred, who came from an even more extreme background than Rose, it was just … it was a perfect storm. It was an accident waiting to happen.
It is very often forgotten how she came to meet Frederick West in the first place on her age when she did. While she may have been young and perhaps somewhat sexually active, Frederick West, 12 years her senior, was a man of the world.
Fred West was born in 1941 in the Gloucestershire village of Much Marcle. At the age of 21, he married Catherine Costello, also known as Rena. After a year of marriage and living in Scotland, Rena gave birth to a daughter, Charmaine. Although it appears Fred was not her father. A year later, a second daughter arrived, Ann Marie. The family moved to the southwest, but after a turbulent few years of marriage, Fred found himself bringing up the girls alone.
[inaudible 00:09:07] who had with him to look after two children, and she very quickly moved in with him into a carver, and she was brought into whatever Frederick West’s world was.
Fred West’s world was in fact dominated by sex. He harbored an interest in pornography, prostitution, and sadism, and he was soon encouraging Rose to join in. A year later, and with Rose pregnant, Fred moved his growing family to a new home in Gloucester at 25 Midland Road.
She was quite heavily pregnant by the time they moved to Midland Road. She would be 17 at this time. So you’ve got a 17 year old whose got a baby. She has Heather, her first child and then two just little girls to look after. You have already this kind of strange sex life, where Frederick wants to spy on her to push her to have sex with friends, people that they knew in the road. All of this was a lot for a young girl to cope with. What chance did she have just from home straight into this situation?
Some time in March 1971, when Rose had yet to turn 18, young Charmaine went missing. While the Wests’ claimed she had gone to live with her natural mother and Fred’s first wife, Rena, the truth was far more sinister.
Fred and Rose West were married in January 1972. Later that year, the family moved from their flat in Midland Road to a new home at 25 Cromwell Street. Although Fred put bachelor on his marriage certificate, there was no record of him having divorced his first wife, Rena. Along with the couple, were their children Anne Marie, Heather and their new arrival May. Of young Charmaine, the daughter from Fred’s first marriage, there was no sign.
25 Cromwell Street is not a large property. It was small. It was even smaller by the time he had placed numerous small walls inside to make little cells of places where people could sleep.
In moving to Cromwell street, the Wests had overstretched themselves financially. To supplement Fred’s income as a builder, he began altering the inside of their new house, so he could accommodate lodges.
The house was on three floors and as it turned out a basement as well. But the rooms were very small and very close together, and to have a family there, and probably then a half a dozen lodges, the place would of been packed, and it would of been very difficult to come and go without hearing footsteps on the stairs.
As well as rent from lodges, Fred West also earned money on the side from minor criminal activities.
The best way to describe him was a petty thief. Someone who would be able to deal and wheel with most people. Had convictions for minor offenses of theft. Theft of metal, that sort of thing, scaffolding. He had served minor terms of imprisonment during the times of his life.
Only a few months after they moved to Cromwell Street however, Fred and Rose would come to the attention of police for a far more serious matter.
I met Fred and Rose when I was at [inaudible 00:13:15] back in 1972. Car pulled up with a couple in, and the girl in the window [inaudible 00:13:24] asking me where I was going. She seemed really friendly, not much older than me, and they said, “Oh, we’ll give you a lift as far as Gloucester.”
Caroline Roberts got on well with Fred and Rose. When they offered her a job as a nanny, she was only too pleased to accept.
I actually got on quite well with Rose great from the start. I suppose it was because there’s just a slight age difference. She was quite tactile as well. She liked to play. She’d look at my hair and say, “Oh I love your hair and I think it’s … I love your hair. Lovely eyes.” She’s very [inaudible 00:13:58].
While she got on with Rose, Caroline grew concerned about Fred’s behavior.
I realized after couple of days of being there that he was very like hands on with Rose. He was forever groping out of her. He would sometimes grope her over clothes or put a hand up her skirt when she was doing something [inaudible 00:14:22].
The worst was his bragging. He seemed to brag about really strange things as well, like he told me, “If you ever get pregnant, don’t you worry because I’ll give you abortions. I’ve done them before.” But it wasn’t till about a week before I left there, that he mentioned Anne Marie, who was eight. He said that she wasn’t a virgin and Anne Marie was in the room at the time, and I saw her head go down. I thought, “I think maybe there might be some kind of abuse going on.”
When Fred and Rose asked Caroline to take part in an orgy, she decided to leave Cromwell Street. A month later, however, she would meet the Wests again when she was hitchhiking home and they picked her up.
She got at the car, Rose and smiling and just apologizing. She said, “Oh we’re really sorry for what we said. We didn’t mean anything by it.”
Suddenly Caroline was attacked, knocked unconscious, bound with tape and taken back to Cromwell Street.
They took me up to the first floor, front room. I kind of cooperated going into the room, even though I was taped up and everything. That is when Rose started to try and kiss me and touch me, and of course I panicked and started protesting again, and that’s when I was threatened again and then I was tied up. That really was the beginning of a [inaudible 00:16:10] of being sexually abused, being beaten, being made to feel like I was a bag to be operated on. Rose to me was a mama. She was a friend and yet she was betraying me and assaulting me, and didn’t seem to care about it. I thought I was her friend.
One stage, somebody knocked on the door and I thought, I got to take a risk now. So I shouted out, and with that Rose panicked. She put the pillow over my head and tried to hold me down. Next thing I know the pillow is taken off me and I’m being picked up by the throat and I’ve got Fred’s face in my face, and he is so angry. She’s behind him looking over shoulder at me, and he’s so angry. He said, “We’re going to keep you in the cellar and let our black friends use you and when we’ve finished with you, we’re going to kill you and bury you under the paving stones of Gloucester.” He said, “There’s hundreds of girls there, police haven’t found them and they ain’t going to find you.” At that point, I kind of wished I was dead already. I wished the pillow had stayed, because … sorry. The [inaudible 00:17:45] gets to me. [inaudible 00:17:51]
Rose had to go down and look after the children for a little while, so I was left upstairs alone with Fred, and it was during that time that he did actually rape me. It didn’t last for long. He wasn’t physically hitting me or frightening. I just couldn’t get away from him because I was tied with my hands behind my back. After he had raped me, he started crying and he apologized for what he’d done, and he said, “Please don’t tell Rose. If she finds out, she’ll kill you and me.”
After initially agreeing to stay at Cromwell Street, Caroline managed to escape. But after reporting the crime, she decided not to give evidence in court. Unbeknownst to her, it was a decision that would have dreadful consequences.
The detective that was brought in was not at all compassionate. I felt like he kept saying to me, “Well you slept with this guy. Then you slept with this guy. Surely you were up for it. Maybe it got a little bit too rough.” He made me feel like it was all my fault.
The young lady didn’t have the confidence in the police that she probably could of done today, and she didn’t disclose that she had been raped by Frederick West at that time. Now during those allegations, it was quite clear that Rosemary West was as much an instigator as her husband. In fact, she had conducted some of the offenses herself. As a result of this, the two Wests appeared at Gloucester Magistrate Court and were convicted of offenses of indecent assault against her.
Actually find out by looking at it in the newspaper the next day that they had been fined 50 pound each for two offenses each, which is a total of 100 pound, which was a lot in those days, but not that much really. I was expecting at least a jail sentence for both of them.
That was a shot across the face, I suspect for them. When shortly after that, Lynda Gough came into their clutches, and whatever the relationship was there. And whatever happened with Linda, then she couldn’t be left to tell anyone.
With the prosecution of Fred and Rose barely meriting a mention in the local paper, the Wests went back to their lives, on the surface full of normality. What no one could of realized, however, was that behind the curtains of Cromwell Street, hid a world of torture and murder. A world that would remain hidden for another 20 years.
In the summer of 1992, a chance allegation of child abuse at the home of Fred and Rosemary West was the catalyst for one of the most shocking murder cases Britain had ever seen.
In the heart of Gloucester, one three story terrace home has become the focal point of the city’s biggest ever criminal investigation.
The secrets of number 25 Cromwell Street were about to be revealed.
A police officer was patrolling in Cromwell Street when he was approached by a number of children. One of the children told the officer that he thought the children of the West were being abused in some way. A meeting took place that day, and as a result of that, a joined team of police officers and social workers went to Cromwell Street and searched the premises there, and took the children into care.
After interviews with the youngsters who were age between 15 and 11, Fred and Rose West were both charged with abusing their own children. Charges that were dropped weeks later, when all the children decided not to give evidence.
Some of the social workers started to talk to each other, and they made mention to one another that the children that they were looking after made some conversation about Heather, who was the first daughter of Rosemary and Frederick West, saying that, “If you don’t behave or you don’t eat your tea,” you’ll end up under the patio like Heather.
When this family threat was relate to the police, they were justifiably concerned. During the abuse investigations, no trace of Heather could be found. She had seemingly disappeared.
A lot of work had been done to try and locate her, which included interviewing both Frederick and Rosemary West. During the course of these interviews, Rosemary West had made assertions about how she had come to leave. Frederick West had made the same sort of mention that they’d had a family argument more often than not about her becoming a lesbian.
All inquires to trace Heather had failed. From what we could see, she had just disappeared.
So the surmise had to be that she was either out of the country or that she was dead.
An application was made for a warrant to go and search the garden, dig up the patio.
Detectives believe the solution to an eight year mystery may be buried in the back garden of this terrace house in Gloucester. It belongs to a couple whose daughter vanished in 1986. But no one ever reported that Heather West had disappeared, and this is proving an obstacle to the investigation.
A local reporter had got to the scene and shouted out, “What’s happened to your daughter, Heather?” There was an unusual response to that by Fred West and it wasn’t, “I don’t know,” or “I’m as concerned as anyone else.” What he said was an answer which wasn’t the question. He said, “I haven’t murdered my daughter,” and that got alarm bells ringing.
Just after 4:00 on the 26th of February, a human female was discovered under the patio of Cromwell Street.
Shortly after this first bone had been found, what appeared to be some human hair was discovered, and underneath this were human remains.
The covers have now been removed, revealing a gaping four foot trench in the back garden of number 25 Cromwell Street.
The home office pathologist was called for, and on examining the excavations in Cromwell Street, he made a startling discovery.
He expressed that he had found two more femurs and came out with this sort of [glimp 00:25:23] comment that either that he had found the first three legged woman or there was another victim in the garden. Professor [inaudible 00:25:33] and I was absolutely convinced that this other femur was of a young female. But who was she and why was her remains there?
During the following hours, West was interviewed repeatedly, and by that evening he had claimed to be responsible for the murders of not only Heather but also two other women, later identified as Allison Chambers and Shirley Robinson. Shirley was eight months pregnant at the time she was killed.
He said that this girl called Shirley Robinson was someone that had come to live in the house there, and that he had been having an affair with her, and unbeknown to Rose and that although she was a lesbian, he had got her pregnant. She wanted to have the baby and she was going to live with Fred and they were all going to live happily as a family.
Fred came out with this ridiculous idea that all his promised them was a bit of fun, and then they wanted this lovey dovey business that he couldn’t cope with, and Rose wouldn’t of been happy with that, so he killed them.
As the case against Fred built, detectives were left wondering where Rose fitted in.
Fred’s response was very complicated and changed over time. Rose was much more clear. Rose from the start, right through to the end of the trial was, “It’s nothing to do with me.”
Within the investigation itself it was realized that a lot of the things that Rosemary West had said about how Heather disappeared were exaggerated, and now we actually located Heather, made it quite apparent that Rosemary West was lying.
Fred West was interviewed 151 times in the course of the investigation. During which he admitted and denied the charges put to him before changing his story again. Rose, on the other hand, during her 60 interviews, spoke only to offer a simple, “No comment.”
That was a challenge for the investigation. Just because the bodies were found in the house, doesn’t mean to say she had anything to do with it.
As detectives carried on with identifying anyone who had contact with the West, another possible victim emerged. Linda Gough, who had been missing since 1973. In possession of this new information, detectives interviewed Fred West again.
He had been told that we were going to excavate every inch of the floor area of Cromwell Street, which included the ground level which we hadn’t yet covered, which was the bathroom. A bathroom in which he had said that he had killed or decapitated some of the victims that we’d already found. Then I had a phone call from the solicitor from the [inaudible 00:28:36] to say that he wished to see me. We stood in the corridor and he handed to me this note. It signed by Frederick West and it outlined in there that he authorized Howard Ogden to advise me that there were approximately another nine victims. The names of which he could identify included Linda Gough. We now had something that was almost beyond comprehension.
Also named on the list was Rena, Fred’s first wife and their daughter, Charmaine. Over the course of the next few weeks, every inch of 25 Cromwell Street was examined, including the gardens and cellar. As excavations continued, the house revealed yet more victims. Their remains gave a chilling indication of how they met their deaths.
At the house, the excavations continue as the remains are taken away for forensic examination.
These victims were not there of their own accord. They were unclothed at the time of their death. That meant that the bindings, especially the rope made of plastic like a washing line plastic, was around the victim in a naked form.
From the remains found in the garden and cellar of Cromwell Street, detectives confirmed that the victims had been bound and gagged with tape or clothing, presumably to keep them quiet as they were tortured. They had been dismembered, and most beheaded. In some cases, small bones such as fingers, toes, and knee caps had been removed and taken away. One of the most chilling finds was a mask made of tape that was still wrapped around the skull, complete with tubes that allowed the victim to breathe until they were finally killed. The nature of the crimes were so gruesome, that reporters covering the case were told to tone down their coverage.
What we know about sexually sadistic homicides is that individuals who commit them, they enjoy the control and the power, but it’s not just about control and power, because many sex offenders, many people who commit offenses, enjoy control and power. It goes beyond that. They enjoy the humiliation. They enjoy a degradation. They enjoy the suffering of the victim.
Between the 26th of February and the 8th of March, nine sets of remains were found at Cromwell Street. They were Heather West, Rose’s first child last seen in 1987. Allison Chambers who was 16 when she disappeared. Shirley Robinson, last seen in April 1978. The bones of her unborn child were found with her remains. [Therese 00:31:44] Siegenthaler who went missing in April 1974. Shirley Hubbard missing since December 1974. Lucy Partington, who disappeared on her way home in December 1973. Juanita Mott, missing since April 1975. Linda Gough, who left home on the 19th of April 1973. She was never seen alive again, and Carol Ann Cooper, who was last seen boarding a bus on the 10th of November 1973, after meeting friends in Worcester. Of course the question remained, what had happened to Fred’s first wife and their daughter Charmaine? In the note given to John Bennett, West admitted killing them both. But detectives were about to prove otherwise.
The timeframe showed that Frederick West was almost certain he still in custody at the time of Charmaine’s death.
In November 1970, Fred West was sent to Leyhill Prison in Wotton-Under-Edge, to serve a 10 month sentence for theft.
By this time, we already knew that Rosemary West had difficulty in disciplining Charmaine. So we’ve now got a problem with Frederick West’s story, because it does appear that she was probably killed before he comes out of prison.
The remains of Charmaine’s body were discovered at 25 Midland Road on the fourth of May. Forensic comparison of the teeth and the child’s skull with a photograph taken just before her disappearance, confirmed she had died when Fred was in prison. Rose would of been 17 at the time of the murder.
If you say that Rosemary killed Charmaine when he was in prison, for certain she would of told Frederick what had happened, whether it be an accident or however it occurred, and he would of had to of come up with a plan to resolve it. What better to say for example, this is total surmise and speculation, “Rena, won’t you come down to collect Charmaine?” When Rena turns up at the house, for Fred to say, “I’m afraid that Charmaine’s not here. She’s over at my mother’s in Much Marcle. Should we go and get her?” So Frederick West could of taken her on his own and murdered her there.
Rena’s body was discovered in a field in Kempley, some 15 miles from Gloucester. Nearby were the remains of Anne McFall, a previous girlfriend of Fred West, wrapped in some old curtains. She was six months pregnant at the time of her death.
Frederick West always denied having killed her, and always said it was his first love, so what the circumstances were surrounding her death are unknown.
In December 1994, the Wests appeared together at Gloucester Magistrate Court. Fred was charged with 12 counts of murder, whilst Rose was charged with nine. In all her court appearances to date, she had denied any involvement in the killings. On New Year’s Day 1995, news broke that threw the whole case against the West and their awful crimes into doubt.
Often I read or it’s been said that he hanged himself. He didn’t hang himself at all. He asphyxiated himself, having over a period of time made a rope out of blanket. He couldn’t really use anything other than the handles of the door and a catchment on a window to bind this piece of rope round, but what he successfully did was bound it round his neck, and sank to his knees.
Detectives from West Midland’s police were back at the prison today continuing their investigation into Fred West’s death.
Your thinking processes were, “Well what has that done to the investigation?”
It not only had him cheating justice himself, it left the legal system with a problem. He and Rose had been jointly charged with most of the murders, but now it was Rose alone.
The trial of Rosemary West began on the third of October 1995.
Rosemary West went on trial in Winchester today, charge with the murder of 10 young women and girls.
Unlike her husband, who had talked openly to police admitting to several of the killings, Rose had spoken only to deny any involvement in the murders. Now with Fred dead, she stood alone in the dark to face 10 charges of murder.
The evidence that was put to the court consisted of a number of facets, but most importantly there was the forensic evidence. Then there was the evidence of the live witnesses. Then together with that, there was the evidence that joined everything together, which was known as similar fact evidence.
Similar fact evidence is circumstantial evidence. It’s the smoke rather than the fire, but I think as it was pointed out by the prosecution, they’re like strands of string and when you bind them together, they can become very strong.
The fact that a number of victims were last seen going to catch buses in country areas. Then you had the fact that these victims were bound, or some of them were bound, or most of them with no clothing. To join that in together, you had the evidence of live victims who had shown that they had been bound in similar ways with tape and the same sort of tape, which they have described and they didn’t know what we had found. As to the victims in the ground, and who had applied the tape or who had been present, but not just Frederick West, but Rosemary West.
During the seven week trial, the court was spared none of the horrific details of the Wests’ crimes. The most chilling evidence came from those who escaped their clutches, including Fred’s own daughter, Anne Marie, and former nanny, Caroline Roberts.
When I went into the witness box, I could see her up to the left, and all I had in my mind was, “I’m gonna face her this time,” because I felt so guilty about not getting them a prison sentence the first time around. If I’d gotten them a prison sentence probably none of these girls would of died.
Despite the evidence heard in court, the public still felt Fred West had escaped justice, and more importantly preventing him revealing more about his and Rose’s actions.
There may have been more victims. There were questions that hadn’t been answered about what had really happened to the victims. There’d be no clear admissions and explanations. It was the situation with Mary Bastholm who had disappeared in very similar circumstances.
Mary Bastholm was a 15 year old girl who disappeared from Gloucester in 1968.
She was a waitress at a café that he used to go. It was an area of town he would of been very familiar with. He vehemently denied any involvement with Mary Bastholm. The police believed that it was to retain some kind of control.
The fate of Mary Bastholm remains a mystery. Police no longer consider the case live, but have stated any new leads will be investigated.
Rosemary West was found guilty today on three of the 10 murder charges she’s facing.
When the jury came back, they found her guilty of the murder of Charmaine at 25 Midland Road, the murder of Lynda Gough, and the murder of Heather. Sitting there listening to that, that they had really considered the evidence, now they have convicted her of a murder before she had ever lived at 25 Cromwell Street, the murder of Charmaine. Now they were convicting her of two murders that must of occurred when they’d already taken occupation at Cromwell Street.
It seemed to follow to myself and the investigating team, that if she was guilty of those three, then they must find her guilty of the ones in the middle.
The jury agreed. After another night of deliberations, they returned the following day and convicted Rose West of the remaining seven murders.
My client is totally devastated. She wept uncontrollably after hearing the verdict of the jury.
I acted [inaudible 00:41:33]. Put it this way, I wouldn’t sleep at night if I was convinced she was innocent, and I do sleep quite well at night.
Here was a husband and wife team that were doing some terrible things, and not just to the victims, but also allegations of sexual abuse on their own children saw that they were very strange people.
In some ways, my upbringing was not that much different to Rosemary’s. I’m not sure the difference is between us for her to be able to be coerced into the things she did. I think basically the difference is I’ve got a conscious, and I’m not sure that she has, and I definitely know that Fred West hasn’t.
Although the jury found her guilty, the exact role play by Rose West in the murders is still unclear.
It is often said when you read it or you hear it, or you see it in films, people talk about Frederick West being this murderer, this mass murderer and the West killings by Frederick West, where although that Rosemary West is serving life imprisonment, it seems almost as though that she is sort of not really part of this. Though that she was not involved in this, or if she was, it was to a much lesser part. Whereas anyone who is involved and who dealt with the investigation or involved in it, knows that that’s not right. Some of the behavior that was outed in the trial, it very difficult to understand that a mother would do to their own children. That these offenses took place not just against the deceased victims but live victims and also members of the West family themselves.
Rose West was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1995, with a judge recommending that she should never be released.
.She’s an evil wicked woman and she’s going inside, and she should never ever, ever come out.
A year later, number 25 Cromwell Street was completely demolished. In its place, a simple walkway with no memorial or marker to remind people of the awful crimes that happened there.
Rosemary West has never ever admitted any culpability to any crimes that she was charged with. Certainly not at the time of her conviction or appeal, so she’s in total denial. That’s in my view.
If I could just have one wish it would be for her to just tell the truth about what she does know. Whether that be she has took part in murders or she knew these young girls were gonna be disposed of. Whatever, she’s doing her life sentence so why not just come out and tell the truth? A confession could help a lot of people, people who don’t know.
In 2000, Rose West considered appealing her conviction before changing her mind.
After the application had been submitted she said, “I don’t want to come out of prison. I’d rather stay in prison,” and for the sake of her family and for the sake of herself. She said, she saw herself as making a life in prison. Well people can always change their minds, and I said that to her. But I also said, “Well does that mean you’re admitting all of this?” And she said, “No, I’m not.”