Trevor McDonald:
Twenty five years ago, the chance remark of a child into care led to one of the biggest murder investigations in British history.
John Fitzgerald:
She said, “I’ve got another sister,” and the foster mother said, “Have you? Where is she?” And she said, “Under the patio.”
Trevor McDonald:
Gloucester Police began digging up the garden at the home of Fred and Rosemary West. What they found would uncover the depraved and shocking secrets that had bound the west together for years.
Trevor McDonald:
This vacant plot is where Number 25 Cromwell Street once stood. It’s now been demolished. This was done at the request of the families of the nine victims recovered at the address.
Howard Sounes:
Most serial killers are men, but one of the key things about Fred and Rose West is they’re a couple.
David Canter:
They created a spider’s web in which they suck people in and then were able to do what they wanted with them.
Trevor McDonald:
The Wests maintained a façade of normal family life. But what went on behind closed doors here was far, far darker. In her first television interview, a former lodger at Cromwell Street tells us how she escaped just in time.
Jayne Hamer:
He took me to the cellar, it was a dark, dank place. There was a little bed in there, but I just thought it was for children. Find out years later on that it wasn’t.
Trevor McDonald:
And the family of one of the murdered women speak for the first time about their horror and grief.
Belinda:
It came on the television, “Cromwell Street’s Bodies,” I just knew deep down she was going to be there.
Trevor McDonald:
Before Fred West could face justice, he committed suicide. Rose West was jailed for life. She has never accepted her guilt.
Mary-Ann:
We needed her to admit what she’d done, but she denied it.
Trevor McDonald:
Now we uncover the truth about the Wests and the role Rose West played in their murderous partnership.
David Canter:
It’s tempting to think that he would be the dominant individual. But she was very manipulative.
Caroline Owens:
She put a pillow over my head. At that point I thought I might die.
Leo Goatley:
There was this dark side to her that could explode. And in those moments of fury I would say that Rose would be capable of absolutely anything.
Trevor McDonald:
Twenty five years ago, one of the most disturbing and chilling murder cases in Britain came to light when the police began digging up the garden of an ordinary house in an ordinary street. This is a 3-D floor plan of 25 Cromwell Street. The Wests lived here for more than 20 years, and in that time they killed nine people.
Trevor McDonald:
I reported on it at the time.
Trevor McDonald:
“Reports from Gloucester on the latest charge and today’s other developments.”
Trevor McDonald:
The news shocked and horrified the nation.
Speaker 10:
Another morning’s drilling has located body number six.
Trevor McDonald:
And what became known as the Gloucester House of Horrors was the biggest story of its time.
Speaker 11:
All of the bodies had some bones missing, indicating they’d been mutilated after death.
Trevor McDonald:
Police discovered another three bodies elsewhere, bringing the total number of murders to 12. The victims were all female, between the ages of eight and 27. At least two of them were lodgers at Cromwell Street at the time of their disappearance.
Trevor McDonald:
I’ve come to the city of Gloucester to find out how Fred and Rose West were able to escape detection for more than 20 years. As a journalist, Howard Sounes broke major stories about the West case and wrote the bestselling book about the crimes.
Trevor McDonald:
What could life have been like for a family here?
Howard Sounes:
It would be enough. The Wests, in this street, were considered to be among the more stable families. Fred did odd jobs for the neighbors down the street, they could be very charming.
Trevor McDonald:
But even so, all of the houses are very close around it. It’s very difficult to imagine all of that happening without any knowledge of people around.
Howard Sounes:
It’s a slightly transient community, that’s part of the issue.
Trevor McDonald:
We can imagine that this is where the house was.
Howard Sounes:
Yeah. So they’ve tried to cover up all traces of it, but you see this line of sort of mastic?
Trevor McDonald:
Yes.
Howard Sounes:
So this would’ve been what Fred called his windy house, which was basically just a shed. Because one of the grotesque aspects of it is that area was really a sort of play area for the children. The Wests are having a family life here, whereas there are bodies right underfoot.
Trevor McDonald:
This is macabre in the extreme.
Trevor McDonald:
During the 21 years the Wests were living at Cromwell Street, as well as bringing up a family, they also took in lodgers. Jayne Hamer rented a room at the top of the house when she was 16 years old. She has not spoken on television before.
Trevor McDonald:
How well did you get to know the Wests?
Jayne Hamer:
I came to know Fred fairly well. He was a pleasant landlord. We never had any reason to have cross words. Rose was harder to get on with. Very domineering, very curt. She seemed like a very controlling person. Rose definitely ruled the roost.
Trevor McDonald:
I’m wondering about the general atmosphere in the house, would you describe it as fairly normal? Genial?
Jayne Hamer:
It seemed fairly normal when the children were around. I would very often look after them when Fred and Rose went out. When I look back now I do wonder why I was babysitting for the children, what were they doing? Maybe they weren’t going out drinking, maybe they were going out finding victims.
Trevor McDonald:
The Wests presented the appearance of a normal family life. The children attended local schools and Fred West was an industrious worker, employed as a jobbing builder by Derek and Wendy Thompson.
Derek Thompson:
Fred wanted to work every day. Fred would go out to a job on Christmas Day if I asked him. He was a perfect employee. I’d always take him out to jobs in my car, and he would talk incessantly.
Wendy Thompson:
We used to hear all sorts of-
Derek Thompson:
Orgy parties, he used to tell me about.
Wendy Thompson:
But we didn’t believe him. We didn’t … we just didn’t listen to him.
Derek Thompson:
It just went in one ear and out the other.
Trevor McDonald:
Fred West put his building skills to use at his home, extending the house and fixing up the cellar.
Howard Sounes:
The cellar becomes a key part of this story, it becomes a dungeon, a torture chamber. It also became a place where they buried victims.
Trevor McDonald:
Later, West concreted over the floor and the cellar became a bedroom for the younger children. They slept there completely unaware that beneath them lay the bodies of five young women. Eighteen year old, Juanita Mott, was one of them. Belinda and Mary-Ann, her younger sisters, are speaking together on camera for the first time.
Belinda:
That’s the three of us on that one photograph.
Trevor McDonald:
Juanita had disappeared without trace in 1975.
Belinda:
I knew something was wrong because she always said to me, “I’ll always be there for you.”
Mary-Ann:
It was a constant search. Everything that we could think of, we’d do. And if we weren’t getting any response, we’d try a different angle.
Trevor McDonald:
Belinda, you visited the house in Cromwell Street when your sister was missing.
Belinda:
Yeah. I had a friend, she rented one of the rooms upstairs. Rose West would be sat on the doorstep with the kids, there was always two kids sat in a big pram outside. Another one’s like running around.
Trevor McDonald:
What sense did you have when you went there about the general nature of the place?
Belinda:
It was just dim. It was horrible. I didn’t … I said to my friend, “How can you live here? It’s horrible.” And she said, “It’s cheap.” When I think back now, when I was upstairs, and little did I know that Juanita was under the staircase downstairs. It was just eerie.
Trevor McDonald:
The Wests had got away with murder for years, but they were also sexually abusing some of their children. And despite being threatened to stay silent, one of the daughters told a friend what had been going on. The youngest children were taken into care, and would never again return to the family home.
Trevor McDonald:
Fred and Rose West were arrested. Leo Goatley was the duty solicitor.
Leo Goatley:
Firstly, it was a tendency to blame the children, which is never a good sign in any abuse case. And secondly, a preoccupation with I hope they’re not going to interfere with the house in their search.
Trevor McDonald:
The children were too scared to give evidence against their parents, and the case collapsed. The Wests thought they were off the hook. But one of the detectives, Hazel Savage, discovered that 16 year old Heather West had not been seen for six years.
Leo Goatley:
She was one of those intuitive kind of detectives who didn’t feel happy about the situation. There was this story about Heather being very difficult, she’s left home, she’s gone. And that triggered Hazel Savage to make inquiries, and no national insurance or social security records came back.
Trevor McDonald:
Subsequently, while in care and away from the influence of their parents, the West’s children began to talk about their life at Cromwell Street.
John Fitzgerald:
One of the children said to her foster mother, “I’ve got another sister.” And the foster mother said, “Have you? Where is she?” And she said, “Under the patio.”
John Fitzgerald:
If that foster mother had just thought, “This is silly,” and ignored it, I wouldn’t have been surprised, because it sounded too fanciful, really. The foster mother in fact took it to Social Services. Social Services talked to the police. And the rest they say is history.
Trevor McDonald:
Finally, the West’s crimes were about to be exposed. It would be beyond the scope of any investigation the Gloucester police had ever undertaken. And then Fred West made a chilling confession.
Trevor McDonald:
February 1994. The police are digging up the garden of Fred and Rose West after their daughter told a carer that her sister, Heather, was buried under the patio. But before any remains could be found, Fred West made a startling confession.
Fred West:
And I brought the [inaudible 00:11:12] and grabbed her around the neck. What do I mean? I mean I didn’t grab her around the neck to choke or do anything, all I was going to do is grab her around the neck and shake her.
Howard Sounes:
He says, “It was me. I did it, yeah. Fair cop, I killed Heather.” Fred had decided, “I’ll take the rap for this, and maybe I’ll get off, maybe I’ll serve a few years and I’ll come home, and we’ll still have Cromwell Street. And Rose will be waiting for me.”
Trevor McDonald:
Rose West was also questioned by police. But she denied any involvement in Heather’s death.
Leo Goatley:
I went over to see Rose and she was very quiet, not wanting to say much, and cursing Fred really, more than … if she said anything it was about that effing Fred West.
Trevor McDonald:
Within two days, the police had excavated a femur or thigh bone from the garden. They presumed this was just a tragic domestic murder, until forensic pathologist professor Bernard Knight made a shocking discovery.
Bernard Knight:
We dug a big hole in the ground which went down, [inaudible 00:12:15] and found two more femurs. I remember the famous remark I made to him that either we’ve found the first three legged woman or we’ve got more than one body. [inaudible 00:12:25] really.
Trevor McDonald:
Confronted with the evidence, Fred West now admitted to a second murder. He may have hoped that the police would then stop digging. But when he realized that they were planning to take his home apart, he wrote an extraordinary note.
Trevor McDonald:
“I wish to admit to a further approx. nine killings. Expressly Charmaine, Rena, Linda Gough, and others to be identified.”
Trevor McDonald:
West was taken back to Cromwell Street to mark the location of the other bodies. He was adamant that he’d acted alone, and that his wife was not involved.
Trevor McDonald:
Professor David Canter is an expert in investigative psychology. Why does he think West confessed so easily?
David Canter:
People give confessions because they think there’s no alternative, and that’s what he became aware of, and thought he could manipulate it. And he may well have convinced himself that this was some sort of heroic act, that he could carry out in order to save Rose.
Trevor McDonald:
Unusually, police knew the identity of the murderer, but not the identity of most of the victims. It was what the investigation team called an upside down murder.
Trevor McDonald:
Professor David Whittaker, a leading forensic dentist, was brought onto the case. He had refined a painstaking technique to identify victims by matching teeth and points on their skull to a photograph.
David Whittaker:
The real problem is when you don’t have dental records. So I said to the police early on, “What we need to do, I think, is to collect photographs of missing females in Britain.”
Trevor McDonald:
There were thousands of women reported missing at that time, but an examination of the recovered bones put the victims’ ages between 15 and 25.
David Whittaker:
Well that dropped it to a few hundred, and then they started collecting these photographs.
Trevor McDonald:
Professor Whittaker was then able to use his technique to start putting names to the victims. West had now admitted to 11 murders, nine hidden away in the cellar and garden at Cromwell Street, and two others buried elsewhere. He also divulged the location of a twelfth body. While Rose West maintained her innocence, Fred West wouldn’t stop talking, a bizarre mix of truth, fantasies, and lies.
Fred West:
You are trying to make it I just went out and blatantly killed somebody. No. And doing that turned to disaster.
Trevor McDonald:
Gloucester police were now certain that West was a prolific serial killer whose true persona had been disguised for years.
Leo Goatley:
Fred was always the guy to have a joke about, “This would be a great place to hide a body.” He was such an ineffectual, garrulous nonentity, that his makes would just sort of laugh him off, they didn’t take him seriously.
Leo Goatley:
Behind this façade, there was this monster.
Trevor McDonald:
The police wanted to know when West started killing and why. Fred West grew up in a village 16 miles from Gloucester. He left school barely able to read or write. He soon got into trouble for petty theft. But when he was 19, he was charged with a far more serious crime involving his 13 year old sister.
Howard Sounes:
Fred was accused of having sex with his sister, who became pregnant. When it came to court, his sister said, “I’m not going to give evidence against my brother.” And so the case collapsed. But it started a lifetime of deviant sexuality.
Trevor McDonald:
One year later, West met Rena, who was to become his wife for the next nine years.
Howard Sounes:
Rena’s first child was not by Fred, it was a girl called Charmaine, we don’t know who the father was.
Trevor McDonald:
Soon after they married, Rena had another daughter, Fred West’s first child. Rena wanted help with the children, so her friend Anna McFall came to live with them.
Trevor McDonald:
This is a picture of Anna McFall, so far as we know she was Fred West’s first victim.
Trevor McDonald:
The 18 year old was nearly seven months pregnant with Fred West’s child when she disappeared without trace.
Howard Sounes:
We don’t really know why Fred murdered Anna. There was rope in her grave, which means probably he tied her up. And also she was cut up. Her body was dismembered.
Trevor McDonald:
Fred West always denied murdering her, but he was able to show police roughly where he put her body.
David Canter:
That first murder is very significant in enabling Fred West to understand some of the technicalities of how you kill somebody. And he will have been aware that there were certain risks involved, but that if he behaved in a particular way, he could get away with it.
Trevor McDonald:
Around the time of Anna’s murder, Fred West’s volatile marriage broke down. Rena went to Scotland, leaving West looking after her two young daughters, Charmaine and Anna Marie. 27 year old Fred West was now on the hunt for another partner. And he was soon to find his perfect match, 15 year old Rosemary Letts. In a pattern that was to become familiar, West picked her up at a bus stop.
Trevor McDonald:
Hers was a tough, unconventional upbringing.
Howard Sounes:
Rose grew up in a dysfunctional household where incest was part of what went on. We think that her father sexually abused her.
Trevor McDonald:
Within a year of meeting West, Rose was pregnant and living with him at a flat at Midland Road in Gloucester.
Leo Goatley:
I think because of the abuse and the way she’d reacted to the abuse before she’d met Fred, it had made her very sexually promiscuous, anything went.
David Canter:
It’s tempting to think that he would be the dominant individual. But I think it’s very probable that she will have been able to manipulate Fred and to offer herself to him in various ways in order to get what she wanted out of him.
Trevor McDonald:
Rose certainly seemed to have some sort of hold over Fred West. When they were arrested in 1994, he consistently refused to implicate Rose in any of the murders.
Howard Sounes:
Rose was stronger than Fred psychologically. So when they were under the police spotlight, they were accused of murder, Rose kept her cool. “I know nothing. I didn’t do it, it was all Fred.”
David Canter:
Rose discovered very early on that by refusing to admit to anything, she’s also keeping at bay the detailed examination of all of her activities.
Trevor McDonald:
Police thought it unlikely that Fred West could have committed nine murders at home without his wife’s knowledge. The question was, to what extent was Rose West involved?
Trevor McDonald:
The police continued to look into her past for clues. And they found some disturbing evidence. Not long after Rose and Fred West had moved in together, he was sent to prison for dishonesty and theft. 17 year old Rose was left looking after Rena’s two young girls, and Heather, her own newborn baby at the Midland Road flat.
Howard Sounes:
There’s evidence from neighbors that she’s mistreating the children, and being sadistic, and it seems she really doesn’t like Charmaine, it’s not her child, after all. Indeed, it’s not Fred’s child.
Trevor McDonald:
Sometime in June 1971, Charmaine disappeared. Rose told everyone that she’d gone to live with Rena, her birth mother. The little girl was found 23 years later under an extension built by Fred at the back of the flat. Although Fred West confessed to killing Charmaine, he was in prison around the time she died. So the police suspected that the killer of the eight year old was probably Rose.
Howard Sounes:
Rena West comes back from Scotland. She came looking for her child, who in fact was dead. So Fred and Rose had a big problem. Fred later gave the impression that he took Rena out drinking, he got her drunk, and took her to Letterbox Field, just outside Much Marcle, and he killed her.
Trevor McDonald:
Two women and a child were already dead. But by the end of the 1970s, that toll would become much higher.
David Canter:
How do serial killers emerge? I would argue that they become very aware of who the vulnerable victims are, and if you kill somebody as part of some psychological desire and get away with it, then you’re much more dangerous.
Trevor McDonald:
In 1972, the Wests married and moved into 25 Cromwell Street with their growing family. Needing money to help pay the mortgage, this was the point at which they started to take in lodgers, attracting young women like Jayne Hamer.
Trevor McDonald:
Did you form any impressions of the relationship between Rose West and her husband, Fred West?
Jayne Hamer:
I realized that things weren’t … they weren’t a normal couple. I kind of sat in the living room with the children one night, and the doorbell went and red light lit up, and that’s when I found out Rose was having other men.
Trevor McDonald:
Was Fred West aware of what his wife was doing?
Jayne Hamer:
Yes. Definitely.
Trevor McDonald:
Extraordinary place to live.
Jayne Hamer:
If her husband wants to let his wife sleep with other men, then that’s their business. But I didn’t lie it. I didn’t like it, it wasn’t normal.
Trevor McDonald:
There was a highly charged sexual atmosphere in the house. Men were drawn to Cromwell Street by advertisements in contact magazines.
Leo Goatley:
Fred was the ultimate voyeur. He liked to hide in the cupboard with a camera and film her with men. Very, very weird.
Trevor McDonald:
Fred West was already a sadist. But Rose’s appetites were at least as dark.
Howard Sounes:
She didn’t know where to draw the line, and the weirder the better, the stranger the better, the more violent the sex was the better.
Trevor McDonald:
In Rose, Fred West had met the perfect partner. A young woman willing to indulge in his darkest fantasies, and take them even further.
David Canter:
Although Fred had the desire to involve himself in all sorts of sexual activity, I think it’s very likely that she was encouraging that and facilitating it in various ways.
Leo Goatley:
I suspect that there was this dark side to her that could explode with a fury, and in those moments of fury I would say that Rose would be capable of absolutely anything.
Trevor McDonald:
Before long, the Wests would lure others into their sordid activities.
David Canter:
They created a sort of spider’s web in which they sucked people in, and then were able to do what they wanted with them.
Trevor McDonald:
In 1994, police found nine sets of remains at 25 Cromwell Street. There were bones missing from all of them. These have never been found. In the graves, police also discovered evidence of torture, including ropes and masks made from packing tape.
David Canter:
The Wests would feel some power and significance by having control of individuals. And once they started doing that, gagging and binding the victims so that they could abuse them without them struggling, they would feel ever more power.
Trevor McDonald:
As the police inquiry progressed, a picture of the Wests modus operandi emerged, which often involved offering lifts to young women. Hitching and accepting lifts was a more common activity in the Gloucester area in the 1970s.
Howard Sounes:
One of the key things about Fred and Rose West as a murder case is they’re a couple. Most serial killers are men who operate alone. The world thinks of Mrs. West as this frumpy, middle aged housewife. But she was this pretty, young teenage girl when the murder began.
Trevor McDonald:
In 1973, three young women went missing. First was 19 year old Linda Gough, one of the West’s lodgers. She disappeared in April. Her mother was told that she had moved on. Then in November, 15 year old Carol Ann Cooper went missing from a bus stop. And in December, 21 year old student Lucy Pattington also vanished, again, from a bus stop.
Trevor McDonald:
For Lucy’s sister Marian life would never be the same.
Marian:
My mum said, “Lucy didn’t come home last night.” And we all knew that something had happened, because she wasn’t the kind of person to just leave. The police did roadblocks and searches, and there was a lake nearby the bus stop, and that was dragged. There was posters put up all over the area.
Marian:
My brothers presumed that she had been abducted. I didn’t make the step in my own mind. My mother also held out hope for a long time. This whole business of someone disappearing is a hugely shattering experience. The agony of living with not knowing.
Trevor McDonald:
In April 1974, a 14 year old Swiss student, Therese Siegenthaler, went missing probably after hitching a lift. And later that year, 15 year old Shirley Hubbard became the third victim to vanish from a bus stop. It was clear that the West’s sadistic behavior was intensifying. Shirley’s grave revealed yet more evidence of torture.
David Canter:
They would be looking for new and more exciting turn on from their activities that would give them the excitement that they were searching, and the feeling of significance that they were searching in their otherwise really quite mundane lives.
Trevor McDonald:
By 1974, the local press began to link the cases of young women who were just disappearing from the side of the road. But there was no evidence to point towards the Wests, or Cromwell Street. It was then in April 1975 that Belinda and Mary-Ann’s sister, Juanita, disappeared. It’s thought she’d been hitchhiking into Gloucester.
Trevor McDonald:
How did you make the connection between the disappearance of your sister and the Wests?
Belinda:
Came on the television, “Cromwell Street’s Bodies”. I just knew deep down she was going to be there.
Mary-Ann:
You hope that she’s not.
Belinda:
But I knew, as soon as I heard that. She’s going to be there, because I couldn’t find her anywhere. There was no trace of her anywhere.
Mary-Ann:
You don’t think it’s going to happen in your little Gloucester town, but it does. And knowing how close she was to all of us, yes, she’d go off, but she’d always come back. Something had to have happened.
Trevor McDonald:
It must’ve been extremely traumatic to hear about your sister’s demise.
Belinda:
Yeah. I find it really, really hard.
Mary-Ann:
Mum sort of hit the floor and we had to scrape her up daily. Literally she just didn’t function. She wouldn’t dress, she wouldn’t wash. There was no coming back from this.
Trevor McDonald:
It must be too awful to describe when you finally learned the truth about how she-
Belinda:
Yeah.
Trevor McDonald:
Died.
Belinda:
Yeah. We were told … that she was tortured.
Mary-Ann:
There were fingers missing.
Belinda:
She liked … she liked to party and stuff like that, but she would never have … said yes to going down there and doing what they liked to do. There’s no way. She wasn’t that sort of person at all.
Trevor McDonald:
Within the space of two years, six young women had been killed, cut up, and hidden at 25 Cromwell Street. But why did the Wests bury their victims at home?
David Canter:
Getting rid of the body when you’ve killed somebody is actually quite a challenging process, and it’s often the way in which stranger murderers actually are caught through the body being found. So I think Fred and Rose realized that they had to be very careful. Fred was always doing work around his house, and so that was the easiest and most direct place to leave the remains. You would have control over that, you could do it in secret without people really becoming suspicious of what was going on.
Trevor McDonald:
Many of the West’s lodgers didn’t stay sufficiently long to notice anything amiss. But one lodger, Jayne Hamer, did become concerned.
Trevor McDonald:
Fred West took you down to the cellar.
Jayne Hamer:
He took me to the cellar, and showed me the cellar, and I think that’s what perturbed me more than anything. It was a dark, dank place. There was a little bed in there, but I just thought it was a den for the children.
Trevor McDonald:
Yes.
Jayne Hamer:
Just find out years later on that it wasn’t.
Trevor McDonald:
Did you have any suspicions about what was happening there?
Jayne Hamer:
None at all. Until the last couple of weeks that I was there. Which is when I heard screaming in the middle of the night, “Stop it Daddy! Stop it Daddy! Please stop it Daddy!” And it sounded like one of the children. And that was reason for leaving.
Trevor McDonald:
Did you ever think of telling somebody about it?
Jayne Hamer:
I was 17, I’d left home at 16, who was going to believe a 17 year old?
Trevor McDonald:
I wonder whether you could describe to me your reactions when you were told what happened to some of the other people in the house.
Jayne Hamer:
Disbelief is the only way to describe it. I sometimes thing that being shown the cellar was maybe my way forward, maybe it was going to be me next. I thought I got away at the right time.
Trevor McDonald:
You thought it could’ve been you.
Jayne Hamer:
Yes.
Trevor McDonald:
It’s quite likely that Jayne Hamer left just in time. Her friend and fellow lodger, 18 year old Shirley Robinson, another vulnerable teenager was to fall victim to the Wests.
Howard Sounes:
Fred gets Shirley pregnant. And it seems that Shirley entertained fantasies that she and Fred might get married. She might be the next Mrs. West. And it seems that Rose became very jealous. Rose now had a motive for killing her, or for telling Fred to get rid of her.
Trevor McDonald:
Shirley disappeared when she was eight months pregnant. The Wests again evaded detection by telling everyone that she’d gone to live abroad. A year later, they befriended and killed another troubled teenager, 17 year old Alison Chambers. For the next eight years, there’s no evidence of any other murders at Cromwell Street.
David Canter:
There’s always going to be a question as to whether the Wests stopped killing, or whether they became much more cautious about what they did with the bodies. It’s very difficult to know. All sorts of other things intrude on their lives. Rose started having babies, there will be changes in their … their predilections and their sexual appetites.
Trevor McDonald:
Rose West was now the mother of eight children. And they became the target for her sadistic tendencies.
Howard Sounes:
A big part of Fred and Rose’s life was family, but Rose was the one who had the terrifying temper, who flew off the handle, who screamed at them, who beat them.
Trevor McDonald:
The West children were taken to hospital 31 times in 20 years. One child had a sexually transmitted infection. Others had injuries that should have rung alarm bells. So why didn’t the authorities suspect the abuse at 25 Cromwell Street? John Fitzgerald led the official review into some of the child protection issues that came out of the case.
John Fitzgerald:
People who injure children, they’re very good at disguising what they’re up to. They always get their story straight before they go to hospital. So they know precisely what they’re going to say. And they’ve worked out over time what will be accepted by professionals.
Trevor McDonald:
The Wests became adept at fending off any unwelcome scrutiny.
John Fitzgerald:
A pediatrician visited Cromwell Street and what she saw was a very normal family life being acted out in front of her. And she went away and reported back that, “I couldn’t find anything that was of concern.”
Trevor McDonald:
The children were terrorized and intimidated into silence. However, one of the eldest children had decided to move away, and her sister, 16 year old Heather, was also desperate to leave.
Howard Sounes:
Heather West was on the point of leaving home. And I think Fred and Rose feared that she might go to the police, and that was their great fear.
Trevor McDonald:
This was when Heather, their firstborn child, was killed and then buried under the patio at Cromwell Street. It seemed the Wests would stop at nothing to avoid detection.
Trevor McDonald:
But of course, in an ironic twist, it was Heather’s disappearance that led the police to their door nearly seven years later. Their search exposing all the other murders the Wests had successfully hidden for years.
Trevor McDonald:
By June 1994, the police believed they had enough evidence to jointly charge both Fred and Rose West with all the Cromwell Street murders. The pair were reunited for the first time in four months at a remand hearing, but Rose West now chose to distance herself from her husband.
Leo Goatley:
Rose wanted nothing to do with him, did not want to be associated with him the dark.
Howard Sounes:
He was snubbed, he was rejected by this woman, Mrs. West, who had been the major figure in his life for 20 years. And then a few months later, he hanged himself.
Trevor McDonald:
The only person who could reveal the truth about Rose’s involvement in the murders had now gone. So she believed she might get off.
Leo Goatley:
I can’t say that she betrayed any sense of sorrow when Fred died. On the contrary, I think that she glowed with a certain relief. There was this kind of expectation that she wouldn’t go to trial, that that would be the end of it.
Trevor McDonald:
Without Fred West, the case against her was weakened, but an important witness had come forward who put Rose West firmly back in the frame.
Trevor McDonald:
Although Rose West was to stand trial for all the Cromwell Street murders, there was no direct evidence to link her to the crimes. But an important witness had come forward. She had been attacked by the Wests in 1972, and unlike the others, had lived to tell her tale.
Howard Sounes:
Caroline Owens had been a lodger/babysitter nanny at Cromwell Street. She moves out. But the Wests want to get involved with her sexually, but she’s not interested in.
Trevor McDonald:
Caroline died in 2016, but had previously spoken about her ordeal. She became the blueprint on which the Wests were to base their future murderous attacks. Trouble began when they gave her a lift one night.
Caroline Owens:
Fred turned around in his driver’s seat and just kept punching around the side of the head. At some point I blacked out.
Trevor McDonald:
Caroline was bound and gagged, and taken back to Cromwell Street.
Caroline Owens:
I lay there and I’m blindfolded, gagged, and got my hands tied behind my back. And I could feel them examining me down below. He must have took his belt off and he was beating me between the legs. I also felt the buckle a couple of times.
Trevor McDonald:
Over the course of the night, she was sadistically assaulted and raped. When she screamed for help, Rose nearly killed her.
Caroline Owens:
Rose put a pillow over my head. And at that point I thought I might die. Next thing I see is Fred’s face, really, really angry with me. He said, “We’re going to kill you and bury you, and [inaudible 00:38:38].”
Trevor McDonald:
Caroline managed to escape by promising to keep quiet. But then decided to go to the police. The Wests were arrested, but Caroline couldn’t face giving evidence about the rape in open court. In 1973, the couple were convicted of indecent assault causing actual bodily harm, and were fined 50 pounds each.
Caroline Owens:
I just made everything worse. It’s almost like, “We got away with it. But by the skin of our teeth, so next time they’ve got to die.” [inaudible 00:39:24]
Trevor McDonald:
Devastated by this realization, Caroline was determined to take the stand against Rose West in 1995.
Trevor McDonald:
Tomorrow, a middle aged woman will step into the dock, and one of the most sensational trials of our time will begin.
Speaker 18:
Hampsire police had mounted strict security along the route, closing roads as the convoy made its three minute journey to Winchester City Center.
Trevor McDonald:
Rosemary West was brought to trial at Winchester Crown Court in October 1995.
Speaker 18:
Two hundred journalists and camera crews all hoping for at least a glimpse of the woman who faces 10 murder charges.
Trevor McDonald:
Nine of those murders were from 25 Cromwell Street, including that of her 16 year old daughter. And a tenth, the murder of eight year old Charmaine West, her stepdaughter. Sasha Wass, now a QC, was Rose West’s junior defense barrister.
Sasha Wass:
Circumstantial evidence is rather like a jigsaw. Each piece can be quite meaningless on its own, but the prosecution say that if you put all of the pieces together, it presents a clear picture of the defendant’s guilt.
Trevor McDonald:
Forensic dentist professor David Whittaker gave damning evidence about the timing of the death of eight year old Charmaine. He was able to identify when she died by the size of her emerging teeth.
David Whittaker:
On my screen, Rosemary was watching a superb facial image of Charmaine coming out of a skull, as the same child. The fact that I could time the death of Charmaine to within a month or two was absolutely crucial for the prosecution side on pinning it on Rosemary West.
Trevor McDonald:
Records showed that Fred West had, as police suspected, been in prison at the time Charmaine was killed.
David Whittaker:
I looked up, not purposefully, and saw her watching, and she did not look comfortable.
Trevor McDonald:
Juanita Mott’s sisters were in court to see justice done on her behalf.
Trevor McDonald:
You both attended the trial.
Mary-Ann:
Every day. We heard everything that went on, and I think it’s just sickening to hear her try and justify things. And wiggle her way out of it.
Trevor McDonald:
How do? What do you mean?
Belinda:
Passing the blame.
Mary-Ann:
Yeah, she was passing the blame a lot, denying that she’d been involved in it. Not giving us the truth that we needed as a family. We needed her to admit what she’d done. But she denied it.
Trevor McDonald:
Arguably the most compelling evidence from Caroline Owens.
Sasha Wass:
One of the most important features of Caroline Owens as a witness is that both Mr. and Mrs. West were arrested in relation to the assault upon her. The prosecution said that what had happened was similar, strikingly similar to what must’ve happened to the dead girls.
Trevor McDonald:
The trial lasted six weeks. The jury took less than 24 hours to reach their verdict.
Howard Sounes:
She really believed she would get off, I think. And so when the jury came back with 10 unanimous guilty verdicts, you know, she was shocked.
Trevor McDonald:
Rosemary West was sentenced to a whole life tariff, meaning that she will never be released from prison.
Sasha Wass:
In terms of what was found in the graves of these young women, there was no doubt that they met the most horrendous death. And I don’t think there was anybody in that trial who was not affected by that.
Speaker 20:
This afternoon Rosemary West made the short journey to Winchester jail.
Trevor McDonald:
To this day, Rosemary West has never admitted her guilt. The police believe there may be other victims of the Wests. Fifteen year old Mary Basthome vanished from a bus stop in 1968. And an investigation into Gloucester’s residential care homes revealed that several young women had simply disappeared.
John Fitzgerald:
We got it down to three. But those three we had no understanding at all of whether they knew the Wests, whether they were alive, where they lived if they were alive, whether they were safe.
Trevor McDonald:
It’s unlikely that the Wests could get away with their crimes today. Legislation is in place to monitor sex offenders. Authorities share information about possible child abuse, and there have been changes in the way missing persons are recorded.
David Canter:
The police are much more alert and aware that the sort of crimes occur within the family can spread to strangers, and therefore they need to be taken even more seriously. And the whole issue of serial killing, the great psychological debate around that, is now part and parcel of police training.
Trevor McDonald:
The Wests crimes continue to leave deep scars. Marian Pattington has only been able to find peace by trying to forgive.
Marian:
I think this business of forgiveness is very much about finding a way of living in which you’re … in you aren’t corrupted by what’s happened.
Trevor McDonald:
But for the sisters of Juanita Mott, there is only one response.
Mary-Ann:
They’re evil. They’re just evil. There’s no other words for them. To call them mentally ill is an insult to the mentally ill people. They’re evil, and I’ll underline that. No other word.
Trevor McDonald:
Twenty five years on, the story of Fred and Rosemary West remains as shocking as ever. With the passage of time, and new details about what they did make it more easier to comprehend why they committed such horrible crimes.
Trevor McDonald:
And unless Rose West speaks out, it’s unlikely that we will ever know all the secrets of 25 Cromwell Street.