Fred & Rose

by Howard Sounes

  With the dismemberment complete, all that was left was to bury the remains. Fred probably put the chunks of Anna’s corpse into plastic bags which were later found with her remains. He then drove towards Much Marcle. Fred parked in open country just off the Dymock road, less than a mile from Moorcourt Cottage. Finger Post Field is a thirteen-acre cornfield between Much Marcle and the neighbouring hamlet of Kempley. The field, which is just inside the Gloucestershire county border, takes its name from a white signpost by the gate. It was a familiar place to Fred because, apart from growing up in the area, he had worked the nearby land as a young farm labourer.

  The grim job of burying Anna’s remains must have been carried out in the dead of night. Fred was well-known locally, making it virtually impossible for him to do anything during the day, so he had to steal out across the darkened field, shovel in hand, listening to the rustle of the trees and darting looks at the silhouettes in the hedgerow.

  Fred almost certainly chose to bury Anna’s remains in Finger Post Field because it was familiar and because he felt confident his secret would be safe there. Criminal psychologists would say that Fred wanted total control over Anna, and all the other women in his life. When he failed to keep her in line, and she became pregnant and threatened the stability of his life, he killed her to exercise that control completely. By burying her remains somewhere familiar, virtually at home, he could continue to have power over her even in death. She was close at hand, and could never get away or disobey him again. Fred almost certainly enjoyed concealing her body. It would have made him feel good, even happy.

  Murderers often fail at this, the last stage of their crime, because they do not dispose of the body with sufficient care. But Fred knew that, unless a carcass was deeply buried, it might be dug up by scavenging vermin or uncovered by farm machinery. So he went down for a good five feet. He carried out his work so thoroughly that twenty-seven years were to pass before Anna’s remains were recovered from that lonely Gloucestershire field.

  When Anna’s letters stopped arriving in Glasgow, her friends, including Isa McNeill, assumed that she had found a new life in England and had put the old days behind her. It was thought strange that she did not return home for the funeral when her mother Jeannie died of malnutrition, but even then Anna was not reported to the police as a missing person and nobody came to look for her, despite the anxious note left in the files of the local social services.

  Not long after the murder Fred moved to the Lake House caravan site in the village of Bishop’s Cleeve. Rose Letts, the girl who would become his second wife (and partner in crime) was then a thirteen-year-old living half a mile away in Tobyfield Road.

  The caravan site was situated off the Stoke Road, and took its name from a large pond in the grounds. It was not a Gypsy encampment, but an established business with permanent and semi-permanent residents. Many were young families who could not afford to buy a house; others were single men who worked at the nearby Smith’s Industries plant, where Bill Letts was employed. There were two substantial buildings on the site: Lake House, which took boarders, and Lake View, the home of the owner, Mrs Dukes. The caravans were grouped around the lake, upon which was moored a small boat. Fred rented Number 17, which, like most of the caravans, did not have wheels and was set on a concrete stand. It had a small garden surrounded by a low wooden fence.

  The caravan itself was not the most modern or best-kept on the site. It was slightly shabby, about twenty feet long, built of plywood and painted a cream colour. There were two bedrooms, a dining area, and a stove with a shiny metal chimney. A large septic tank on the site provided for the sewage and toilet facilities.

  There was a marked change in Fred’s behaviour in the months following Anna’s death. He must have been in a state of intense anxiety, fearful that he would be discovered any day. This preoccupation was reflected in his behaviour. ‘He was in a dark, strange mood at times. He seemed withdrawn,’ says Michael Newman, a boarder at Lake House. Fred undertook odd jobs for the site-owner Mrs Dukes, and would often be found sitting in her lounge, lost in his own thoughts. Interruption brought a terse response. ‘He was almost in a dream world,’ says Newman.

  Rena had moved back into the caravan, her relationship with Fred greatly improved. The Wests took their children out of care and they stayed together as a family for most of that year. Fred allowed his wife to be more like her gregarious self. Occasionally they even visited pubs together, she flirting with other men while he sat brooding over a half-pint of bitter.

  Fred was hired as a labourer at Oldacres mill, a flour and animal feed manufacturer in Bishop’s Cleeve, and was put on the night shift. While he was at work, men – always the same men – called at the caravan for Rena, and gossip soon went round the site that Mrs West was working as a prostitute. There is no doubt that Fred was told about this. He was known to grumble about his long hours and low pay at the mill, and he and Rena sometimes quarrelled over money, so he may have been content to see a little extra cash coming in. Fred and Rena were quite open about the sexual side of their relationship, showing friends pornographic pictures that Fred had taken of his wife. Fred was also seen to sexually abuse Charmaine in the caravan at this time, rubbing the semi-naked child over his groin.

  After returning from an arduous night shift, Fred would snatch the briefest amount of sleep before rising again. In the hours before he was due back at work Fred carried out general maintenance for Mrs Dukes, tried to fish in a small boat on the lake and worked on cars and engines for his neighbours. Obsessive hard work became one of his traits.

  He enjoyed talking about motorcycles. Whilst working on his neighbour Michael Newman’s Honda moped, Fred showed that his fantasy life was flourishing. He bragged that he was used to riding big British motorcycles of at least 400cc, and that he had ridden in the Isle of Man TT race. Fred said that if he got on the Honda moped he would ‘blow it up after a hundred yards’.

  Petty crime was second nature to Fred and, typically, his Vauxhall Viva car was seldom legally taxed or insured. It was common knowledge on the site that Fred dabbled in stolen goods. He was described as looking dishonest, with ‘the sort of eyes that slid off you’, and the police called regularly to question him over minor offences.

  During the day, Fred sometimes visited the Pop-In café in Southgate Street, Gloucester. The street is one of the main artery roads bringing traffic into the centre of the city, and the café was situated on the ground floor of a tall building near a motorcycle shop and a camping centre. It was a seedy dive used as a gathering point for petty criminals and drop-outs. Pornographic photographs were circulated and stolen goods changed hands when the owner was not looking. One of the waitresses at the café was Mary Bastholm, the girl who went missing that January.

  Mary was an attractive and slim fifteen-year-old girl. She was last seen at 7:15 P.M. on 6 January 1968, waiting at a bus stop in Bristol Road, Gloucester. Mary was on her way to visit her boyfriend, who lived five miles away in the village of Hardwicke. She wore a blue and white striped coat, lime-green pleated skirt, a navy-blue twinset, matching shoes and gloves and carried a royal-blue umbrella. She was also carrying her handbag and a Monopoly game in a white plastic carrier bag. Mary was not the sort of girl to run away, and the police feared she had been snatched off the street.

  A major hunt was launched; Scotland Yard were called in; hundreds of officers scoured the ditches and fields around Gloucester in difficult weather conditions. Theories abounded in the Pop-In café – and right across the county – as to what had happened to Mary. Fred listened and said nothing. The mystery deepened shortly afterwards when Mary’s family received an anonymous message instructing them to place an advertisement in the Skyrack Express of Tadcaster, Yorkshire, saying that they ‘forgave her’. The advertisement appeared, but nothing more was heard of Mary.

  There were a number of links between Fred and Mary Bastholm: he was a customer at the Pop-In and Mary often served him tea; Fred had been employed to do som
e building work behind the café; Mary had been seen with a girl fitting the description of Fred’s former lover, Anna McFall; and one witness claims to have seen Mary in Fred’s car. Her disappearance has never been solved, and the police file on the case remains open. In 1994, twenty-six years after she vanished, the case was reactivated when Gloucestershire police questioned Fred about Mary.

  Several factors indicate that Mary was one of Fred’s victims. It is likely that he murdered Mary after abducting her from the bus stop that January evening, just as he would go on to kill other girls picked up at bus stops. She was of the physical type and age that he found attractive. He also knew her habits.

  But despite admitting to many other crimes, including some that he was not charged with, Fred refused to talk about this case. However, in private prison meetings with members of his own family and others, he did indicate that he had killed Mary just as the police suspected. His son Steve claims that Fred admitted to the murder, gloating that he would tell the police about it only when he was good and ready. ‘There’s only one person who will ever tell them and it’s me,’ he said. For all these reasons Mary’s brother, Peter Bastholm, and police officers who worked on the West inquiry are almost certain that Mary was murdered by Fred, but there was never enough evidence to charge him.

  There are a number of reasons why Fred decided not to talk about Mary. Fred enjoyed playing with the detectives working on his own case – killers often hold information back for a later date, when they want to interrupt the monotony of prison life. Another theory is that Fred did not murder Mary on his own, and was protecting somebody else. But the most likely – and the most alarming – reason for his silence is the location of Mary’s body. She was clearly not buried with the other victims that were found, which means there must be another grave site – and possibly other bodies that he was not ready to talk about.

  A month after Mary Bastholm went missing, Fred’s mother, Daisy, was taken into Hereford hospital. She died on 6 February following complications after an operation to remove a gallstone. She was forty-four. Fred was the only member of the family who did not trouble to visit her. He claimed he could not bring himself to go into a hospital after what had happened to him as a teenager.

  The funeral service was conducted three days later at Much Marcle’s parish church. Fred stood at the graveside with his brothers and father: four stocky men in dark suits. Rena also attended. Fred’s brother, Doug, and his sister, Gwen, were the only two children left at home, and did their best to comfort Walter, who reserved a plot next to Daisy for himself. He ordered a headstone engraved with a crucifix and inscribed with the words: ‘In loving memory of a devoted wife and mother.’

  Following the funeral Fred committed a series of thefts and again fell foul of the law. In the summer of 1968 he was working at a private house in Cheltenham when he stole a blank cheque. He used the cheque to buy a record player for £10, was caught and convicted by Cheltenham magistrates on one charge of theft and another of deception, and was fined £20. Shortly afterwards Fred was dismissed from Oldacres mill on suspicion of stealing money. He then worked for a while emptying septic tanks, before becoming a delivery driver for a village bakery.

  It was while he was working at this last job that Fred met Rose.

  7

  ROSE LOVES FRED

  It was several weeks before Bill Letts came to enquire after his family at the Toddington farm. In the end, he made a number of visits, but he never actually brought himself to ask them back to Tobyfield Road, where he and Rose were living on their own. ‘He never said sorry. He wouldn’t belittle himself,’ says Daisy Letts. She finally decided to return home for the sake of her children, whom she could not support on her wages as a cleaner, and the family were reunited at Bishop’s Cleeve in the late summer of 1969.

  Bill had been telling Rose for some time – she had by now left the seamstress shop – that she had to find a proper job, something better than helping out at her brother-in-law’s snack bar, although he admitted he did not expect much of his ‘dozy’ daughter. Rose surprised him by finding regular work as a waitress at a tea shop in Cheltenham High Street, a five-mile bus journey away. At the end of her first week at work she delighted Daisy by bringing home left-over cakes for the family. Rose had also agreed to contribute to the housekeeping now that she was earning a wage, and dutifully paid her mother some money.

  It was after work one night, when Rose was waiting to catch a bus home, that she claims to have been raped for the second time – a fantastical story that is almost certainly part invention. According to her story, a man tried to chat her up at the bus stop, and then made a grab for her when she said she was not interested in him. Rose fled, and found herself in a park where her attacker caught up with her. They came to a pair of padlocked gates. Rose recalled that he ‘just smashed the padlock off with his fists. He said he had been in the army and was very strong.’ He then dragged her down under some trees by the side of a lake, and raped her.

  After this second attack, Rose decided she would catch the bus home from the central station in Cheltenham in future, because it was safer there. It was at the station that she met another man, distinctive-looking and much older than herself. He had wild curly hair like a bird’s nest; bushy sideburns down almost to his collar, merging with dark stubble that swarmed across his swarthy face; his hands were covered with marks and cuts, as though he had been in a fight or was used to rough work; he was not very tall, walked with a limp and had surprisingly blue eyes. The man also attempted to chat to her, speaking in a guttural accent like a farm hand, but was so dirty and poorly dressed that Rose took him for a tramp at first and ignored him. But he would not be dissuaded, and asked her out – with a leering smile that revealed dirty teeth later described by Rose as ‘all ganky and green’. It was an openly sexual gesture, and must have reminded her of the men she had met working at Jim Tyler’s snack bar. Despite herself, Rose felt a little excited.

  His name was Fred, and despite his rough appearance he proved to be a charming man, talkative and full of compliments. He told Rose that they had a lot in common: she worked in a bread shop, while he was a delivery driver for a bakery in nearby Gotherington. He said he might have delivered to her very shop; anyway, he was sure he had seen her somewhere before. Then Fred found out that she lived in Bishop’s Cleeve, only a short walk from his caravan.

  It was true that Fred flirted with every young girl he met; that is why he enjoyed the delivery job. Like the ice cream round in Glasgow, it gave him an opportunity to travel around and meet girls. He stopped to chat with teenagers he saw as he passed through the villages. Some of the girls he took an interest in were no more than children, like ten-year-old Barbara Ann White, who lived in the hamlet of Stoke Orchard. Years later Barbara was to marry Rose Letts’ brother Graham, thereby becoming a sister-in-law to Fred. But in the summer of 1969 she was a village child happy enough to accept a lift in the delivery man’s van. ‘He used to chat everybody up,’ she remembers.

  But Fred was particularly interested in this young girl at the bus stop. She was quite attractive, if a little plump, with sleek brown hair, full breasts and brown eyes. He asked her out three times, and climbed on to the bus with her – after all, he said, they lived in the same village, so why not travel together?

  The journey to Bishop’s Cleeve led through the crowded shopping streets of Cheltenham, past the grand Victorian buildings on the outskirts of town and into the country. On the way, Fred told Rose exaggerated stories about his life and times, and although she stared fixedly out of the window as he spoke, Rose must have found herself smiling – he was a funny fellow after all, and a ‘good talker’.

  One day Fred came into the bread shop in Cheltenham and asked Rose to meet him later, in a pub near her home in Bishop’s Cleeve. She agreed, and when she arrived for the date he presented her with extravagant gifts (no doubt stolen) of a lace dress and a fur coat. She wanted to hand them back at first, but Fred was insistent that
they were hers.

  She could not help being flattered by the attention. She had never had many friends. Both the boys and girls at school had avoided Rose, considering her slow and odd, and in her last years there she was despised as the school bully. Even at home with her family, Rose’s older brothers and sisters tended to leave her out of their activities. Her parents, too, were contemptuous of her low intelligence. But, at last, here was somebody who seemed interested in her, in much the same way as the workmen she had met at Jim Tyler’s snack bar, but much more intense. Rose also enjoyed playing at being an adult, and flirting with men like Fred was just such a pretend game. ‘Her idea of being grown up was going out with somebody a lot older,’ suggests her eldest brother, Andrew.

  Fred was adept at probing for secrets, and must have been excited when he realised that Rose was so sexually aware. She was flirtatious, and did not flinch when he spoke about sex in his crude way or made advances to her; indeed, she seemed to welcome them. Her obvious unhappiness at home, and willingness to keep secrets from her family, must have made her even more attractive to Fred. She was not likely to talk about anything that they did together.

  He tried to excuse his disreputable appearance by saying that he had only just returned from Glasgow, where he had been sleeping rough. He said he had left Scotland in a hurry because his wife was working as a prostitute, and had caused him a great deal of trouble. The truth was that he and Rena had broken up after yet another row, and, far from being back in Glasgow, she was living there in Gloucestershire – in fact, in March that year she appeared at Cheltenham Magistrates Court, where she was found guilty of attempting to defraud the Department of Social Security. But Fred kept all this from Rose, portraying himself as the abandoned husband.

  After Rena had left, Fred briefly shared the caravan with another man, a fashion-conscious pot-smoking hippy named Terry Crick, and his girlfriend, Cathy. It was with Terry Crick that Fred demonstrated just how out of step he was with the mood of the late 1960s. Fred had asked his friend where he could meet girls, and was directed to a pub in Cheltenham that was popular with young people – but these were not the same as the young people Fred had known in Much Marcle, Ledbury and Glasgow. They wore tie-dyed T-shirts, smoked drugs, and their conversation and attitudes were completely beyond his experience, even though Fred was of their generation. He spent a frustrating evening at the pub trying to pick up one of the sophisticated young girls, but finally left alone. ‘The next day the girls asked me who that creep was,’ says Terry Crick.