Fred & Rose

by Howard Sounes

  Fred and Rose made a point of befriending Alison, even giving her a gold-coloured necklace with her name on it. Rose understood Alison’s fantasy life, and told her that she and Fred owned a peaceful farm in the countryside – when Alison reached seventeen and could legally leave Jordan’s Brook House, she could come and visit the farm. Rose showed Alison a colour picture, and told her she could lay in the long grass all day and compose her poems. Alison was completely taken in by this, not realising she had been shown a picture from an estate agent’s brochure. ‘Alison was captivated by it,’ says Sharon Compton. When the girls left the house, Rose told them that, if they were picked up by police, they must not say where they had been. Back at Jordan’s Brook, Alison lay on her bed and drew ivy around the door of the farmhouse in the picture.

  Soon after this, Alison told the other girls at the home that she had met an older man. She said that he was in love with her and gave her gifts, including jewellery. The girls thought this was just another fantasy. ‘Alison had a vivid imagination. When she was talking about this older man who loved her and was buying her this and that, nobody believed her,’ says another young woman who knew Alison at the home.

  On 5 August 1979, four weeks before her seventeenth birthday, Alison packed up her things and absconded from Jordan’s Brook House for the eighth time in nine months. She failed to show up for work the next day as an office junior in Gloucester, where she was employed on a Youth Training Scheme. It seems she had decided to move into Cromwell Street, and was no doubt looking forward to being invited to visit the West’s farmhouse, where she could lay in the long grass and compose her poetry. She wrote her mother a long letter in which she spoke about living with a ‘very homely family … I look after their five children and do some of their housework. They have a child the same age as me who accepts me as a big sister and we get on great … The family own flats and I share with the oldest sister.’ Other girls at Jordan’s Brook had noticed that Alison had a key to 25 Cromwell Street.

  She had probably already begun a sexual relationship with both Fred and Rose, but the sex soon became frightening. One day the Wests gagged her with a purple fashion belt, three-quarters of an inch wide. Unable to scream, she was raped, tortured and finally killed, just like Lynda Gough, Carol Ann Cooper, Lucy Partington, Thérèse Siegenthaler, Shirley Hubbard and Juanita Mott.

  Alison was almost certainly dismembered, although her bones were not marked by knives as the remains of several of the other victims had been. Fred buried her remains in a hole dug in the garden next to the wall of the recently-built bathroom extension. He kept a number of her body parts aside: sections of her wrists, fingers, ankles and toes, two ribs, both kneecaps, the second thoracic vertebrae and part of her breastbone.

  When Alison’s friends asked what had happened to her, the Wests gave them the impression that she was living on their farm. Sharon Compton asked if she could visit Alison there, and Rose nervously replied that she would have to wait. Then she changed her story, saying that Alison was not at the farm, but was staying with relatives. ‘It was obviously a sore point,’ says Sharon.

  Alison was reported to the police as missing on 5 August, but because of the letter received by her mother she was later officially discharged from care and police no longer considered her a vulnerable person.

  It seemed that Fred and Rose’s latest secret was safe.

  * Very well-endowed.

  14

  HEATHER

  During her last years at Linden Road Secondary School, Anna Marie West was given the nickname ‘Tank’ by the other pupils because of her size and her aggressive, bullying personality. She used the aggression to camouflage her miserable life as a child prostitute, a secret she was too frightened ever to speak about with friends or teachers. Fred and Rose were so worried she might talk that they allowed Anna Marie just ten minutes in which to return home from school each day. She could only complete the journey in time by leaving as soon as lessons ended and running virtually the whole way, and was viciously strapped if even one minute late.

  The future held an even greater terror than the present for this unhappy schoolgirl: Anna Marie believed something dreadful would happen to her when she reached her sixteenth birthday. She was not certain exactly what this was, but instinctively knew it would not be wise to wait and see. After all, she had already suffered a lifetime of sadistic abuse – and had even been made pregnant by her own father. In the past Fred had rarely struck her, but eventually this changed. Anna Marie had been viciously kicked in the face by Fred, who was wearing steel toe-capped boots at the time, when she tried to intervene in an argument between him and Rose. When her stepmother saw blood on the child’s face, she laughed and told her that this would teach her not to be so ‘cocky’ with them. It was largely because of this increasing violence, and the vague but pervasive fear of even greater terrors, that Anna Marie left home at the age of fifteen, when she went to live with friends.

  The children at 25 Cromwell Street in 1980 fell into two groups: the older ones, all of whom Fred had fathered, and the younger children, some of whom were Rose’s by other lovers, including coloured men.

  The first of the younger children was three-year-old Tara, who was of mixed race. (Because Fred was not her natural father, he had little to do with the girl.) Then there was two-year-old Louise, whose paternity was also in doubt, and in June 1980 Rose gave birth to Barry, a white child, who appears to have been fathered by Fred.

  The eldest of the senior group was Heather Ann, who turned ten in the autumn of 1980. Heather was a slim, serious girl, with prominent front teeth, dark eyes and thick black hair, looking much like her mother had at the same age. Heather was an intelligent and able pupil at St Paul’s Infants and Junior School, and she also did well when she moved to Hucclecote Secondary. Fred had an antipathy towards Heather; lodgers and visitors noticed how he called her names, said she was ugly and was generally cruel to her. After Heather came eight-year-old May, or Mae as she preferred to spell her name, who took after her father’s side of the family in looks. She was Rose’s favourite, and shared a room with Heather on the first floor of the house. Rose liked to dress the girls in rather boyish clothes, and had their hair cut very short. Stephen, seven, known as Steve, had the same startling blue eyes as his father. He was Fred’s favourite and slept on the second floor.

  Fred and Rose needed complete control over their children to ensure that what went on in the house remained secret. Every effort was made to keep the children away from other adults, or from situations where they might arouse suspicion. They were not allowed to go out and play on their own in the street, no matter what the weather, being confined instead to the back garden and cellar play room, and they visited the homes of relations only when Fred and Rose were there too. School friends were not allowed back to 25 Cromwell Street and the West children were forbidden from visiting the homes of these friends.

  The children’s free time was mostly occupied with household chores, in exactly the same way that Bill Letts had made Rose’s brothers and sisters work. When the elder West children reached the age of seven, Rose demonstrated washing and ironing for them – from then on, they would be expected to do their own laundry. Heather, Mae and Steve were despatched to the shops to buy their own provisions, and from the age of ten, they cooked a number of their own meals in the kitchenette Fred had built as part of the extension. ‘We had a job every single day when we came home from school, in the living room, kitchen or bathroom. We used to come home and do it straight away without talking. If you spoke or if it wasn’t done properly, Mum would go mad,’ says Steve.

  Care of the children was Rose’s sole responsibility, and it was her that they were afraid of. Her disciplining of the older children was outright sadism; her rages frightening and unpredictable. Even years later, most of the West children – including Anna Marie – retained affection for Fred simply because he did not beat them with Rose’s insane violence. ‘Mum hit us for no real reason,’ says
Steve. ‘It could be anything. She made reasons up, like if the dishcloth went missing. She would stand there and keep screaming, “Where is the dishcloth?” You used to be running around trying to find it and she beat us until we found it.’

  The older children were fully aware that their mother was a prostitute – there was even a photograph album containing provocative pictures of Rose with her boyfriends. The children knew that these things went on in ‘Mum and Dad’s Room’, which was now on the first floor of the house, and that they must not go in there. (The bedroom had a plaque on the door which read ‘Rose’s Room’, and its interior was decorated in garish fashion, with a painting of a naked woman on a horse, the silhouette of Rose in the nude that Fred had made in Leyhill in 1971, a candelabra hanging from the ceiling and special knick-knacks on the window ledge.) One day, however, Steve broke the rule and barged in to find his mother in bed with a man. Steve turned and ran back down the short flight of steps, across the passageway into the living room, lifted the trap door and disappeared down into the cellar, which at this time was divided into a play room for the children and a workshop for Fred. ‘My dad ran down after me and I got the beating of my life,’ he recalls.

  Fred was usually more concerned with work than with the children, and this was a rare example of his hitting them. After coming home from the Wingate factory, where he was a general labourer, Fred ate a quick meal before going out on his ‘cobbles’. This was the Gloucestershire phrase he used for work that was not declared to the Inland Revenue – usually general maintenance for neighbours. Fred often did not return home until the rest of the household was getting ready for bed. Fred also continued to dabble in petty crime, and on 2 October 1980 he was convicted at Gloucester Crown Court of receiving stolen goods. He was given a nine-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and was fined £50.

  The children seldom received presents at Christmas, being told by their mother that they ‘did not deserve any’. One winter night, Heather, Steve and Mae were sent to bed with the familiar order to go straight to sleep. Fred had fitted a baby intercom in the upstairs rooms where the children slept, so Rose could hear what they were saying. Suddenly she came out of her bedroom on the ground floor and pounded upstairs to their landing, appearing at the foot of their beds naked. She had Fred’s leather belt in her hand and beat all three of them, making sure to catch them with the buckle. Then she ordered the children downstairs and pushed them out the front door.

  A foot of snow lay in Cromwell Street that night. The children huddled up together for warmth by the door as midnight came and went. Occasionally a drunk stumbled past the house, heading for one of the seedy bedsitters in the street. Three hours passed before they were let back in and sent to bed with another beating. Small wonder the children remained silent when asked at school if they had enjoyed a happy Christmas.

  Heather was receiving even more beatings than the other children. One of the few friends she had at school was Denise Harrison, the daughter of Fred’s Jamaican-born friend Ronalzo Harrison. Denise liked Fred, as most people did, but was struck by the odd way in which Heather lived. ‘It was like they were in a prison camp,’ she says.

  Heather was self-conscious about her body, wearing long-sleeved cardigans and shirts even at the height of summer. During PE lessons she was more concerned about keeping her socks up than taking part in the games, and afterwards, when the other girls carelessly dropped their sports kit and ran for the showers, Heather refused to join in despite the strict rule that girls had to shower after sports. She was frequently sent to the Headmistress’s office because of her refusal to comply with this rule, yet nobody appears to have investigated why this normally studious girl was repeatedly being so disobedient. Denise Harrison discovered the reason one day when her friend was forced to take a shower: Heather had red weal marks and bruises all over her legs and arms where she had been beaten.

  Heather was in a desperate situation at home, but was too terrified to tell anybody what was happening to her. Now that Anna Marie had left 25 Cromwell Street, Fred transferred his demands for sex to Heather, telling her it was a father’s right to touch his daughters, that he had ‘made her’ and could do what he wanted with her. Fred commented on the development of her breasts and ordered her to show him her body after she had a bath.

  Her younger sister Mae has since claimed that she was also pestered by their father. She has said that he threw a vacuum cleaner at her, splintering her bedroom door, when she rejected his advances. Mae says that she and Heather used to stand watch for each other when they took a shower, and became used to Fred bursting in on them early in the morning when they were getting dressed, or pulling the sheets from their beds. He touched and fondled Heather, even wrestling her to the floor and beating her when she refused to succumb to him. Fred and Rose were always careful not to touch her face, so the marks would not show.

  Anna Marie, who was working as a cleaner in a café, met a window cleaner named Erwin Marschall, and began a relationship with him. They spent one night together at Cromwell Street, but Erwin could not sleep. In the middle of the night he heard a protracted scream, lasting between ten and twenty minutes. It was the voice of a young girl, and he could make out the words ‘No, no, please!’ In the morning Rose told him it was only Heather, having one of her nightmares.

  Shortly afterwards Anna Marie went to live with a boy named Chris Davis, lodging with him at a public house in Gloucester. She was using tranquilliser drugs to help dull the memory of her childhood, and had been to see a psychiatrist when she felt unable to have sex with Chris. (Some years later, Anna Marie would undergo a hysterectomy. Doctors told her that her tilted womb was a result of the two daughters she eventually bore, but it seems possible the abuse she suffered as a child also contributed to the condition.) In 1982 Anna Marie and Chris had to leave the pub, and, with nowhere else to go, reluctantly moved into a bedroom on the first floor of 25 Cromwell Street. Anna Marie told her boyfriend all about what had happened to her as a child. She made him promise not to say anything to Fred and Rose, and never to leave her on her own with them. A month after they moved in, Rose gave birth to Rosemary Junior, another mixed race child whom Anna Marie and Chris helped look after.

  Chris noticed how withdrawn Heather was. She bit her fingernails, day-dreamed about leaving home, and had developed a habit of watching Fred warily from a corner, or doorway, of whichever room he was in. Her reproachful gaze disturbed Fred. He demanded to know what was wrong with her, and complained that she was always ‘miserable’.

  Heather took up smoking and began to drink alcohol. She also went shoplifting, and in August 1982 was caught stealing from WH Smith in the city centre. Heather, who was then coming up for twelve, was charged and signed a note admitting three other offences, but because of her age the case did not go to court.

  She was uneasy in the company of males. When one of her uncles began talking to her about boys, and what they might want to do with her, Heather replied that if any boy touched her she would ‘put a brick over his head’. She also absconded from a school camping trip because she did not like the male teachers. Fred and Rose convinced themselves that she was a lesbian, and were furious about it, even though Rose herself was actively bisexual.

  The family increased in size again in July 1983, when Rose went into hospital to give birth to another mixed race daughter, whom she named Lucyanna. Fred did not appear upset by this. In fact, he seemed to think more of these children than he did of his own; they were ‘perfect’.

  After Lucyanna’s birth, Rose flew into increasingly violent rages, lashing out with her hands or with whatever she was holding. She punched her older children in the face and stabbed them with kitchen knives, jabbing at them in a frenzy until they were covered in cuts. When she caught Steve sitting on one of her new kitchen units, she picked him up by the neck and throttled him, actually lifting his body off the floor. Afterwards his face was blotchy, and there were livid marks on his neck where her hands had been. �
�I had to take a note to school to say I was messing around with a rope in a tree, and fell out with the rope round my neck,’ he says.

  Her anger was often irrational. One day Heather broke the rule about going into ‘Mum and Dad’s Room’. She found her mother’s pornographic magazines and decided to take a selection to school. When Rose discovered that part of her collection was missing, she assumed that Steve had taken them and telephoned for him to be sent home. Steve ran all the way, thinking something was wrong, and when he got back he found Rose alone in the house. She ordered him to go into the bathroom and take off his clothes. (The bathroom was also known within the family as Fred and Rose’s ‘office’, because they would ensconce themselves in there with the door closed when they wanted to talk privately.) As he undressed, Steve saw two pieces of wire and a belt hanging on the towel rack. When he was naked, Rose came in and tied one of the wires around the boy’s hands, and then, ordering him to lie on the floor, tied him to the toilet bowl with the other wire. Then she beat him, screaming, ‘What have you done? You took my magazines from upstairs!’ When Steve denied it, she lashed him until he was bloody, then told him to get dressed and go back to school. Later that day Heather was found to have the magazines and was sent home, but Rose laughed at her mistake, telling Heather not to worry because Steve had already received her punishment.

  Fred lost his temper on occasion, although not nearly as often as Rose. One night he came in late, and Heather, who was ironing in the living room, told him in a lighthearted way that his dinner would be spoiled yet again. Fred’s blue eyes opened wide in anger and he jerked out a quick, hard punch which connected with Heather’s shoulder, knocking her several feet sideways. With his anger vented, Fred returned to his normal self and sat down to eat.

  If the violent anger which Fred and Rose regularly exhibited took the form of murder during this period of their lives, there is no direct evidence of such crimes. It is highly probable that the Wests, having killed at such an intensive rate just a few years previously, would not suddenly have ceased murdering young girls – they were, almost certainly, still abducting unfortunate victims like Shirley Hubbard and Lucy Partington, and killing them after their lust had been satisfied. But the graves of these other, unknown victims have never been discovered.