When Anne-Marie was just eight years old, she was led down to the cellar of Cromwell Street by her father and stepmother. Rose removed the child’s clothes and gagged her, all the while groping and touching her sexually. Fred then raped the child, while Rose looked on, ‘laughing and giggling.’
Upstairs, lodger Caroline Roberts could not believe her luck. Days before, while hitchhiking, she had been picked up by the Wests in their Ford Popular. She was urged to ‘pop in’ by a friendly-seeming Rose. The 16-year-old was astonished by the freedom she was allowed at 25 Cromwell Street: she could invite boys back, smoke dope and was even given pin money to babysit the Wests’ daughters.
But in the weeks that followed, Caroline became perturbed by increasingly graphic talk of sex, incest and abortions – and the lesbian advances of Rose, so she fled home. A month later, the same Ford Popular that first snared her appeared as she walked alone along a quiet road. She was bundled inside by the thick-set builder and sexually assaulted by a sneering Rose. After being knocked unconscious, she woke to find herself being raped by Fred while his wife chuckled. ‘Relax and enjoy!’ said Rose. Meanwhile, her male tormentor threatened: ‘We are going to keep you in the cellar and let our black friends use you. Then we will kill you and bury you under the paving stones of Gloucester.’ After demanding the terrified teenager’s silence, the Wests let Caroline go. She reported the sadistic pair to police, but found herself unable to press ahead with a rape prosecution. They received a fine for sexual assault. Understandably, Caroline remained traumatised at the hands of the evil couple, though later she founded a charity for troubled youngsters. Not all were so lucky.
Over the next six years, between 1973 and 1979, Fred and Rose West abducted or enticed eight girls into their perverted web:
Lynda Gough, aged 19, was a lodger at 25 Cromwell Street. She is said to have slept with several of Rose’s ‘gentleman callers’. Her body was found under the bathroom floor of the House of Horrors.
Carol Anne Cooper vanished from a children’s home in Worcester, aged 15. The Wests enticed her into the back of their car after a visit to the cinema – and her remains were found on 8 March 1994.
Lucy Partington, a 21-year-old student, and author Martin Amis’s cousin, was unusual among the Wests’ abductees in that she was not a drifter or runaway. Her disappearance sparked a national search and her remains were eventually found on 6 March 1994, in the Cromwell Street cellar.
Therese Siegenthaler, 21, from Switzerland, was hitchhiking when the Wests picked her up. She was never seen again until 5 March 1995 when her bones were uncovered by forensic archaeologists.
Shirley Hubbard was in care and travelling back to her parents’ house in Droitwich. She never made it, after accepting a lift from the Wests.
Juanita Mott, aged 18, was a lodger at 25 Cromwell Street. Her bones were found on 6 March 1994.
Shirley Ann Robinson was another lodger of the Wests. A runaway who had found herself lured into prostitution, she was last seen alive in May 1978.
Alison Chambers, 16, was last seen alive in August 1979. She ended up in the Wests’ garden.
Fred and Rose’s final killing, at least the last-known, was their daughter. Heather was beaten if she ever refused demands for sex. At school she was withdrawn and quiet, refusing to remove her clothes for games for fear of showing the bruises that covered her body. In June 1987, she, too, disappeared.
It was in 1992 when Fred was arrested on accusation of rape and Rose of child abuse that the net began to tighten on the wicked couple. Even though the case did not proceed, the remaining West children were placed in care. After a tip-off, detectives began asking about Heather. On 26 February 1994, they found her, buried at a spot where Stephen West had dug a fishpond on the order of his parents. The lad had unwittingly dug his own sister’s grave.
Faced with the mass of evidence against him, Fred West confessed in detail to his crimes, though insisted his wife had nothing to do with them. For her part, a smirking Rose coldly replied ‘No comment’ to all police questions. In the summer of 1994, Fred was charged with 12 counts of murder. Despite his pleas, Rose was charged with nine counts at first, then the 10th – Charmaine.
Fred’s insistence that his wife was innocent was the last favour he did her. On New Year’s Day, 1995, he was found dead in his cell at Winson Green Prison in Birmingham, having suffocated himself with torn bedclothes.
The trial of Rose West began at Winchester Crown Court on 3 October 1995. Winchester was chosen rather than the Wests’ hometown of Gloucester, as it was thought feelings were running too high there. As it was, feelings ran high across the world, with camera crews and reporters from every country clamouring for a place in the courtroom.
Opening for the prosecution, Brian Leveson, QC, said police had found scenes ‘more terrible than words can express… young girls dumped without dignity or respect.’
A defence bid to block evidence from Caroline Roberts and Anne Marie West was overturned. The judge ruled it vital for the jury to hear evidence of the most horrific crimes committed against vulnerable girls and young women.
West’s defence counsel, Richard Ferguson QC, argued that Rose had never known about the killings, let along taken part in them. A weeping West took to the witness box, insisting she had been raped as a child and was a victim at the hands of Fred, who was described as ‘a sadistic monster.’ But her tears fooled no one. In all, Rose West was found guilty of the murders of 10 girls and young women: Charmaine West in 1971, Lynda Gough in 1973, Carol Ann Cooper in 1973, Lucy Partington in 1973, Therese Siegenthaler in 1974, Shirley Hubbard in 1974, Juantia Mott in 1975, Shirley Ann Robinson in 1978, Alison Chambers in 1979 and Heather West in 1987.
Sentencing her to life for the murders, judge Mr Justice Charles Mantell said: ‘If attention is paid to what I think, you will never be released.’ He also praised the jurors for their conduct during the trial: ‘You will never have had a more important job to do in your life – I am aware of the great stress it must have placed you under.’
Detective Superintendent John Bennett led the investigations in the House of Horrors case. He is insistent Rose’s sexual perversion led to the deaths of the young women in Cromwell Street and beyond. He spent 19 months bringing the Wests to justice and said: ‘It is sexual motivation that makes people become serial murderers. I don’t think we can begin to comprehend the minds of these two – they were constantly reaching out for further experience and to extend their appetite for sexual thrills.
‘The whole case was about Rose being sexually insatiable. There were huge amounts of pornographic material and sex objects in the house. I firmly believe that Rose murdered the girls and Fred disposed of the bodies.’
And he scoffed at her claims during the trial that she had been a victim of her husband: ‘She could have egged him on. Within the household at least, Fred was certainly subservient.’ The detective added that during questioning, Fred was co-operative, chatty, joking even. Rose answered only ‘No’ or ‘No comment’ during 50 hours of questioning.
Rose West spent 10 years in Durham Jail, until 2005. Today, she is a prisoner at the all-female Bronzefield Jail at Ashford, Middlesex. Conditions there are comfortable. Her cell boasts a TV, DVD player and a stereo. The windows are curtained and the walls covered with pictures, photos and – remarkably – cards and letters from well-wishers. She also has access to a sewing machine and embroidery kit, and works in the prison laundry room, loading and unloading washing. Considered one of the jail’s 35 ‘most well-behaved’ prisoners, inside she is allowed her own kettle and cutlery. She chooses her own bedspread and duvet from catalogues.
Known institutionally as Prisoner GJ 0017, Rose was pictured in the Daily Mirror last year, enjoying a Bank Holiday fair, munching barbecued chicken, listening to a steel band and spending the money earned at her laundry duties on fairground games.
Many people have struck up a correspondence with her. She wrote to one pen friend, Stephen Potts: ‘Do y
ou know they have a rabbit and a guinea pig here? Quite a big garden too, which is always a positive. Anyway, we have got three guinea pigs now. They have got so much better since they have been here; they used to be so frightened.’
To this day, she protests her innocence, believing herself a victim not only of her husband Fred’s sadism but also of a conspiracy by the Establishment to keep her behind bars. One rambling, deluded letter she wrote to Mr Potts read: ‘There is so much more to this than meets the eye. Only once I had entered the prison system did I start to learn what it was motivating the authorities to act in such an appalling manner.
‘When I started to receive the “paperwork” on which to build a “defence” and started to read certain pieces of “evidence”, it started to become clear that for those in a position of great power and control, there was a lot of stuff that would never become public knowledge. Not only were they responsible for the most abominable inadequacy, neglect and incompetence that in my view would undermine the public’s confidence in them, but they are also shown to be corrupt and even evil.
‘It made clear to me just why after 20 years of asking for the authorities “help” with the terrible situation I found myself and my children in, not once did they “respond”. We were being systematically used, abused and tortured, and they could only find it in their hearts to threaten us.’
A former inmate – ‘Jenny’ – who befriended her in Bronzefield, told the Daily Mirror in January 2008: ‘Rose says she has been locked up for long enough for the crimes she actually committed. She knows she is a twisted and depraved child abuser, but thinks her time has been served.’ She went on: ‘Rose confided in me that she abused children. She said on several occasions Fred would call her upstairs and there would be a naked child held in their bedroom. She admitted going ahead with sickening, depraved acts, yet she made out she was going along with what Fred told her to do. Although she is a paedophile, she insists she never killed anyone.’
Jenny added: ‘Rose opened up to me and told me things because we were neighbours and talked a lot. She sometimes opened up about Fred and her part in their crimes. Rose certainly knew her husband was a killer, or at the very least capable of murder. She said she lived in fear of her life when he would take her out in the car to a remote farm.
‘Fred often lived out a warped fantasy of his, which involved tying Rose to a gate on a farm in the middle of nowhere, removing her clothes and having sex. Rose said she thought each time it happened he might kill her. It meant she knew he was a sick and evil man, and she was under no illusions about his character.’
Jenny said she knows that Rose, 54, will never apologise to the families of her victims and that she is not phased by publicity: ‘Rose is always moaning about her press coverage. It’s remarkable, as if she has pushed her crimes from her memory. But when there are stories in the newspapers Rose learns of, she says: “Well, at least they all still know who I am.”’
It seems she believes she has been used as a scapegoat for the dreadful crimes unearthed at Cromwell Street and elsewhere, and that had Fred not killed himself, she might have walked free.
When Moors Murderer Myra Hindley died in November 2002, Rose West inherited the dubious distinction of being Britain’s most notorious female killer. Her upbringing and sexual tastes certainly contributed to the ease with which she fell under the spell of Fred – an equally damaged personality. The combination of the two led to the torture and murder of women and girls whose total number will never be known for sure.
The fact remains that while Myra Hindley at least pretended to show remorse, Rose West has shown none.
‘THE SUFFOLK STRANGLER’
‘He said, “You’ve got nothing to be frightened about.”
I didn’t need to be frightened because he wasn’t going to kill me; I wasn’t a prostitute.’
Wright’s common-law wife, Pam
Name: Steve Wright
Crime: Serial killing
Date of Conviction: 21 February 2008
Age at Conviction: 49
At 10.30pm, on Monday, 30 October 2006, Tania Nicol, a 19-year-old prostitute who sold her body to buy crack cocaine, left home for work on the streets of Ipswich’s red-light district. She failed to return home and was reported missing by her mother, Kerry, 48 hours later. Tania was never seen alive again.
Her mobile phone records showed regular incoming and outgoing activity leading up until just before midnight, then nothing. Police searched through CCTV footage but were unable to find anything concrete.
Two weeks later another prostitute, Gemma Adams – a crack addict like Tania – vanished from the streets of Ipswich. Her boyfriend raised the alarm on 15 November, when the 25-year-old didn’t meet him, as planned. As with Tania, Gemma’s phone records told a worrying story. Police set up patrols to keep kerb crawlers off the streets as hopes of finding the two girls alive rapidly faded.
A further fortnight went by before the police and the girls’ families’ worst fears were realised. On Saturday, 2 December, Gemma’s naked body was found in a stream at Thorpe’s Hill, Hintlesham, about 15 minutes’ drive south of Ipswich town centre. Five days later, police divers found Tania’s body two miles away at Copdock Mill. Both girls had been submerged in water for some time, meaning forensic scientists had great difficulty collecting evidence.
On 10 December, a motorist phoned police to say he had seen what he thought was a mannequin in woodland near a private girls’ school at Nacton, close to where Gemma and Tania were found. It turned out to be the naked body of 24-year-old Anneli Alderton. She had not been seen for a week, but had not been reported missing and so police were not looking for her.
Like the other girls, Anneli had turned to prostitution to fund her drug habit and had been working Ipswich’s red-light area. She was last seen on CCTV, catching a train on 3 December, the day after Gemma’s body was found. The mother-of-one, who was three months pregnant at the time, had been deliberately placed in the cruciform position. Unlike Tania and Gemma, however, Anneli’s body had not been thrown in water, and so scientists started the urgent task of gathering forensic evidence that might nail her murderer.
Police knew they had a serial killer on their hands and urged all sex workers to stay off the streets. The newspapers had dubbed him the ‘Suffolk Strangler’ and Ipswich was paralysed by fear. The biggest investigation in the provincial Suffolk police force’s history, it was stretched to the limit. More than 300 of its 1,300 officers were drafted in to the inquiry and 300 specialists brought in from other forces.
All cars going in and out of Ipswich town centre were logged using automatic number plate recognition. The atmosphere in the town was edgy and the red-light district’s streets empty, save those who, despite the warnings, could not afford to stay home. Police urged all working girls to check on their friends to ensure they were OK.
Two prostitutes were missing. Annette Nicholls, 29, was last seen at 9.50pm on 5 December, working on Norwich Road in the red-light area. Paula Clennell, 24, had not been seen since just after midnight on Sunday, 10 December. Neither woman’s mobile phone had been used from the moment they had vanished. It was a familiar story.
Just after 3pm on Tuesday, 12 December, a woman walking along Old Felixstowe Road, near Levington, spotted a body. As police began to seal off the area, they found the corpse of another naked female dumped nearby.
The bodies were identified as those of Annette and Paula. Like Anneli, Annette’s corpse had been arranged in the shape of a crucifix. Again, like Anneli, neither victim had been dumped in water. Paula had been disposed of 100 yards away from Annette, at the foot of a tree, just a few metres from a road. This suggested that whoever left her there was either in a hurry, or was becoming more confident. Police were able to produce DNA profiles very quickly.
In the course of hundreds of police interviews since the killings started, one name repeatedly cropped up. Tom Stevens was an oddball loner, who knew most of the women who worked Ipswich’s
red-light district. He also liked to draw attention to himself and was only too pleased to offer himself up to the press as the man the police must want to question. Indeed, he was taken in for police questioning and it looked as if they had their man. All they needed was the DNA profile from the victims’ bodies to match his.
On 17 December, detectives were told that the DNA recovered from Anneli, Paula and Annette could only belong to one person. It was not Tom Stevens. But they did have a full profile match on the national DNA database. The man they were after was called Steve Wright.
Forklift driver Wright, 48, was a twice-married father-of-two, who lived on London Road, in the heart of the red-light district. Police already had his DNA on record after a conviction for stealing £80 from a till while working as a barman in Felixstowe, in 2001. Wright’s flat was just a few hundred yards away from where Tania Nichol was last seen. Police soon discovered he was well known to Ipswich’s street prostitutes, many of whom regarded him as a friend as well as a client.
Despite the weight of scientific and circumstantial evidence against him, police did not arrest Wright straightaway. The fact that his DNA was found on three of the victims could be explained away. After all, it is not illegal to have sex with prostitutes.
At the Forensic Science Service in Birmingham, 250 of the centre’s 275 scientists worked shifts around the clock, testing hundreds of samples from the bodies. They took minute fragments from Tania Nichol and Gemma Adams’ hair and compared fibres with others taken from Wright’s clothes, furniture and the carpet of his car. It was painstaking work, but it paid off.
One of the fibres recovered from Tania’s hair was a direct match to the carpet in Wright’s Mondeo. This crucial evidence proved Tania’s head had been lying on the floor of the suspect’s car and that she must have been dead at the time. Other tests found that traces of semen on the three girls, who were dumped on dry land, matched traces found on three pairs of Wright’s gloves, which police believed he wore while carrying the bodies. Annette and Paula’s blood was found on his reflective yellow jacket. Further tiny fibres discovered in his car and flat were identical to those found on all five bodies. In total, forensic scientists recovered 177 clothing or textile fibres from the victims that matched fibres from Wright’s home, his car or his clothes.
Life Means Life Page 26