West said that they had had a row; he had punched her, then strangled her with his bare hands. Later, he said he had strangled her with a piece of electrical cable to make sure she was dead. Then he had buried her under the paddling pool, afterwards explaining that he could not make a hole big enough without a sledgehammer, so he had to cut her head and legs off. However, she was naked when she was buried and had clearly been subjected to some sort of sexual abuse.
In June 1980, Rose gave birth to Fred’s second son, Barry. In April 1982, Rose had Rosemary Junior, who was not Fred’s child. Then in July 1983, Rose had yet another daughter, Lucyanna. Like Tara and Rosemary Junior, she was mixed race. It is thought that the Wests kept on carrying out sexual abductions throughout this period but, as they did not bury any of the victims at 25 Cromwell Street and refused to confess to any murders during the early 1980s, one cannot be sure.
Having eight children in the household took its toll on Rose’s temper. She became increasingly irrational and beat them without provocation. This began to loosen the children’s bond of loyalty. Their continued silence was the Wests’ only protection.
In June 1987, Heather, who was then 16, decided that she would resist her father’s sexual demands. At the time, Rosemary was also showing a sexual interest in Heather, with Fred’s encouragement. In a fit of pique, Heather challenged her mother and father about the parentage of her three mixed-race sisters. Her father had claimed they were a throwback to his ‘gypsy past’. To Heather, though, it was clear that they were the children of one of her mother’s West Indian clients and she confronted one of the other daughters of that particular man.
In Fred and Rosemary’s eyes, she had overstepped the mark, talking to someone outside the family about their business. She received a tremendous beating. They then waited until the end of the school year, so there would be no awkward questions from teachers, before they strangled her. The other children were told that she had left home, while Fred and Rosemary played an elaborate charade with telephone calls and supposed sightings to make them believe she was alive and well. Acquaintances were told that she had run off with a lesbian lover.
Fred asked his 13-year-old son Stephen to help him dig a hole in the back garden. Later, Fred buried Heather’s dismembered body there. Afterwards, slabs were laid over it. When her body was eventually recovered from under the patio, it was clear that she had been treated in the same way as the other victims; she had been decapitated, dismembered and disarticulated, and a number of bones were missing. Two lengths of orange cord of the type that Fred carried in his van to tie ladders to the roof were found. One was entangled in her hair.
Fred West could barely bring himself later to look at the anatomical drawings showing which bones were missing. When asked whether any of these parts of the body had been removed while Heather was alive, he said, ‘I’ve no comment on that.’
Twenty-two of the twenty-six bones in the fingers and toes were missing, along with fifteen from her wrists and ankles. Her right kneecap was also absent. Her right thigh had been smashed with a meat cleaver and the legs disarticulated from the pelvis with a sharp knife. West maintained that he had killed his daughter in a simple disagreement about leaving home.
Over the next few weeks, Fred and Rosemary extended the patio out over the garden. Stephen was surprised to see the hole that he had been digging for a new paddling pool and been filled in and covered over.
In the years that followed, the other children tried to locate their missing sister. The older siblings filled out a Salvation Army missing-persons form. But when they talked about reporting her missing to the police, they were told that Heather had been involved in credit card fraud and that, if they went to the police, they would get her into trouble.
When divorcée Katherine Halliday moved into 11 Cromwell Street, Fred invited her round to meet Rosemary. Immediately, she was treated to a pornographic video. Rosemary sat next to her. She was wearing a miniskirt and a low-cut top – and no underwear. Halliday was then dragged up to the bedroom where both Rosemary and Fred had sex with her. After that, she and Rosemary became regular lovers, with Fred usually watching. The sex quickly became more aggressive, with Fred showing her amateur videos he had probably made himself featuring increasingly violent sado-masochism.
The levels of bondage Halliday underwent were then stepped up. She noted that the Wests liked to see her frightened, but when they showed her rubber suits and masks that had no holes for the nose and mouth, she got so scared that she did not go back again.
The Wests’ campaign of rape and murder had been going on for 20 years, but only now did they begin to run out of luck. When Fred began raping one of his younger daughters and videoing it, she told one of her school friends. And another one of the very young girls they had abducted and raped also told a girlfriend what happened. The girl went to the police and the case was assigned to the newly promoted DC Hazel Savage.
On 6 August 1992, the police arrived at 25 Cromwell Street with a search warrant. They were looking for evidence of child abuse, and found a mountain of distasteful pornography; both Fred and Rosemary were arrested. Fred was charged with the rape and sodomy of a minor and Rose was charged with assisting him.
Hazel Savage was assigned to the case. She knew of Fred from 1966 when Rena had told her about his sexual perversions, and she set about interviewing the Wests’ friends and family members. Anne-Marie talked openly about the abuse she had suffered at Fred’s hands. She also expressed her suspicions about the fate of Charmaine, whom DC Savage had known from her investigations in 1966. Rena, it seemed, had also gone missing. Savage checked tax and national insurance records which showed that Heather had not been employed, drawn benefits or visited a doctor in five years. Either she had moved abroad or she was dead.
The younger children were taken into care. Unable to cope without Fred, who remained in custody, Rosemary tried to kill herself by taking an overdose of pills. But her son Stephen found her in time and saved her life. In jail, Fred became self-pitying and depressed. But still his luck held. The case against him collapsed when two key witnesses decided not to testify against them and he was released.
However, DC Savage now launched an inquiry into the whereabouts of Heather. The West children joked that she was under the patio; they said that Fred had threatened them that if they did not keep their mouths shut about the goings-on at 25 Cromwell Street they would end up under the patio like Heather.
The task was daunting. Digging up a 600sq-ft garden was a huge undertaking and was bound to attract media attention, especially since the extension to the house had been built over part of the garden. But DS John Bennett eventually got a warrant.
After the discovery of the bones in the garden, Fred West was charged with the murder of Heather West, Shirley Robinson and an unidentified third woman, who turned out to be Alison Chambers. To protect Rose, Fred took full responsibility for the murders.
The police now broadened the investigation to look into the disappearance of Rena and Charmaine. Fred was assigned an ‘appropriate adult’ named Janet Leach. She was usually assigned to befriend and assist juveniles or the mentally subnormal when they were taken into custody. Fred West was thought to fall into this second category. Leach asked Fred whether there were any more bodies. West admitted that there were and sketched a map of the cellar and bathroom, showing where six more bodies lay. He admitted to murdering the girls he had buried there, but not to raping them. The girls, he insisted, had wanted to have sex with him. However, he did not even know the names of some of his victims. He called Carol Ann Cooper simply ‘Scar Hand’ because of a burn on her hand caused by a firework. Thérèse Siegenthaler he referred to as ‘Tulip’ under the mistaken impression that she was Dutch; she was Swiss. This made it difficult for the police to identify the bodies. With large numbers of people being reported missing each year, it was a mammoth task to match a set of remains to a missing person’s report.
Of course, Fred West did know the name
s of some of his victims. He admitted to murdering his first wife Rena and his lover Ann McFall and burying their bodies in the fields near Much Marcle. He also admitted to the murder of Charmaine, Rena’s eldest daughter. With his help, the bodies of Rena, Ann McFall and Charmaine were found. However, he refused to co-operate over the disappearance of Mary Bastholm and her body has never been located.
From the start, the police were convinced that Rose West was involved in the murders, even though she feigned shock at her husband’s confessions and denied everything. She played the naïve and innocent victim of a murderous and manipulative man. Along with Stephen and her eldest daughter Mae, she was moved by the police into a safe house in Cheltenham. The house was bugged by police, but Rose never said anything which implicated herself. However, on 18 April 1994, she was charged with a sex offence and taken into custody. The murder charges would come later.
By this time, the world’s media had turned up in Gloucester. There were TV crews from America and Japanese film interviews in the street. Journalists quickly dubbed 25 Cromwell Street the ‘House of Horrors’. The fact that a serial killer had been operating in Gloucester for over 25 years came as a shock to its citizens. They had got away with it because, with the exception of Lucy Partington, the Wests had deliberately targeted people who drifted in and out of society and whose disappearance would not be noticed. Nevertheless, the international attention the Wests had brought the city came as a terrible blow to Gloucester’s civic pride.
On 13 December 1994, Fred West was charged with 12 murders. He and Rose appeared together in court. In the dock, Fred tried to comfort Rose, but she pulled away from him, telling the police that he made her sick. Fred found the rejection devastating. He wrote to her, saying, ‘We will always be in love … You will always be Mrs West, all over the world. That is important to me and to you.’ She did not respond.
Just before noon on New Year’s Day 1995 at Winson Green Prison in Birmingham, 54-year-old Fred West hanged himself with strips of bed sheet. He had picked his moment well; the guards were at lunch and he had clearly planned his suicide so that he would not be discovered and resuscitated.
This left Rose alone to face ten counts of murder when her trial began on 3 October 1995. Clearly, she could not have been involved in the murder of Rena and Ann McFall as they had been killed before she knew Fred. However, there was little direct evidence to link her to the other murders. Instead, the prosecution, led by Brian Leveson QC, aimed to construct a tight web of circumstantial evidence to prove Rose’s guilt.
A number of key witnesses – including Caroline Raine and Miss A – testified to Rose’s sadistic assaults on young women. The prosecution maintained that the abduction of Caroline Raine was a blueprint for how the Wests picked up their victims. Caroline escaped with her life and the Wests were prosecuted and fined over the incident. From then on, it was clear that Fred and Rosemary West had made up their minds that future victims would not be allowed to live to tell the tale.
Fred’s confidante Janet Leach also gave crucial evidence. She testified that Fred had told her privately that Rose was involved in the murders – and that Rose had murdered Charmaine and Shirley Robinson by herself. However, West had apparently said that he made a deal with Rose to take all the blame himself. At the time, this confession, given in confidence, had put Ms Leach under so much stress that she suffered a stroke. It was only after Fred’s suicide that she felt the bond of confidentiality had been lifted and she told the police what he had revealed to her. Giving testimony, she again was put under enormous stress. She collapsed and had to be taken to hospital, with the trial being adjourned for several days.
The most damning evidence came from Anne-Marie West, who fixed her stepmother with a withering stare as she described how she and Fred had embarked on a campaign of sexual abuse against her when she was eight.
The defence, led by Richard Ferguson QC, maintained that evidence of sexual assault was not the same thing as evidence of murder. He made the case that Rose did not know that Fred was murdering the girls they had abused and burying them around the house and in the back garden. Ferguson then put Rose on the witness stand. She did not impress the jury. The prosecution rattled her by making her angry; she appeared obstructive and defiant. The prosecution also managed to force her to confess to the extent of her maltreatment of the children and she gave the general impression of being unscrupulous and dishonest.
The defence played taped interviews with Fred West, where he said that he had murdered his victims when Rose was out of the house. But it was not difficult for the prosecution to show that Fred was an inveterate liar, so everything he said was open to doubt.
In his closing speech, Leveson maintained that Rose had been the dominant force in the Wests’ murderous partnership. She was, he told the jury, the ‘strategist’. ‘The evidence that Rosemary West knew nothing is not worthy of belief,’ he said.
Ferguson, closing for the defence, maintained that the evidence for murder only pointed to Fred. There was no proof that Rose had known anything, let alone participated. The jury did not agree with him; they quickly came to the unanimous verdict that Rosemary West was guilty of the murders of Charmaine West, Heather West, Shirley Robinson and the other girls buried at the house. The judge sentenced Rose to life imprisonment on each of the ten counts of murder. In 1996, her request for leave to appeal was turned down. Home Secretary David Blunkett later told Rosemary West that she would never be released.
In October 1996, Gloucester City Council demolished 25 Cromwell Street. There were calls to create a memorial garden on the site, but there were fears that it would be turned into a ghoulish shrine, so it was left as a landscaped footpath leading to the city centre.
Four years after Rose West was sentenced, her son Stephen revealed that not only had his father admitted killing 15-year-old waitress Mary Bastholm when visiting his father in prison shortly before he died, he had boasted that Bastholm’s body would never be found. Stephen said his father had told him, ‘I will never tell anyone where she is.’ He also talked of a number of other victims and crowed, ‘They are not going to find them all, you know, never.’
However, to the police, West had continued strenuously denying that he had killed Bastholm, although she had been seen in his car. Mary Bastholm’s brother Peter said he was relieved when he heard what Stephen West had said, although his parents had both died without learning the fate of their only daughter.
In December 1998, Gordon Burn, the author of Happy Like Murderers, another book about the Wests, claimed that the bones removed from the victims’ bodies – usually fingers and toes, but in some cases kneecaps and entire shoulder blades – had been buried near Pittville Park in Cheltenham, close to the bus stop where Fred first met Rose in 1970. Burns said that the location held an ‘almost spiritual’ significance for the Wests.
In 2000, Rosemary West secured legal aid to launch a new appeal. Her lawyer, Leo Goatley, said that there was ‘new photographic evidence, which would prove that her husband, Fred West, was the sole killer’. The hope was that she would ‘be cleared by anatomical photographs of women which were taken by Fred West and seized by police during an earlier investigation in 1992’. The photographs, he asserted, were time stamped and would help his client prove she was not present at the time. The originals, he said, had been destroyed, but Goatley was confident that ‘copies would have been made or details of the photographs chronicled by police’. He also said that excessive publicity and chequebook journalism had prevented her from receiving a fair trial, and an application was made to the Criminal Cases Review Commission on 20 October 2000.
But the application was doomed to failure when a TV documentary aired an interview with Janet Leach who revealed that Fred West had confessed to killing many more than the 12 victims he had been charged with murdering. ‘Fred said that there were two other bodies in shallow graves in the woods but there was no way they would ever be found,’ she told the interviewer. ‘He said there w
ere 20 other bodies, not in one place but spread around and he would give police one a year. He told me the truth about the girls in the cellar and what happened to them so I don’t see why he would lie about other bodies.’
She also said that West had confessed to the murder of Mary Bastholm. She was one of two young woman ‘in shallow graves in the woods, but there was no way they would ever be found’.
‘No one has even scratched the surface of this case,’ said the documentary’s producer. ‘Social services had 300 missing files and 100 missing girls. There were two girls from Jordan’s Brook Children’s Home who were making a living as prostitutes from 25 Cromwell Street.’
The programme also described how West had told his solicitor that he believed the spirits of his victims rose from their graves. ‘When they come up into you it’s beautiful,’ West is alleged to have said. ‘It’s when they go away you are trying to hold them, you feel them flying away from you and you try to stop them. You can’t send them back to where they were.’
Soon after this, Rosemary West abandoned her appeal and told the press that she had resigned herself to spending the rest of her life in Durham’s high-security prison. In 2008, she was transferred to the all-women prison at Low Newton in County Durham where she has a private room, complete with a TV, radio, CD player and her own bathroom. She listens to The Archers and Neil Diamond, plays Monopoly, cooks and has beauty products from Avon and trinkets from Argos delivered. Among the other inmates in her unit is Tracey Connelly, mother of Baby P, with whom she has struck up a close relationship.
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THE VEGETABLE PATCH AT RILLINGTON PLACE
John Reginald Christie, the notorious necrophile murderer of 10 Rillington Place, also buried bodies in the back garden. This was discovered after Christie had moved out of the slum property in north Kensington.
Bodies in the Back Garden--True Stories of Brutal Murders Close to Home Page 4