Speaker 1: Cromwell Street, Gloucester, England. An ordinary house in an ordinary street.
Speaker 1: Number twenty five was the home of a local builder
Speaker 1: and his wife, bustling with children and topped up to
Speaker 1: the brim with lodgers. The only thing that distinguished Number
Speaker 1: twenty five from the others was the amount of people
Speaker 1: that came and went. Fred West liked company. He also
Speaker 1: liked to maim, molest and murder. But was this seemingly
Speaker 1: ordinary man driven to the slaughter of at least twelve
Speaker 1: women and children? Or was Fred West born to kill?
Speaker 1: Fred West was described by Richard Ferguson, Prosecuting qc. Of
Speaker 1: the trial of Rosemary West as a man devoid of compassion,
Speaker 1: consumed with sexual lust, a sadistic killer, and someone who
Speaker 1: had opted out of the human race, the very epitome
Speaker 1: of evil. But who was Fred West?
Speaker 2: If you passed Fred West in the street, you wouldn't
Speaker 2: give him a second glance. He had a wife and
Speaker 2: had six children.
Speaker 3: Fred West was a chameleon. His neighbors would have told
Speaker 3: you that he was a very hard working, likable, friendly chap.
Speaker 4: On the face of it, was a completely ordinary builder, pandeyman,
Speaker 4: a very jovial fellow who got on well with everybody.
Speaker 5: He did fit in with the normal flow of life,
Speaker 5: even though he was profoundly abnormal.
Speaker 6: Many people would be taken in by him because he
Speaker 6: was plausible and charming. So the last thing in your
Speaker 6: mind is that he might actually harm a terrible evil.
Speaker 2: The great mystery of the whole thing is what drove
Speaker 2: them to do this.
Speaker 4: You're talking about two people who literally plumbed the depths
Speaker 4: of human depravity.
Speaker 5: Some people have the ambition to, you know, to become
Speaker 5: a great politician, to succeed in the world of art.
Speaker 5: He had the ambition to succeed in sadistic sexual homicide.
Speaker 7: You could put on this act as an amiable row,
Speaker 7: but it was only to put up some kind of disguise,
Speaker 7: and underneath that look this monster.
Speaker 6: Someone may have evil written all over his face, and
Speaker 6: yet people miss it. Fred West's evil would be missed
Speaker 6: by very many people.
Speaker 1: Frederick Stephen West was born on the twenty ninth of
Speaker 1: September nineteen forty one in the rural Hereford village of
Speaker 1: Much Markel, a tiny agricultural community cut off from metropolitan life.
Speaker 1: This rural idyl would be where the young West grew up.
Speaker 1: The second of six siblings, Fred was a striking child
Speaker 1: with a shock of curly blonde hair and piercing blue eyes.
Speaker 1: But how did this blue eyed boy turn into one
Speaker 1: of history's most vicious and heenous serial killers?
Speaker 5: For Frederick West, this kind of landscape, obviously you can
Speaker 5: see a sense of freedom, and he will have had
Speaker 5: a lot of freedom, more freedom than most people would
Speaker 5: have had. But then again, this kind of landscape is
Speaker 5: also very brutal, and what goes with it is the
Speaker 5: kind of activities he had, such as clubbing to death rabbits,
Speaker 5: to watch his mother shotgunning rats, this kind of like
Speaker 5: physical and very kind of harsh environment.
Speaker 1: It's widely believed that Fred's father, Walter, was a child abuser,
Speaker 1: and he seemed unashamed and unrepentant about his behavior. Fred
Speaker 1: was very much the apple of his mother's eye, and
Speaker 1: her love could be described as more than overprotective.
Speaker 3: Apparently for years they'd been having sort of sexual games together,
Speaker 3: and a minute he was capable of doing anything more
Speaker 3: than that. She initiated him. He was also abused by
Speaker 3: his father. It was a family in which interest was
Speaker 3: taken fairly much as normal. He was highly sexualized from
Speaker 3: a very young age, and sex became very much part
Speaker 3: of his motivation. He would talk constantly about sex.
Speaker 1: Fred's school career was short and unproductive. He left school
Speaker 1: at fourteen, barely able to read and write. His IQ
Speaker 1: was later measured at just eighty.
Speaker 5: The problem there obviously lies that lots and lots of
Speaker 5: doors are then closed, and the doors that were open
Speaker 5: to Fred and his industrious, possibly attention deficit hyperactive traits
Speaker 5: would be channeled into things like chasing girls, petty theft,
Speaker 5: problematic behavior via little pettiacts of violence, and possibly other
Speaker 5: activities that we don't as yet know about.
Speaker 8: This would have turned him into a survivor, a lad
Speaker 8: that would live off the land, crude, get by as
Speaker 8: I can get what I can. That he would be
Speaker 8: like a fox, and he didn't need good literature skills
Speaker 8: to survive. He could survive on his wits.
Speaker 1: Like many young boys, West became fascinated by motorbikes. He
Speaker 1: saved hard to buy his first machine, but his pride
Speaker 1: and joy was soon to become a nightmare. On the
Speaker 1: evening of November twenty eighth, nineteen fifty eight, whilst West
Speaker 1: was riding along this road, he collided with a girl
Speaker 1: riding in the opposite direction. The precise details of the
Speaker 1: accident remain a mystery, but West suffered multiple injuries, including
Speaker 1: a serious head wound. He lay unconscious in hospital for
Speaker 1: seven days.
Speaker 5: Like many unfortunate children, Frederick West did inherit certain brain
Speaker 5: abnormalities from his parents, who had problems themselves. This reached
Speaker 5: a very much of a crescendo on this very road,
Speaker 5: which not only caused great damage to his body and
Speaker 5: the shortening of a leg, but delivered a massive amount
Speaker 5: of damage to his head and there four to his brain.
Speaker 5: And the part of the brain that gets the head
Speaker 5: on particular damage is the frontal cortex. Here the frontal lobe,
Speaker 5: which contains the elements of what makes us a moral person.
Speaker 5: That will give you a sense of revulsion if that
Speaker 5: is a particularly horrific act. Now for Fred, these were damaged,
Speaker 5: so someone who was already a little bit psychopathic suddenly
Speaker 5: had the brakes taken off completely and made him into
Speaker 5: a real danger to society.
Speaker 1: Fred's recovery was slow and humiliating. His nose was broken,
Speaker 1: he walked with a pronounced limp, and now suffered from
Speaker 1: violent mood swings.
Speaker 5: He did lose a lot of his good looks. There
Speaker 5: was damage to his nose and other configurations, and from
Speaker 5: being quite a charmer and a crudely good looking lad
Speaker 5: in the village, he lost a lot of that edge.
Speaker 1: Fred compensated for the loss of his looks by taking
Speaker 1: a much more aggressive approach with the local girls.
Speaker 4: If Fred wanted sex, he effectively would rape young girls
Speaker 4: in that community.
Speaker 5: It would have been very much a kind of grab
Speaker 5: and grope situation, and he tended then, obviously to use
Speaker 5: girls for the only kind of comfort that really ever
Speaker 5: existed for Fred in his entire life, and that was
Speaker 5: sex and control.
Speaker 1: One girl Fred couldn't control was Catherine Costello, better known
Speaker 1: as Rena. She was a sixteen year old prostitute who'd
Speaker 1: moved to Gloucester from her native Glasgow. Fred married Rena
Speaker 1: despite her being five months pregnant with another man's child.
Speaker 5: I think Fred saw in Rena certain elements.
Speaker 9: Of his mother.
Speaker 5: It was a strong person who would control him, and
Speaker 5: he was putting his place, if you like, for the
Speaker 5: first time probably in his life, by a female. But
Speaker 5: I don't think he was ever comfortable with her. He
Speaker 5: was never really someone that he could see as a soulmate.
Speaker 5: She was really a mother substitute.
Speaker 1: Charmaine West was born in the March of nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: three and was soon followed by a little sister, Anne Marie.
Speaker 1: Childhood for the two little girls was far from traditional.
Speaker 3: Rena and he had a very on and off life together.
Speaker 3: Sometimes lived were together, sometimes they weren't. Sometimes he had
Speaker 3: both the children. Sometimes these children were in foster care.
Speaker 3: Occasionally Rena took the children. Mostly if they weren't in care,
Speaker 3: they were with Fred. Fred found a succession of young
Speaker 3: women to look after them.
Speaker 4: It was a very.
Speaker 3: Up and down, strange life.
Speaker 1: This turbulent relationship finally reached breaking point in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: Rena feared for her own safety and fled back to Scotland.
Speaker 1: Fred had been happy to let her go, but not
Speaker 1: the children, and he'd already recruited sixteen year old Anna
Speaker 1: McFall to act as their nanny.
Speaker 4: Am McFall and Fred always maintained, in his words, the
Speaker 4: love of his life. In fact, when he was in
Speaker 4: prison awaiting trial before he committed suicide, he wrote a
Speaker 4: great piece of catalog of his relationship with amm Full
Speaker 4: which he entitled I Loved an.
Speaker 1: Angel, but the angel was soon to fall. When she
Speaker 1: became pregnant with West's child.
Speaker 4: She became effectively a problem to the bread, an obstruction
Speaker 4: who had to be removed. It sounds extraordinarily callous, but
Speaker 4: Fred was the kind of man who if a woman
Speaker 4: presented a problem, she effectively would be removed from his life.
Speaker 1: Anna McFall was last seen in the July of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven.
Speaker 6: Fred West would have thought that people were disposable, because,
Speaker 6: as far as he was concerned, other people were instruments
Speaker 6: to be used, so there would be no ethical boundaries.
Speaker 8: He decided that he'd had enough of her and that
Speaker 8: she was surplustorist requirements, and as cold blood it may seem,
Speaker 8: he destroyed her and buried her.
Speaker 1: Twenty seven years later, the remains of Anna McFall were
Speaker 1: discovered in this field on the outskirts of Fred's home village,
Speaker 1: much Markle in Herefordshire. The body had been decapitated and dismembered,
Speaker 1: and was found with the skeleton of her unborn child.
Speaker 5: He would not have had the same sense of revulsion
Speaker 5: that you and I would have had of stripping the
Speaker 5: body and deciding how to dispose of it. He would
Speaker 5: be very industrious about this, and this would have set
Speaker 5: him apart from many many attempted killers and attempted serial killers,
Speaker 5: in that he was very energetic, very industrious about the
Speaker 5: way he went about things.
Speaker 1: Anna McFall had been the last of the victims to
Speaker 1: be recovered, but she'd been the first to die. She'd
Speaker 1: signaled a turning point in the murderous career of Frederick West.
Speaker 1: Fred West was just twelve years old when in November
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three a young girl was born who was
Speaker 1: destined to be his partner in life and in death.
Speaker 1: The young Rosemary West's childhood was tragically similar to that
Speaker 1: of Fred. Her mother, Daisy, suffered from both severe depression
Speaker 1: and the attentions of a violent schizophrenic husband.
Speaker 6: Her father was very.
Speaker 7: Very abusive to his daughters, and the other daughters wouldn't
Speaker 7: tolerated and moved out. In fact, I think the mother
Speaker 7: moved out at one stage, but from an early age
Speaker 7: he would have been having sex with her and she
Speaker 7: would be accepting it. The relationship with her father continued
Speaker 7: after Fred and Rose got together, and in fact Rose's
Speaker 7: father would turn up at Cromwell Street even after Rose
Speaker 7: had four children, to have sex with her, and then
Speaker 7: Fred would send her into the bedroom with Anne Marie.
Speaker 6: When Fred met Rose, he recognized what one might call
Speaker 6: a solemad and that's why he was attracted to her.
Speaker 6: They are kind of interlocking psychothology and background, so that
Speaker 6: they played off each other and they have fantasies and coincided.
Speaker 1: Probably Fred and Rose met in the quiet village of
Speaker 1: Bishop's Cleve, Gloucestershire, England. Despite the age gap, they soon
Speaker 1: started a relationship and it was not long before seventeen
Speaker 1: year old Rose was living with Fred and his two children,
Speaker 1: Charmaine and Anne Marie, in their new home at twenty
Speaker 1: five Midland Road, Gloucester.
Speaker 8: That the two girls sexually, probably almost from the off,
Speaker 8: really probably saved Rose her life to start off with,
Speaker 8: and I think she could have easily become another victim.
Speaker 8: She's using him for what she wants, a little perks.
Speaker 8: He's driving around in his carn and she's feeling much older.
Speaker 8: She can tell her girlfriends at school where it is,
Speaker 8: and my boyfriend's older. All the time, learning from Fred,
Speaker 8: who was a willing teacher and enjoying every minute of it.
Speaker 8: This was the cocktail that was going to start to
Speaker 8: put the bomb together that would soon explode.
Speaker 1: Rose was soon pregnant and gave birth to Heather Anne
Speaker 1: in October nineteen seventy. Motherhood didn't come naturally.
Speaker 5: This was very very new to Rows. She's very young. However,
Speaker 5: she did like children, but possibly not in the way
Speaker 5: that most adults would like children. For Rose, she'd always
Speaker 5: had a kind of learning disability and a slight intellectual challenge,
Speaker 5: and she found it much easier to sort of deal
Speaker 5: with small children, and she didn't like the kind of
Speaker 5: conflict of being challenged. So therefore she would treat children
Speaker 5: more as kind of dolls toys. They were kind of
Speaker 5: still objectified.
Speaker 7: I remember asking her whether she have a breastfeed and
Speaker 7: she said, oh, no, tips were for fucking not for
Speaker 7: you know, breastfeeding children. So you know, there was this
Speaker 7: thing that made me wonder about, you know, a mother's milk.
Speaker 7: It was something alien to Rose.
Speaker 4: Rose was very very strict, disciplinearian for all the West children.
Speaker 4: Their upbringing was very very regimented. They were taken off
Speaker 4: to school, they were never ever encouraged to make friends
Speaker 4: in the community. Rose ruled the West children with an
Speaker 4: iron rod.
Speaker 1: Tragically, the child that suffered the most was eight year
Speaker 1: old Charmain. Sometime in the June of nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: while Fred West was coming to the end of a
Speaker 1: nine month prison sentence for theft, Charmain disappeared.
Speaker 6: Once Rose had killed Roman, then she is of course
Speaker 6: equally guilty, so she could not claim just to be
Speaker 6: an unwilling accomplice. Once she's done that she has to continue.
Speaker 5: This was, as it were, a shared experience. It is
Speaker 5: incredibly bonding, but in this case bonding in immorality because
Speaker 5: having disposed of a problematic, challenging child which might have
Speaker 5: disrupted the relationship between Fred and Rose, then as it were,
Speaker 5: nothing could be ruled out in terms of eliminating other
Speaker 5: factors that could threaten their relationship.
Speaker 1: Of these factors was Charmain's real mother, Rena.
Speaker 3: She came looking for her child, and that I'm afraid
Speaker 3: sealed her fate because she could not find Charmaine was
Speaker 3: not there. Charmain was dead. The only solution was to
Speaker 3: murder Rena.
Speaker 1: Rena was last seen alive in the autumn of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one. Her dismembered remains were found in letterbox field
Speaker 1: in Much Markell Anna McFall already lay next door, degraded
Speaker 1: and discarded by West. For Frederick West, this.
Speaker 5: Will have been his little playground. This would be an
Speaker 5: area he was very familiar with, an area that he
Speaker 5: probably played in as a child. And it's an area
Speaker 5: that he can find readily. It has practical reasons. It
Speaker 5: has a tree, it has a signpost, and it can
Speaker 5: be found easily. And he'd want that because he'd want
Speaker 5: to be able to control these corpses, even though they
Speaker 5: were not alive. He wants access. He wants to feel
Speaker 5: that he can actually be part of this area, and
Speaker 5: they are part of this area. This is his private yard.
Speaker 1: With Rena out of the way, fred was free to
Speaker 1: marry and he and Rose cemented their murderous relationship. In
Speaker 1: the January of nineteen seventy two. They moved across the
Speaker 1: park from Midland Road and into a street that was
Speaker 1: set to become infamous.
Speaker 2: Twenty five Cromwell Street became the most famous address in
Speaker 2: the world, which is bedsit Land. It's inhabited by a
Speaker 2: moving population of sort of people who are drifting around,
Speaker 2: or they've left home for some reason, or they couldn't
Speaker 2: easily be traced, and that was one of the reasons
Speaker 2: why Fred remained undetected for so many years.
Speaker 1: This anonymous neighborhood provided the perfect cover for the West's
Speaker 1: lustful and murderous nature. It was the ideal lair into
Speaker 1: which they trapped their prey. Fred and Rose now set
Speaker 1: about spinning their web.
Speaker 5: Fred on his own was a charmer, and he would
Speaker 5: try and chatwagle upon street corners and bus stops or
Speaker 5: what have you. But having rows around and having a
Speaker 5: vehicle completely puts people at ease. And you can see
Speaker 5: that they slowly but surely crafted this into a refined scavenging,
Speaker 5: predatory stalking family, a sort of unit that could, as
Speaker 5: it were, take people off the streets very, very efficiently.
Speaker 1: In November nineteen seventy two, seventeen year old Caroline Owens
Speaker 1: was hitchhiking from Tewkesbury to her home in Cinderford. She'd
Speaker 1: been on a regular visit to see her boyfriend and
Speaker 1: was waiting for her usual lift from a friendly telephone engineer.
Speaker 1: It was then that a gray Ford car drew up
Speaker 1: and a young couple offered her a lift.
Speaker 9: She seemed pretty cheerful.
Speaker 10: She said, where are you going to and I said Cinderford,
Speaker 10: and she said, we're from Gloucester, but don't worry, we'll
Speaker 10: take you all the way back. They started telling me
Speaker 10: about their family and asked me if I'd like to
Speaker 10: be a nanny because they said they are three little
Speaker 10: girls at home. And I was really excited because I'd
Speaker 10: always dreamt of being a children's nannia eleven children that,
Speaker 10: you know, everything seemed quite romantic and glamorous to me.
Speaker 10: I was going to escape my home and going over
Speaker 10: with this lovely family, and it was like a big
Speaker 10: fairy tale. But then a week and meeting them, I
Speaker 10: moved in.
Speaker 1: But Caroline's fairytale began to turn into a nightmare when
Speaker 1: Fred let slip a shocking revelation.
Speaker 10: One day, he turned around and he said that A
Speaker 10: Marie had lost her virginity. And I mean she was
Speaker 10: a little girl of eight, and I didn't think that
Speaker 10: was a funny thing to say. And I just said
Speaker 10: to him, quite accusingly, what do you mean, Why are
Speaker 10: you saying she's lost virginity?
Speaker 9: What's happened to her? And he said, well, she had.
Speaker 10: An accident on her pushbike and the saddle came off
Speaker 10: and it penetrated her, and she was damaged by that.
Speaker 9: I became a bit aware then.
Speaker 10: You know, I'd been sexually abused as a child myself,
Speaker 10: so it was almost like I could now recognize that
Speaker 10: her behavior was probably being beaten up by her stepmother
Speaker 10: and being abused maybe by her father.
Speaker 1: Events got out of hand when Fred propositioned Caroline.
Speaker 10: He said, well, you know, we've got a sex circles,
Speaker 10: me and Rose and a few other men.
Speaker 9: We'd like you to join it.
Speaker 10: And I started getting quite angry because by this time
Speaker 10: I got a bit fed up of all the things
Speaker 10: used to come out with. And I said, I don't
Speaker 10: know what you're on about. Don't want nothing to do
Speaker 10: with it.
Speaker 1: I discuss did Caroline fled the house, vowing never to return.
Speaker 1: A couple of months later, she was standing in her
Speaker 1: usual hitchhiking spot when she noticed a familiar car.
Speaker 9: My first day.
Speaker 10: Instant was to run away, but I didn't, and when
Speaker 10: they pulled up besides me, Rose was like apologizing, I'm
Speaker 10: sorry that you left and the children are really missing you.
Speaker 9: Can we give you a lift down?
Speaker 10: And as much as I didn't want to, I felt
Speaker 10: like I couldn't be nasty to them, so I got
Speaker 10: in the car.
Speaker 9: If it was fine. We went just through Gloucester.
Speaker 10: Most of it was like the children had missed me
Speaker 10: in that kind of conversation. As soon as we got
Speaker 10: out of Gloucester, going more towards where I live, Fred
Speaker 10: said to me, I had sex tonight, Caroline, and I
Speaker 10: went no, And I was kind of like going, oh,
Speaker 10: don't start that kind of conversation off again. And he said,
Speaker 10: I'll go and have a field Rosy if she's wet,
Speaker 10: and with that she just like grubbed around down my crunch.
Speaker 9: We started fighting.
Speaker 10: About two miles outside of Gloucester, past the round about.
Speaker 10: Fred brought his car up on the side and Aunt
Speaker 10: rose by turning around in his seat and punching me
Speaker 10: inside of the end until I was unconscious. When I
Speaker 10: came round Fred at the door open, he was on
Speaker 10: his knees. He'd already tied my hands beyond my back
Speaker 10: with my scarf, and he was wrapping like parcel tape
Speaker 10: all the way round and round and round my face
Speaker 10: as a gag. And they turned the car around and
Speaker 10: they went back around the roundabout, took me to from
Speaker 10: one street.
Speaker 1: They eventually arrived at the house. Caroline, still bound and gagged,
Speaker 1: was taken into a bedroom For the.
Speaker 9: Next twelve hours.
Speaker 10: I was beaten. Both of them were like medical examining.
Speaker 10: It was almost you know, they were talking about my
Speaker 10: genitulia and all that, as if they were doctors. You know, Oh,
Speaker 10: this is a bit stranger, that's so, and so. I
Speaker 10: thought they were going to get a knife and just
Speaker 10: start cutting at me. So I was absolutely terrified. But
Speaker 10: he got his bart off his jeans and he'd folded
Speaker 10: it over and was whipping between the leg with his bart.
Speaker 10: And then she started doing something else sexual towards me
Speaker 10: while he watched, And then she invited him to join in,
Speaker 10: and she was doing something to me and he was
Speaker 10: having sex with her from behind at the same time.
Speaker 10: To be quite honest, at that time, I would have
Speaker 10: been up y'r off dead.
Speaker 1: After a night of harrowing abuse, a terrified Caroline was
Speaker 1: eventually left alone with Fred.
Speaker 10: I thought he was just going to take me down
Speaker 10: to the cellar, but he obviously had second thoughts. He
Speaker 10: just raped me and then he started crying. He said
Speaker 10: to me, you know a few promise that you won't
Speaker 10: I've touched you, he said, and you'll come back here
Speaker 10: to live. He said, I'll let you go, of course,
Speaker 10: you know, considering I thought it was on my way
Speaker 10: down to the cellar, I was just so relieved and
Speaker 10: I said, yeah, okay.
Speaker 9: I'll do that.
Speaker 1: Caroline had a remarkable escape and went straight to the police.
Speaker 1: But for Fred and Rose this signaled a significant change
Speaker 1: in the balance of their relationship.
Speaker 5: I think the escape of Caroline owen owed a lot
Speaker 5: to the fact that Fred and Rose were still experimenting
Speaker 5: with sexuality. Now, Fred had already picked up, or at
Speaker 5: least imposed on the relationship something that he carried forward
Speaker 5: from his mother, the idea that it was okay to
Speaker 5: engage in things if mother approved, but outside of what
Speaker 5: mother approved, it was grab and try and get away
Speaker 5: with as best you could and make sure she didn't
Speaker 5: find out. The same applied to Rose exactly. Rose dictated
Speaker 5: what went on as far as Fred's sexual adventures were concerned,
Speaker 5: and hence most of hisctual activities sexual activities with other
Speaker 5: people were hidden from Rose.
Speaker 1: The West's pleaded guilty to the kidnap and sexual assault
Speaker 1: of Caroline, with their victim too scared to give evidence.
Speaker 1: Fred and Rose were never charged with rape find twenty
Speaker 1: five pounds each. They were allowed to go free.
Speaker 5: I think the twenty five pound finds sent a very
Speaker 5: clear message that even if you do slip up, when
Speaker 5: you make a mistake, that you're really not going to
Speaker 5: carry the can fully for what you've done. So it
Speaker 5: sent the signal that providing you make sure that you
Speaker 5: tidy up, you probably will never get caught. And that
Speaker 5: just basically sealed the fate of future victims.
Speaker 8: And then they're hooked on. This becomes like a drug,
Speaker 8: you know, and then the more you have, the more
Speaker 8: you need. They have to make a cold bloody decision
Speaker 8: if we do this again. We can't allow somebody to
Speaker 8: go away because they go to the police and they'll
Speaker 8: come back again. We have to dispose of the bodies.
Speaker 8: And Fred already knew about disposing of bodies because he'd
Speaker 8: done it before.
Speaker 1: Some but not all, future victims would conveniently come from
Speaker 1: society's margins.
Speaker 6: Fred West would have realized that there are plenty of
Speaker 6: people around who will not be missed. They use the
Speaker 6: same technique actually as certain religious groups that go around
Speaker 6: finding vulnerable people.
Speaker 5: They were very good at beginning to spot the kind
Speaker 5: of girl who would fall into a category that we
Speaker 5: kind of use the phrase less than dead. In other words,
Speaker 5: someone if they were killed disappeared, they would probably be
Speaker 5: less missed, less noticed, and a lot less police force
Speaker 5: than the average person, such as prostitutes, runaways, girls of
Speaker 5: very sort of mixed repute who did not have very
Speaker 5: strong family ties.
Speaker 1: Once Fred and Rose had selected their prey, they would
Speaker 1: take them back to Cromwell Street and down into the cellar.
Speaker 5: The events in the cellar, in as it were, the
Speaker 5: Chamber of Horrors, can be only really speculated on, but
Speaker 5: by bits and pieces that were left over. Clearly a
Speaker 5: certain amount of sexual torture and abuse had progressed. These
Speaker 5: victims may have been stripped and hung and left for
Speaker 5: long periods of time in extreme pain. You have to
Speaker 5: remember that Fred at least had very little restraint when
Speaker 5: it came to the revulsion of what his physical acts were,
Speaker 5: so you know, to actually inflict almost intolerable, continuous and
Speaker 5: protracted pain and injury on a person would not have
Speaker 5: created the same revulsion that it does in Uri.
Speaker 3: Fred fitted a beam across and there were hooks on it.
Speaker 3: He talked about girls being hung there for days and
Speaker 3: bodies mummifying, and we don't know exactly what happens. We
Speaker 3: do know that in the course of the time that
Speaker 3: they were there, they were killed, their bodies were dismembered,
Speaker 3: and they were buried. And then when he had filled
Speaker 3: the cellar with girls, he concreted over the floor and
Speaker 3: then turned the cellar into the bedroom for his children.
Speaker 1: Fred and Rose West had now perfected their mode of operation,
Speaker 1: and over the next fourteen years would kidnap, rape, torture
Speaker 1: and murder almost at will. But each murder would require
Speaker 1: them to push the boundaries of sado sexual behavior further
Speaker 1: and further.
Speaker 5: She had to be abusive, she had to be in
Speaker 5: control of the situation, and for Fred there had to
Speaker 5: be as it were, bizarre episodes of sadism and bondage, etc.
Speaker 8: They always wanted something more. They want to scream a
Speaker 8: little bit more. They want to cut a bit deeper.
Speaker 8: They want they know what causes more pain than something else,
Speaker 8: And to be bound and gagged and poked and stabbed
Speaker 8: and cut and beaten and sexually abused, probably just not
Speaker 8: even seeing what was going on half the time, with
Speaker 8: these two monsters cackling and laughing. There's the most terrifying
Speaker 8: experiences beyond human comprehension.
Speaker 1: Fred and Rose were now sinking to such depths of
Speaker 1: depravity that it was entirely possible that one of them
Speaker 1: could end up as the next victim.
Speaker 5: I think there must have been an absolute element of
Speaker 5: competition between them that grew up in terms of that
Speaker 5: other person may kill me. Therefore I am at risk.
Speaker 5: Therefore I must show myself to be as tough, as sadistic,
Speaker 5: as hard, and as progressively homes as the other person. Otherwise,
Speaker 5: you know, I may be the next victim, as it were,
Speaker 5: rather than the next perpetrator.
Speaker 1: By June of nineteen eighty seven, Fred and Rose's eldest daughter, Heather,
Speaker 1: was sixteen. She'd suffered both physical and sexual abuse at
Speaker 1: the hands of her parents all her life, and now
Speaker 1: this teenage girl was becoming a problem.
Speaker 3: She was murdered one day when the other children had
Speaker 3: gone to school. There's no evidence or belief that she
Speaker 3: was sexually abused. She was simply murdered, and her body
Speaker 3: was got rid of in the classic Fred West way
Speaker 3: and buried under what subsequently became a patio.
Speaker 8: I don't think for one moment he would have even
Speaker 8: shed a tear. I think that's how cold blooded this
Speaker 8: man was. He was disposing again of something that he
Speaker 8: had no further use for.
Speaker 5: If Heather had been able to survive and continue, she
Speaker 5: may have brought the whole facade down one way or another,
Speaker 5: and that could not be allowed. So to some degree
Speaker 5: they committed, as it were, a very risky murder, a
Speaker 5: murder that was done to show that they were in
Speaker 5: control to the rest of their children, and unfortunately that
Speaker 5: probably led to their undoing.
Speaker 1: Heather lay undiscovered under the patio in the garden of
Speaker 1: Cromwell Street for eight years. Yet the Wests became careless
Speaker 1: and her disappearance had become the subject of a sick joke.
Speaker 4: Bred and Rose would tell the children, you know, to
Speaker 4: behave themselves, otherwise they'd end up under the patio like Heather,
Speaker 4: which was a macarbro joke, you know, obviously looking at
Speaker 4: the reality of the situation.
Speaker 1: The persistent rumors about Heather eventually reached the ears of
Speaker 1: a local policewoman.
Speaker 3: Detective Constable Hazel Savage had always been aware that there
Speaker 3: were these rumors and persuaded her bosses that that patio
Speaker 3: was going to have to be dug up.
Speaker 1: On the morning of the twenty fourth of February nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four, a police search team knocked at the door
Speaker 1: of twenty five Cromwell Street and set in motion an
Speaker 1: investigation that would stun the world. The murderous career of
Speaker 1: Fred West was about to come to an end. As
Speaker 1: the police started digging in the back garden of twenty
Speaker 1: five Cromwell Street, they could have no idea of what
Speaker 1: they were about to find. Fred and Rose West's daughter
Speaker 1: Heather had been missing since nineteen eighty seven, and she
Speaker 1: was the focus of their search. When they unearthed a
Speaker 1: female thigh bone, they were confident they'd found what they
Speaker 1: were looking for, but it fell to pathologist Bernard Knight
Speaker 1: to break the news to Detective Superintendent John Bennett that
Speaker 1: there may be more than one body under the patio.
Speaker 11: And I still remember John Bennett's face when I got
Speaker 11: down this hall in the garden and looked up and said,
Speaker 11: either you've got more than one or she had three
Speaker 11: legs because of another two thigh borns. I think gob smacked.
Speaker 11: It would fit John's face fairly well at that time,
Speaker 11: because say they expected to find Heather, then I think
Speaker 11: there were three bodies in the backyard, and then was
Speaker 11: it six in the house.
Speaker 1: Fred West was arrested. Despite the mounting evidence against him,
Speaker 1: he seemed remarkably unperturbed.
Speaker 8: He's fifty four year old man. Then he's had a
Speaker 8: long run. He's got away with it all his life.
Speaker 8: His mindset is one of, you know, I'm probably caught,
Speaker 8: but who gives a damn now, believing it and not
Speaker 8: believing it at the same time, not really fully appreciating
Speaker 8: that the enormity of what happened, and it probably took
Speaker 8: a few weeks before the penny dropped.
Speaker 5: He probably you know, you know, went to pick up
Speaker 5: his coat a few times, thinking he was probably on
Speaker 5: his way home in a few days because you know, well,
Speaker 5: you know, they've found them now, and it's not really
Speaker 5: that important. So therefore he was actually entering quite a
Speaker 5: severe sort of state of a delusion where he actually
Speaker 5: didn't think, you know, that this was that important.
Speaker 1: Despite West's ambivalence to his crimes, he knew the game
Speaker 1: was up. He offered to show the police where to dig.
Speaker 2: He went back to the house, and he did indicate
Speaker 2: certain places where the police might dig in the garden,
Speaker 2: but he never admitted that there were six other bodies
Speaker 2: under the house, and there was speculation that Fred didn't
Speaker 2: want to point that out because he's very proud of
Speaker 2: his house and how he built it and incorporated various
Speaker 2: interesting features into it. He didn't think the police would
Speaker 2: go as far as knocking the house down in order
Speaker 2: to find evidence.
Speaker 1: But the police did knock the house down, and after
Speaker 1: recovering a total of nine bodies from Cromwell Street, they
Speaker 1: switched their interest to Midland Road, where the body of
Speaker 1: eight year old Charmain was discovered. A lengthier search of
Speaker 1: the two fields at much Markel was to drag on
Speaker 1: for months, but they were to give up the remains
Speaker 1: of Rina Costello and Anna McFall. The police now faced
Speaker 1: the harrowing task of identifying all the victims. Professor Bernard
Speaker 1: Knight made the startling discovery that the skeletons were incomplete.
Speaker 11: There's a lot of hand and tool bones missing, but
Speaker 11: you actually rarely find every bone if you dig up
Speaker 11: the skeleton. One reason why there may be a sinister
Speaker 11: aspect is that two babies, two fetuses present, and their
Speaker 11: tiny little bones were there, most of them even tiny ribbons,
Speaker 11: so were magtick and yet they were big, but bigger
Speaker 11: bones missing from the adults. There's one shoulder blade missing.
Speaker 11: That's a bit difficult imagine. If you can get a
Speaker 11: tiny fetal bone surviving, where's this big shoulder lad gone.
Speaker 11: Of course, the sensational aspect or explanation would be that
Speaker 11: they were taken off as some form of fetish and
Speaker 11: even cannibalism was mentioned. But I mean, I think that's
Speaker 11: pure speculation. But certainly have a lot of bones missing.
Speaker 5: He may have had some bizarre paranoid ideations. So in
Speaker 5: the beginning, perhaps he was cutting up bodies to make
Speaker 5: them smaller, taking away the fingers and toes in case
Speaker 5: they were identified. It could have been, you know, a
Speaker 5: paranoid state that was superstitious. He had to keep these
Speaker 5: various little objects close to him so that he knew
Speaker 5: that he was safe, that he had some control over
Speaker 5: these dead victims. It may have become a very habitual thing.
Speaker 6: It is known for psychopathic killers to keep trophies of
Speaker 6: their victims. He may have kept one or two bones
Speaker 6: as kind of mementoes in order to be able to
Speaker 6: keep his work with him.
Speaker 1: On June the thirtieth, nineteen ninety four, Fred and Rose
Speaker 1: West appeared at Gloucester Magistrates Court jointly charged with nine murders.
Speaker 1: It was four months since the police had started digging.
Speaker 1: Their victims had now been identified as Linda Goff, Lucy Partington,
Speaker 1: Carol Cooper, Juanita Mott, Shirley Hubbard, ter Raise Siegentala, Allison Chambers,
Speaker 1: Shirley Anne Robinson and Heather West. Fred was also charged
Speaker 1: with a further two murders, that of his first wife,
Speaker 1: Catherine Costello, and his stepdaughter Charmain West Anna McFall. Fred's
Speaker 1: first victim was yet to be identified. This was the
Speaker 1: first time Fred and Rowe had seen each other since
Speaker 1: their arrest. Fred was devastated when Rose rejected him in court.
Speaker 5: He would have been distraught. The confidence would have gone,
Speaker 5: his face would have sagged, He would have lost that confident,
Speaker 5: jovial demeanor, and he had very little else left to
Speaker 5: live for.
Speaker 1: Six months later, on New Year's Day in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: whilst waiting to stand trial at Winston Green Prison in Birmingham,
Speaker 1: Fred West hanged himself.
Speaker 10: When they told me you killed herself, and they were saying, oh,
Speaker 10: that's justice, isn't it, And I said no, it's not
Speaker 10: really and I was absolutely gutted.
Speaker 9: I wanted him to pay the proper price.
Speaker 10: He just like took his own way out and had
Speaker 10: his own way about what happened to him.
Speaker 9: He was in control right to the end.
Speaker 1: Rose was now left alone to face trial, well for
Speaker 1: ten murders.
Speaker 7: She was in probably in the devastate of shock. Actually,
Speaker 7: I'd see this blanket denial came down, and that's pretty
Speaker 7: well on the whole the way it remained.
Speaker 5: Rose at that point is only really protecting one person, herself,
Speaker 5: and that would be her only interest. So she would
Speaker 5: then progressively try to look as though she was a
Speaker 5: useful member of society potentially okay, that it wasn't really
Speaker 5: hair even if the evidence was against her, and that
Speaker 5: she wasn't that complicit in what went on.
Speaker 1: But the corps thought otherwise, and she was convicted of
Speaker 1: ten murders and sentenced to life imprisonment. The investigation was
Speaker 1: now closed. But had the police found all the victims,
Speaker 1: rumors persist of many more bodies.
Speaker 5: We have to regard the kind of dark matter of
Speaker 5: Fred's life, and he's kind of killing career if you
Speaker 5: like that. There are a lot of black spots which
Speaker 5: I'm sure, maybe filled with other poor unfortunates who have
Speaker 5: disappeared and not been registered and not been connected with
Speaker 5: the Wests.
Speaker 7: There was a young child supposedly killed accidentally when Fred
Speaker 7: was driving an ice cream lorry in Glasgow. There was
Speaker 7: a young boy who supposedly committed suicide not far from Gloucester.
Speaker 7: But really, if that had been more carefully investigated, I
Speaker 7: think they'd have been interested to talk to Fred.
Speaker 5: It is possible, as we know with personality disordered individuals,
Speaker 5: that their characteristics, both Fred and Rose would have eased off,
Speaker 5: and perhaps they're their interest in this would have would
Speaker 5: have slowed a little as they approached middle age and
Speaker 5: is it where they were going into sort of homicidal retirement.
Speaker 5: But the chances are there would be other victims, but unfortunately,
Speaker 5: due to the logistics, we will probably never know.
Speaker 1: Twenty five Cromwell Street was demolished in an attempt to
Speaker 1: erase the memory of West's atrocities for Caroline Owens, forgetting
Speaker 1: her ordeal will not be so easy.
Speaker 10: They've took it all down now and turned it into
Speaker 10: this walkway. Some people wanted a garden of remembrance, but
Speaker 10: others thought it wouldn't be respected as such. So they
Speaker 10: decided to turn it into a walkway. And now I'm
Speaker 10: actually walking where the ice was, and some of the
Speaker 10: girls would have been buried under this area here and
Speaker 10: some in the patio over in that area. It brings
Speaker 10: back quite a few sad feelings, bad feelings from me.
Speaker 9: I don't like being here.
Speaker 10: I just see it as a grave for all the girls.
Speaker 10: And I'm just glad it's all over and they're all
Speaker 10: out of here. It's almost like canar in love in
Speaker 10: his wife can hear and laughing, almost him laughing and
Speaker 10: joking about the party and stuff. It feels like you're
Speaker 10: still here. I don't think they took enough of this
Speaker 10: place away.
Speaker 1: Fred West committed some of the most evil and henous
Speaker 1: crimes in history, a gruesome and disturbing legacy. But was
Speaker 1: he really born to kill?
Speaker 5: Given his basic biological background at birth, this chap was
Speaker 5: not going to escape the genetics, the psychopathy which probably
Speaker 5: affected his brother as well. He was not going to
Speaker 5: escape the family environment, which was going to reaffirm these
Speaker 5: characteristics that were already in the parents. You have to
Speaker 5: look back and say basically that his crime aims, to
Speaker 5: some degree were inevitable. The degree, and and and the
Speaker 5: frequent nature of the crimes may have been adjusted by
Speaker 5: aspects of his life, but indeed Fred was born with
Speaker 5: the characteristics that would make it reasonably easy for him
Speaker 5: to turn into a killer.