00:00:05
-Twenty-five Cromwell Street
in Gloucester has become one of the most
infamous addresses in Britain.
00:00:10
For 20 years,
Fred and Rose West quenched their appetite
for sex and murder inside this house
of unimaginable horror.
00:00:18
When police began investigating the disappearance
of their daughter, it led them right
to the Wests' front door.
00:00:24
Detectives were only
just beginning to unearth the murderous history
of Fred and Rose West.
00:00:30
-It was on a scale
that was really unprecedented. -Children are their
things to play with.
00:00:35
They are disposable. They're things that are to be
used and abused. -I've never, for one moment,
doubted that Frederick West
00:00:41
was a truly evil man. But he found, in Rose, the
perfect sorcerer's apprentice. -This is the story of how
Fred and Rose West
00:00:49
became two of the world's most evil killers. [ Dramatic music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ Fred and Rose West are one
of the most notorious couples
00:01:17
in British history. For 2 decades,
they sexually abused, tortured,
and murdered 9 women,
00:01:22
including their own daughter,
in their house of horrors. And, between them,
were responsible
00:01:27
for another three victims buried around Gloucester. When the news broke
in February 1994,
00:01:33
the media were only
scratching the surface of the couple's
terrifying life behind the closed door
of 25 Cromwell Street.
00:01:41
-Five days and nights
into their excavation, and forensic teams
have now unearthed
00:01:46
three sets of human remains, all buried in separate places
5 feet under the garden patio
00:01:52
of this Gloucester home. -It's horrible to think
that there are, you know, dead bodies in a garden
just down the road.
00:02:00
It's just thoroughly disgusting. I mean,
it's horrifying to think. -Totally shocking, especially
around, you know, in Gloucester.
00:02:07
I mean, you wouldn't
expect this to happen. -But Fred and Rose's
horrifying story
00:02:12
began many years before. In 1969, 28-year-old Fred West
was married to his wife, Rena,
00:02:19
with a young family of his own. But he had his eye
on a 15-year-old girl named Rosemary Letts.
00:02:25
Rose and her family had recently
moved to the Gloucester area, whereas Fred was born and raised
00:02:30
in the local village
of Much Marcle. -Well, Fred was the oldest
boy in the family,
00:02:36
and he was very much the target
for quite a lot of abuse at the hands of his mother.
00:02:41
So his mother sexually
abused him, essentially, and he lost
his virginity to her.
00:02:46
And the family was
a very self-contained one. Rose's childhood was similar
to Fred's in many ways in that
00:02:52
it was completely dysfunctional and anti-social and abnormal. So she was abused by her father,
00:02:59
who started raping her
from a very young age. So what she took to be normal,
what she took to be acceptable
00:03:07
in terms of behavior
within a family, really was anything but. -Fred pursued Rose.
00:03:13
He was used to getting
what he wanted. When the couple met,
there was instant attraction.
00:03:21
-Rose lived in the same village
that Fred had a caravan. They met at the bus station
in Cheltenham.
00:03:28
She said that he could charm
the birds off the trees even though
his appearance was shabby.
00:03:34
He had, well, very clean teeth. -Well, these were two
incredibly damaged people.
00:03:40
They had both come
from abnormal families. And I think, when they met,
what they saw in each other
00:03:45
was something familiar. So they both would have realized
that the childhoods that they had were
far from normal.
00:03:52
But, with one another,
they felt that familiarity. -Maybe it was something
that Rose gave off implicitly.
00:03:59
But something in Fred connected
with what had happened to Rose and the way she was
00:04:03
and the way she'd been
treated by her father. And it was like a union
of two souls.
00:04:10
-I think it was
the perfect storm. You know, the chances of these
two people meeting
00:04:14
was, you know, it must have been
a million to one. But, unfortunately, they did.
00:04:19
-By 1970,
just a year after meeting, they were living
together in Gloucester with Fred's stepdaughter,
Charmaine.
00:04:26
His wife, Rena,
was nowhere to be seen. Rose was pregnant with
the couple's first daughter,
00:04:32
Heather. -I think, in the early days, perhaps the more
dominant partner was Fred.
00:04:37
He was older. He was more experienced. He'd seen more than Rose had. You know, she'd come from this
incredibly contained family.
00:04:45
But I think,
as their relationship developed, she started to find her feet
and find her confidence,
00:04:52
and I don't think that Fred
ever really trusted her. -For Rose and Fred,
it was all about sex
00:04:58
from the very,
very beginning. Fred was the originator, but he found the perfect
sorcerer's apprentice,
00:05:06
the perfect partner,
someone who shared his lust and someone who understood him
and wanted to perform for him.
00:05:15
-I think we have a lot
of trouble making sense of Fred
and Rose's relationship, and the reason for that
is because we are people
00:05:22
with emotions
and normal feelings and ideas of what acceptable
and unacceptable boundaries are
00:05:27
around relationships. So I don't think I'd describe
their relationship as a loving one.
00:05:34
-Fred and Rose's
traumatic childhoods had a lasting effect
on the couple and their twisted approach
to family life together.
00:05:42
-It's always a very
complicated question to answer how many children Fred
and Rose actually had because
00:05:48
if you count Fred's
daughter, Charmaine, along with Fred
and Rose's eight, it's nine.
00:05:56
But then you've got
to add Rose's three mixed-race children, all of whom were
fathered not by Fred.
00:06:04
All I would say is that
all of them were deeply hurt, almost ruined by the parents.
00:06:12
-I think Rose's earlier
experiences within the family of being abused by her father
wrote the script
00:06:17
for what would later play out. So what she took to be normal, what she took as
boundaries and rules,
00:06:25
really weren't going to
work in the wider world. So what she was learning
about in those early years
00:06:32
would set her up to be somebody
who didn't quite fit in. -And it was,
to some extent,
00:06:38
what Fred then adopted
as a family habit. It was, if you like,
a West tradition.
00:06:46
I don't mean to say that
that wasn't disgraceful, but it is, nevertheless,
part of the family history
00:06:52
and helps, helps, to explain
something of West's behavior. -Two decades later,
it's 1992,
00:07:02
and Gloucester police
are searching for Heather West. In 1987, aged just 16, Fred
and Rose's eldest child vanished
00:07:10
from the family home. Fred had claimed
Heather had run away, but she was never
reported as missing.
00:07:16
But after receiving
allegations of child abuse at 25 Cromwell Street, detectives began to look
into Heather's whereabouts.
00:07:24
Chief Constable Tony Butler was
in charge of Gloucester Police. -One of the children
told a friend at school
00:07:30
about what was
happening to her. That friend talked to
a patrolling police officer,
00:07:35
in fact, about what
her friend had told her, and, as a result
of what the police...
00:07:40
The police officer
then took that back, and it initiated a child
protection process
00:07:44
which led to the evidence
being gathered. -Five of the West children
were placed into care,
00:07:49
and the police began
their investigations. They were interviewed about
the darker side of their lives
00:07:55
at 25 Cromwell Street. -What it brought to light
was a family joke, and the family joke
was a simple one.
00:08:04
You better watch out because,
if you don't shut up and stop causing your dad
or your mom any trouble,
00:08:11
you'll end up like Heather, two down and three across
in the patio. Fred had lain a patio
behind Cromwell Street,
00:08:17
was in squares which were
rather like a crossword. The family joke
was that he buried
00:08:22
Heather at two down
and three across. -And this issue, this
"Heather is under the patio,"
00:08:29
continued to be raised. And so we started to take
this point seriously. We knew Heather had disappeared,
had left the home.
00:08:38
So we tried to trace her. And despite massive amounts
of inquiry to try and find her,
00:08:44
she just literally disappeared
off the face of the Earth. -In February, 1994,
the police decided to find out
00:08:50
if the family joke
was more serious than the children realized. Armed with a warrant,
they began to dig
00:08:56
under the patio
of 25 Cromwell Street. -When they arrived
with the warrant, Fred and Rose were at the house,
00:09:02
and they went into
the back garden, and the officers started
digging the garden.
00:09:07
-Sensing the end was nigh, Fred asked to be
interviewed by police. -Fred asked the officer
00:09:15
if they could go down
to the police station, and so they left. Fred said that he admitted
00:09:21
that Heather's remains
were in the garden, but the police were looking
in the wrong place.
00:09:25
And, later that day,
he returned with the officers, and he indicated where
he thought Heather was buried.
00:09:33
The following day,
officers digging in that area recovered a femur, and that was taken
for examination
00:09:40
by the forensic pathologist, who confirmed it
was human remains. And that turned out to be
one of Heather's remains.
00:09:48
-Rose was being questioned
at Cheltenham police station when the news reached her
and her solicitor, Leo Goatley.
00:09:55
-When Rose was told
that Heather's remains had been found, she gasped loudly
and was very distraught.
00:10:05
How do you interpret that? Was that a mother's
shock and distress, or was it a murderer's
distress at being found out?
00:10:16
At that time, I believed that
she was shocked and distressed and that she didn't know
the extent of Fred's activities.
00:10:24
And, of course, at that stage,
it wasn't about serial killing. It was about Heather.
00:10:30
But, of course, the thing
unraveled pretty quickly with the excavation. -The police found more
than they bargained
00:10:36
for under the patio
at 25 Cromwell Street. -When they found remains, they found not just two legs
or two thigh bones,
00:10:47
but three. The interrogating detective
said to West, "Well, unless Heather had three
legs, there's another body."
00:10:56
"Ah, yes," Fred says, without
drawing breath or hesitating, "That must be the other girl.
That'll be Shirley."
00:11:03
-The police were about to
unearth all the secrets that Fred and Rose West
had been hiding
00:11:08
at 25 Cromwell Street
for over 2 decades, secrets that would shock
the entire nation.
00:11:15
Fred told the investigating
officers the other body was of his former lover,
Shirley Robinson.
00:11:21
Shirley hadn't been seen
since 1978. When she disappeared,
she was heavily pregnant
00:11:26
with Fred's child. West also admitted
that police would find a third body in the garden,
00:11:32
who he claimed was
a friend of Shirley's. Throughout the questioning,
he insisted on one thing,
00:11:38
that his wife, Rose, knew
nothing about any of the bodies. -I think, when Fred was
protesting Rose's innocence
00:11:46
and taking the blame
completely upon himself, I think, yes, at that point, the power had changed
in their relationship
00:11:53
from him being the dominant
one in the early years to her really pulling the
strings in those later years.
00:11:58
And I think he really didn't
trust her at this point in time. He was really quite afraid
of what she might do.
00:12:05
So I think that was
definitely something that had flipped
in this relationship. -Well, I found him
quite a creepy bloke.
00:12:13
He would always be trying
to endear himself to people
in a rather smarmy way, a little kind of giggle,
making light of things.
00:12:27
But he was very
unconvincing, doing that. And he would very
quickly realize if you weren't impressed by him,
00:12:34
and then he would withdraw, and I would sense
there was this other side to him that would scowl
and be probably quite nasty.
00:12:42
Whatever his sort of murky
machinations within his mind were,
once he realized, he was probably better able
00:12:49
to actually charm
women than blokes. It's possible that, you know,
with a little smile
00:12:58
and some sort of soft talk, he was able to persuade
some young women that he was safe to be around.
00:13:06
-To make things
more complicated, Fred's story kept changing. He alternated between admitting
and denying the killings
00:13:13
and told detectives that
all the deaths were accidental. He wanted to get charged with
manslaughter and not murder.
00:13:20
It would be a hard job for
pathologists to prove otherwise. -It's very difficult when
somebody has been buried
00:13:27
for years to look at them in detail
as a pathologist. You haven't got the skin.
You haven't got the muscles.
00:13:34
You haven't got the organs,
the things that you'd see injury or disease in. So you really have to comment
on what may not be there.
00:13:43
It makes the pathologist's
job a lot harder. -Finding the cause of death
was difficult,
00:13:49
and so was identifying the third
victim buried under the patio. There was approximately
10,000 missing women
00:13:55
recorded at the time. By using dental records, experts
identified the third victim
00:14:02
as Alison Chambers, who was just 16 when she
went missing in 1979, meaning she cannot have been
a friend of Shirley Robinson,
00:14:11
as Fred suggested. Marks found on her body proved beyond doubt
she'd been tortured.
00:14:19
-Someone's behavior is
more in the realm of psychology than pathology, but quite clearly
there's potentially
00:14:25
the aspect of torture there, potentially of sexual violence. And when the pathologist
sees findings like that,
00:14:34
we're looking away
from manslaughter and more into some sort
of act of cruelty. -This proves that West hadn't
accidentally killed
00:14:42
these young women. He tortured, sexually assaulted.
and intentionally murdered them.
00:14:49
But was Fred doing this
without Rose knowing? The police weren't convinced. -The most important thing,
of course,
00:14:55
was that these bodies
were recovered in the house that she shared with Fred. And it would appear
inconceivable
00:15:03
that she wouldn't have
had knowledge of this. -The house itself was very,
very small.
00:15:09
It would have been inconceivable
that you could have kept a young woman
or women in that house
00:15:17
without every occupant knowing
that something was going on, no matter how much tape
00:15:22
you would have
put over their mouths, no matter how much they'd been
concealed in the cellar.
00:15:27
You would know. It would have been impossible
not to know. -The police began to look into
missing persons' files
00:15:34
to try and find
any more potential victims. But with about 10,000
missing women in the country,
00:15:40
it was a seemingly
endless search. -Throughout that time,
we were trying to trace people
00:15:45
from children's homes and make sure they were safe. We were dealing with forensic
materials, I mean,
00:15:50
massive amounts
of forensic material, searching. It was on a scale
that was really unprecedented.
00:15:55
-Two of the missing people
stood out, Lucy Partington, a 21-year-old student last seen at a bus stop
in Gloucester in 1973,
00:16:05
and Lynda Gough, a 19-year-old who went
missing in the same year. Her last known address,
25 Cromwell Street.
00:16:13
-Fred and Rose adopted
a sort of modus operandi. They would identify
young women on the run,
00:16:21
if you like,
run away from home, run away from a children's home,
run away from their parents.
00:16:27
They were vulnerable. They would offer them a home. And, time after time,
Fred would pick out, with Rose,
00:16:35
often at bus stops, young women
who looked a little lost. -So they would always chose
people who would be
00:16:42
in that position
of vulnerability. And the fact that they were
a couple, I think,
00:16:46
was quite helpful to them
in luring victims in because the women
that they targeted
00:16:51
would be more likely
to trust a couple. So, when they would pick
somebody up who was hitchhiking,
00:16:57
that played to the idea of, "Well, there's a woman there,
so I'm going to be safe."
00:17:02
-Rose already knew
the language of grooming. She was quite used to it. And when you hear the victims
talk about how she spoke to them
00:17:08
in this sort of quiet, soft, pleasing voice,
you knew that, again, that was something
she had learned.
00:17:18
-Lynda Gough was never
officially reported as missing, but her family searched for her
00:17:23
at the time
of her disappearance. -Lynda Gough's mother,
she'd been round to the house,
00:17:29
knocked on the door, and it had
been answered by Rose West. And she asked where Lynda was,
and she was told
00:17:36
that she'd gone away,
I think, to Weston-super-Mare. But she was struck by the fact
that there was Rose,
00:17:41
standing there,
with Lynda's slippers, wearing Lynda's slippers, and she also noticed,
on the clothesline,
00:17:49
there were articles
of Lynda's clothing. -Lynda's mother believed Rose
when she said her daughter
00:17:56
had moved on
from Cromwell Street. But, as the press coverage began
to reflect the sheer enormity
00:18:01
of the unfolding story, other women who'd encountered
the Wests came forward. The police got a break when
Caroline Roberts contacted them
00:18:10
to offer her help
in the investigation. She'd seen the investigation on
the news and revealed to police
00:18:17
she'd been sexually assaulted
by both Fred and Rose in 1972. She'd known them for a while
after they picked her up
00:18:26
while she was hitchhiking and even worked for them
as a nanny for a short time. It was one horrifying incident
that caused her to lodge
00:18:34
a complaint against them. -They invited her back
to the house. When she got to the house,
00:18:42
having been assaulted
in the car by Fred and Rose, she got back to the house, and she was then bound
and subject
00:18:49
to some rather aggressive
sexual activity. She managed to escape
subsequently and reported it to her mum,
00:18:56
who then told the police. Both Fred and Rose
were arrested for rape and serious sexual offenses.
00:19:04
-At the time, she was scared
to face them at her trial and ashamed
at what had happened.
00:19:09
The Wests were charged
with indecent exposure instead of rape. They were fined 100 pounds.
00:19:15
But, with the information
Caroline gave to the police, they could link Rose to the crimes and bodies
at Cromwell Street.
00:19:23
-So we had that evidence
that there was an aggressive sexual nature
to her personality.
00:19:29
The details of sexual activity
that had taken place had a number of similarities,
00:19:34
particularly talking about
bindings and gags and so on, that were very similar,
if not identical,
00:19:41
to the material that was
recovered in association with the victims
when they were discovered.
00:19:47
-This case was much more
about the accounts of people and what the survivors
were saying
00:19:54
than what the pathology
can tell you. There are things that they could
say that the bodies were
00:20:00
no longer able to speak to, and that was a bigger
element of this case than maybe the physical
findings by the pathologist.
00:20:10
-On March the 4th, 1994, police moved their search
inside the house. They had a feeling that,
down in the dark cellar,
00:20:18
they may uncover
even more bodies. On the same day,
when news reached Fred West at Gloucester Police Station,
00:20:24
he made a stunning admission
in a handwritten note given to detectives. It read, "I, Frederick West,
authorize my solicitor,
00:20:32
Howard Ogden, to advise
Superintendent Bennett that I wish to admit to
a further approx. nine killings,
00:20:39
expressly, Charmaine,
Rena, Lynda Gough, and others to be identified,"
signed F. West.
00:20:47
-Can you imagine the scene? It almost defies belief. They weren't sitting across
the table from a monster,
00:20:53
huge man with bear hands
and able to kill at ease. Little insignificant chap who,
nevertheless,
00:21:01
confesses to nine murders. It's at that point
that police realize, I think probably for
the first time,
00:21:09
that they are dealing
with someone truly evil. -Fred was, again,
taken back to the house,
00:21:14
and he indicated where some of
the bodies had been buried, particularly the area
of the cellar.
00:21:21
And so what happened
then was that we undertook a methodical search
of the whole property.
00:21:26
Fred maintained a position
that Rose was not involved in these cases. You know, that's the inference,
that he was trying to keep her
00:21:33
out of it. -Fred took the rap for it. They had an agreement
that she would stand by him
00:21:40
and visit him, and he'd hoped
to be out in so many years. But the minute Rose heard
that he'd actually admitted
00:21:48
to the murders, then she dropped him. He was gone, and she
never spoke to him again.
00:21:54
She absolutely refused
to have any contact with him. -On March the 5th, 1994, the world's media
had descended upon the home
00:22:05
of Fred and Rose West
in Gloucester. Police had exhumed three bodies
from their back garden --
00:22:10
their daughter,
Heather, Fred's pregnant lover,
Shirley Robinson, and missing teenager
Alison Chambers.
00:22:17
Now detectives were moving
their search inside the property and began excavating the cellar
at 25 Cromwell Street.
00:22:26
-We started the excavations
in the cellar. It was a difficult place
to do excavations.
00:22:31
And we had to be very careful
about recovering the bodies. And, on the first day, we did
find two sets of human remains.
00:22:40
One turned out to be
Therese Siegenthaler. And the second remains
were Shirley Hubbard.
00:22:47
-It was clear to pathologists
that much had been done to try and hide the identity
of all the murdered girls.
00:22:54
-With Fred and Rose's victims,
one of their hallmarks, as it were, was that the fingers
and toes were removed.
00:23:01
I think we can hypothesize that there may be
different reasons for that. Simple cruelty would be one.
00:23:08
But obviously most people
know that fingerprints are a very good way
to identify somebody.
00:23:14
So removing them, particularly
in the '60s, '70s, '80s, before DNA technology
was really recognized,
00:23:21
would be a way to limit the chances of that person
being identified. -And that was one
of our difficulties
00:23:29
when we were doing
the investigation, trying to identify the human
remains and, in particular,
00:23:34
Therese's remains
because there was no evidence she'd been anywhere
near Gloucester.
00:23:39
But we were able to, in liaison
with the Much Marcle police and the missing persons
to come down
00:23:44
to sort of a short list
of people that it could be, and then, through using
forensic techniques,
00:23:50
we were able to be satisfied that we had identified
her remains. -As the cellar
excavation continued,
00:23:57
officers escorted Fred
to a field near his home at Much Marcle. He told them, if they dug there,
00:24:03
they'd find the body
of his first wife, Rena, not seen since 1971, a year after Fred and Rose
had moved in together.
00:24:11
Rena and Fred had been
married for 9 years, but she was never
reported missing. -So he was taken out
to the fields,
00:24:18
and he pointed out, in one field,
fairly close to a hedge line, where he said that
he'd buried Rena Costello.
00:24:32
-There were now six victims. And, back in the cellar
at Cromwell Street, even more bodies
were being exhumed --
00:24:38
Juanita Mott,
a former lodger at the house, missing since 1975
and Carol Cooper,
00:24:43
last seen walking home
from the cinema in 1973, plus two familiar names that
police had been looking out for,
00:24:50
Lucy Partington and, buried under the family
bathroom, Lynda Gough. -This was a tragedy
for these young women.
00:24:58
I mean,
all murders are tragic for the victims
and their families, but it was the scale
of this, I think,
00:25:03
that took the media's attention. I mean, it's almost
incomprehensible that two people
00:25:09
could abduct young women or lure them to the house
and subsequently, you know, sexually abuse
them and then kill them.
00:25:19
I mean, it is on a scale
that's almost incomprehensible. -By the 8th of March, 1994,
00:25:27
less than 2 weeks after
beginning their search at Cromwell Street, police had found 10 victims.
00:25:33
Most of them had been buried
2 decades ago when Fred and Rose
were at their most prolific.
00:25:39
-Aside from the sexual
element to the murders, they were becoming, I'd say, maybe closer in a way,
but I don't know whether closer
00:25:49
is the best word
to use to describe that. I think they were
becoming more cut off
00:25:53
from the rest of the world. This was something that only
the two of them understood.
00:25:58
It was something that we refer
to as a folie à deux, a madness shared by two. So I think it was kind of
cementing their relationship.
00:26:06
-They were, to him, no more
than sexual implements, a kind of doll, if you like.
00:26:12
I know it's a horrifying
thought, but they had no more humanity
for him than that.
00:26:17
He was a man capable
of absolutely no conscience and absolutely no remorse. And everything he did
was with Rose's help.
00:26:25
And the thought of having
some young woman hung up in the cellar,
literally, by her hands into a hook
for Fred and Rose to abuse
00:26:36
when they wanted to over
a period of days almost defies belief. It is that horrifying.
00:26:44
-Nine bodies had been exhumed
from Cromwell Street, and one more, that of Rena West,
Fred's first wife,
00:26:50
in a field near Much Marcle. But Fred wasn't finished. Although he didn't admit
to killing her,
00:26:56
he told police he had a feeling
that Rena's friend, Anne McFall, might be buried in
a neighboring field.
00:27:03
She's believed to be Fred's
first victim, killed in 1967 when she was 6 months pregnant.
00:27:10
-As he did with
all his killings, he dismembered the bodies
before he buried them.
00:27:15
So he didn't bury them
in a skeleton. He buried them in a tube,
if you like, in which the body
was compressed,
00:27:22
the torso, head separated,
arms and legs separated, and shoved into a smaller hole.
00:27:30
It made the search
for those bodies a very complicated affair. -The problem with
Anne McFall's body
00:27:36
was that the whole land
had been relandscaped. And so there was this topsoil
that had been put on there.
00:27:41
Now, when you're looking
for human remains, you can't just bring a big
digger in and shove it all out.
00:27:48
You are, literally,
doing it by spadefuls and sieving every spadeful. And we actually excavated
a whole the size
00:27:55
of an Olympic-sized
swimming pool. We were almost giving up hope that we were going
to find the body,
00:27:59
and we set a deadline
for ourselves that, if we didn't find it
by date X, then we would stop.
00:28:05
But, fortunately,
a couple of days before that deadline came in, we found some bones and then
subsequently recovered the body.
00:28:13
-During the 2 months of digging
for Anne McFall's remains, the police had arrested and
charged Rose West with murder.
00:28:20
For each victim, she claimed,
"I'm innocent." The police's evidence
was circumstantial,
00:28:25
and defense lawyers
felt there wasn't enough to connect her to the murders. -Rose West said,
"I had nothing to do with this,"
00:28:33
and the Crown was saying,
"Well, we've got a statement from so-and-so who says that you were involved
00:28:39
in an abduction
and sexual abuse." Well, to a point, you say,
"Well, so what? What's that got to do
with murder?"
00:28:47
Fred had said,
in his interviews, he fully admitted them and said Rose had nothing
to do with them.
00:28:53
So the first point is to say, "Well, what is the strength
of the case against Rose?"
00:29:01
She's denying it. Where's the proof
that she was involved? -While police continued their
search at Cromwell Street,
00:29:12
they also turned their attention
to a second address, 25 Midland Road, Fred and Rose's first home
together in Gloucester.
00:29:20
Investigators believe
that somewhere in the house or garden they might find
the body of Charmaine West,
00:29:27
Fred's stepdaughter from
his marriage to Rena. An extensive search began. -At the time of
Charmaine's death,
00:29:37
she was living at
25 Midland Road, a house that, subsequently,
Fred and Rose had left.
00:29:43
But we went to the house,
and again, excavating under
the floor of the kitchen, we found Charmaine's body.
00:29:52
-Charmaine had not been seen
since she was 8 years old in 1971 and had not been
reported as missing.
00:29:58
In the same year, Fred was
in jail for 9 months for motoring offenses and stealing fence panels
from his then employer.
00:30:05
The police were convinced they'd
finally got a breakthrough. They were confident Charmaine
must have been murdered
00:30:11
by Rose while Fred
was serving time. -Rose was jealous of Charmaine. Charmaine was a very
bright little girl,
00:30:18
and I think Rose could see that she was getting
the upper hand of her, and she didn't like it.
00:30:25
The younger sister knew
to keep quiet. It was best not
to antagonize Rose. And Charmaine was
quite a feisty little girl.
00:30:34
-So there were
slight differences in the modus operandi, you know,
certainly with the others,
00:30:42
you can imagine Fred
going about his work with a sort of builder's
precision and routine,
00:30:53
you know, severing
the limbs and the head, digging a hole in the ground
and placing them in it.
00:30:59
Charmaine was different,
nevertheless, Fred was charged with Charmaine even though there were,
from the outset,
00:31:05
issues about whether
Fred was present or whether he was in prison. So there was always that
slightly nebulous issue
00:31:13
about how old, precisely, Charmaine was and the dates
when she died. -With the high profile
trials imminent,
00:31:20
the police had to somehow
prove that Rose West was just as guilty
as her husband, Fred.
00:31:27
But before they got a chance, there was a major setback
in their case. In December 1994, 10 months
after police had begun
00:31:36
to search 25 Cromwell
Street for Heather West, the bodies of 12 young women had been unearthed
across Gloucester.
00:31:43
Fred West was thought
to be responsible for all of the deaths, and police were desperately
trying to find
00:31:48
some evidence
to prove that his wife, Rose, was implicit
in 10 of the murders. Both had been arrested, charged,
and were awaiting trial,
00:31:56
but on January the 1st 1995, Fred West took his
secrets to the grave. -Fred was in custody at
Winson Green Prison
00:32:06
in Birmingham
and on the 1st of January 1995, he was found dead in his cell. He died from hanging and it
was subsequently determined
00:32:15
that he committed suicide. -Fred West was always
a cunning man. He planned his suicide
as carefully
00:32:25
as he concealed his bodies. He groomed the prison
officers into thinking that he was absolutely safe,
00:32:32
harmless little man
who could do no wrong and was very happy
to collaborate with anything they wanted.
00:32:39
Indeed, he volunteered. He said, "I'll mend shirts. Don't worry, give me
something to do.
00:32:45
You know, pass time for me
while I'm waiting for my trial." Painstakingly, over
a period of weeks,
00:32:52
he stitched together a rope, partly from bits
of the blanket on his bed, partly from pieces
of shirt, very carefully,
00:33:02
because he had decided
that he was not going to trial, and that he was not ever going
to confess the true extent
00:33:14
of what his crimes
amounted to. -There was a total loss of
control by Fred over Rose.
00:33:21
I have no doubt about that. She made it abundantly clear
she wanted absolutely nothing else
to do with him,
00:33:27
and she blanked him
in the dark. Independent of his
relationship with Rose, he lacked empathy with people.
00:33:36
You know, people are objects
to be used and abused. The fact of the matter was,
he knew the game was up.
00:33:41
He had made the admissions. The remains had been found. The terrible story
of those victims unfolded.
00:33:48
-For those who knew
the West family, this is just another
macabre twist in a story
00:33:53
that first came
to light 10 months ago. In the words of one neighbor, "If Frederick West
really did kill himself,
00:33:59
then it seems almost appropriate
that a man accused of taking so many people's lives
00:34:04
should end up taking his own." -Fred's suicide was a huge
problem for the police.
00:34:10
It put the entire case
in jeopardy. -With the death of Fred,
we were concerned that the press might feel,
00:34:17
"Well, the case against Fred
is now finished, and therefore, we can
disclose information
00:34:21
because the case is closed." That would have been a disaster
for us because it would have
00:34:27
then compromised
the trial of Rose West. -The police were desperate. While Fred had confessed
to 11 of the killings,
00:34:35
Rose had always claimed
her innocence. Without any solid evidence,
there was a real chance
00:34:41
that Rose West was going
to get away with murder. -I think it's the Crown
that need to review that case
00:34:48
and decide where they want
to take it from here. I would hope that
they would drop the case.
00:34:57
-I thought it was possible the case might
have been dropped. There were a lot of
eminent observers
00:35:02
suggesting
that would be the case. The DPP had a different view,
though, and in fact,
00:35:08
the case got worse against Rose. They added on the murder
of Charmaine, which prior,
00:35:17
had been a sole charge
in relation to Fred. I thought that was very curious. Rose thought the case
was going to go away as well,
00:35:26
but it didn't. -Prosecutors needed proof
that Rose alone was responsible for the death
of her stepdaughter, Charmaine.
00:35:34
They turn to
forensic odontologist Professor David Whittaker. -The police brilliantly
discovered, I don't know how,
00:35:42
that a certain newspaper,
national newspaper, had acquired a set of negatives, and they were large
professional negatives.
00:35:53
And they showed
incredible detail in some of the baby teeth, the deciduous teeth,
of Charmaine,
00:36:01
which I was then able to match exactly using our facial superimposition
technology and show,
00:36:10
A, that they matched exactly
in terms of tilt and position and grooving and little rough edges
that were a perfect match,
00:36:22
but the position
of the teeth had moved, so if we could calculate
that movement and assess it of
being able to determine,
00:36:33
within reasonable accuracy, the time elapsed between
the photograph being taken,
00:36:40
which the police had a date for. It was written on the negative. And the time of death.
00:36:46
And if that fit into the slot
where Fred West was in jail, then clearly Mrs. West had
a lot of questions to answer.
00:36:57
-On the 3rd of October 1995,
the world's press flocked to
Winchester Crown Court
00:37:02
to report on one of the
most sensational trials of modern times. -Rose's trial attracted
worldwide attention,
00:37:10
as you would expect. It's very rare for a woman
to go on trial, let alone for 10 murders.
00:37:16
I attended it from the first day
to the last. It was an extraordinary event. -As the trial began,
Rose West pleaded not guilty
00:37:24
to all 10 counts of murder, the nine girls found buried at
Cromwell Street and Charmaine,
00:37:30
but the evidence against her
was irrefutable. -So in court,
in front of Rosemary West,
00:37:36
I had all the technology
available to reproduce
the imaging of Charmaine. Dreadful thing to have
to do in court,
00:37:47
but the judge
and the prosecution insisted, so Mrs. West actually saw this imaging
00:37:55
developing in front of her, and I think it was about
the only time she looked a little bit upset.
00:38:03
-She marched into
the witness box like a very angry
traffic warden -- plain shoes, weighty woman,
angry demeanor.
00:38:14
"This is all an outrage.
It was all Fred. I had nothing to do with it.
I knew nothing.
00:38:18
It was completely inconceivable
I could have done this. I couldn't have killed
my own daughter."
00:38:22
A tissue of lies. -We think of Rose West
as this woman in the courtroom in her 40s,
00:38:29
great big glasses that she wore, quite a frumpy
housewife-looking. Those murders had happened
a long time before then.
00:38:38
She actually was very young
when she committed the murders. She was, in fact,
a teenage serial killer
00:38:43
because she committed
three murders before she was 20 and most of the murders were
over by the time she was 26.
00:38:51
-The evidence provided by
Professor Whittaker convinced the jury that Rosemary West
was guilty of all 10 murders.
00:38:58
-He was able to say,
and the jury accepted this, that he could pinpoint
within a few days
00:39:04
of when
the child had been killed, and we had evidence that Fred
was in jail during that time.
00:39:11
So Fred could not have killed
Charmaine at that time because he physically
wasn't around.
00:39:16
He was in jail. -I didn't think the trial
had gone well for Rose, and the jury took
quite a long time.
00:39:22
It wasn't a 5-minute decision. It was many hours. They thought about everything
very carefully.
00:39:29
They came back, and it was pretty well
unanimous on everything. I mean, she was
totally defeated.
00:39:35
-When the first guilty
verdicts came back, Rose did not flicker,
not a sign of emotion.
00:39:43
She just simply stood there. There was no histrionics,
no shouting, no screaming.
00:39:50
There was no sign of any emotion
at all, really, and I was left with
the overwhelming feeling
00:39:56
that one had been
in the presence of someone who had lost contact
with humanity.
00:40:02
-Sentencing her, the judge,
Mr. Justice Mantell, recommended that Rose West
should never be released.
00:40:09
She was immediately returned
to Holloway Prison. -Rose has never confessed to me,
00:40:14
whether she's made any kind
of confession to anybody else, I don't know,
but she certainly hasn't to me.
00:40:20
-I would say that, tacitly, she,
at various stages, gave the impression to me,
with hindsight,
00:40:27
that she knew that, you know, under the floor
in Cromwell Street, there were a lot of secrets.
00:40:34
That's slightly different to
saying that she murdered people, but then the nature of the case,
it was circumstantial.
00:40:45
-Three hundred miles from
Gloucester, Rosemary West en route to the prison that
will be home for a lifetime.
00:40:51
-Today, Rose West is serving
life imprisonment at Low Newton Prison in Durham. In 1996, a year after
25 Cromwell Street
00:41:04
had given up its grisly secrets,
it was demolished. In its place is now
a public walkway,
00:41:10
but nothing can erase the painful memories
of Fred and Rose West, and their house of horrors.
00:41:19
-This certainly was a unique
case in my experience, and I was involved as a detective investigating
murders right back in the 1960s,
00:41:26
and this is on a scale
that's completely different. And I think in terms of its
complexity, I think, again,
00:41:31
it probably stands out
as unique in criminal history. They were all young women
who had their lives
00:41:38
in front of them,
and it was cut short. They're just brutal and selfish, self-gratification
of Fred and Rose.
00:41:46
-I have never, for one moment,
doubted that Frederick West was a truly evil man.
00:41:50
I think he was born and bred. I think he only
ever thought of himself. He was a psychopath
and a sociopath,
00:41:57
no concern for society, no concern
for anybody but himself, but he found in Rose the perfect
sorcerer's apprentice.
00:42:05
-Many of us reflect on
serial killer couples and say, "Well, if they had never met one
00:42:10
another, would they have gone
on to kill?" We know that Fred had already
committed one murder
00:42:15
before he met Rose, so I think
he would have killed again. When we look at Rose, I think
she would have certainly gone on
00:42:21
to harm other people, whether that was emotionally, financially, a non-physical kind of harm,
00:42:28
but I think having Fred
in her life opened up the door to a different kind of harm,
a different kind of abuse.
00:42:36
-I've never been in any doubt
that Fred and Rose committed far more
than 12 murders.
00:42:42
I've always believed
there are other victims, and they were buried
in other places
00:42:45
or concealed in other places, but to be fair
to Gloucester police, they can't dig
out Gloucestershire
00:42:51
in the effort
to find more victims. -Speculation about other
possible victims of Fred and Rose West
will always remain.
00:42:58
Theirs is a case
whose shock waves continue to reverberate
around the world even today.
00:43:03
The sheer depravity and
the unimaginable terror of their victims is why we should remember them,
not Fred and Rose,
00:43:10
and their house of horror. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪