Original subtitles

What I'm concerned about, Fred, is that you are gonna keep quiet

because you think,

or you are frightened to death it would implicate Rose.

Rubbish.

Was she ever in the house when you were killing somebody?

- No. - Or cutting them up?

- No. - Never once?

No. She knew nothing because I am sure of one thing.

If she'd have known, she'd have been the first to report me.

Turn it off.

Cromwell Street has become a magnet

for the sympathetic, the shocked, and the downright curious.

It's still giving up its grisly secrets,

but already it's one of the most infamous addresses in Britain.

Detectives, who've unearthed three bodies in the garden,

don't expect to find any more there.

The search for bodies has now switched to inside the house,

as, piece by piece, 25 Cromwell Street is torn apart.

The case has developed

from a missing person to three bodies in a garden,

and now, suddenly,

this acknowledgement is made of nine more victims.

So the police now have to cope with a multiple murder inquiry.

Fred confessed to a series of killings.

So from that point of view, it wasn't a complicated investigation,

it wasn't complex.

The difficulties we had was, one, identifying the victims,

and two, what to do about Rose.

You can only work with the evidence that you've got.

Rose was in a safe house with the children, Mae and Stephen,

where she spent the time whilst we were excavating 25 Cromwell Street.

There were a lot of listening devices throughout the premises,

and the intention would have been

to elicit, covertly, some admissions to what Rose knew,

gathering evidence which should directly implicate her in any of the murders.

I thought Dad was a very sick man.

And it's come out, he is a very sick man.

And the worst liar I ever could have dreamed of.

But nobody could have known.

She was devastated,

quite clearly distressed, um, and shocked.

She denies she knew anything about the bodies.

- Is that correct? - Yes, she does.

What about knowledge of the killings?

- She totally denies that? - Yes, she does.

Whilst there was this huge shadow on Rose West,

clear instructions to me were that

she had got into a relationship with Fred when she was still a young girl, 16.

He'd always been the dominant older party.

He'd manipulated her.

She'd been totally hoodwinked.

I mean, if I got near the bastard now,

I'd put me hands round his throat.

This is something you don't forgive.

I'd never forgive that. You don't forgive that.

You never forget it.

Although she talked a lot in the safe house,

there was no new information.

We were getting nothing, absolutely nothing.

Fred was at Gloucester Police Station

for the murder of his daughter Heather.

I used to spend quite a lot of time with Fred in the morning

before, um, Scott or Howard turned up.

So, you know, we had chance to talk quite a lot.

And he said, "The other girls that I've talked about before,

they're in the cellar."

So I had some paper, and he drew the diagram of the cellar,

and he sort of pinpointed where each of the bodies were.

Because he couldn't remember what the names were, I just numbered them.

Police are concentrating the search in the cellar area.

This follows a day's scanning using imaging technology.

This highly sensitive equipment

allows them to see into walls and underneath floors,

shadows on the monitor revealing any object encased in bricks or concrete.

Just a quick shot of the, uh, threshold to this far room.

See the original access to the basement.

Staircase and a grille.

The cellar was accessible down some fairly steep stairs.

There's another room off on the side there.

It was clear that the kids had used it as a den at some stage

because there was pictures on the wall.

But it was cold, it was dank,

it was particularly smelly because Fred had split sewage pipes.

We went to the cellar at Cromwell Street

with a view to guide the officers to then dig.

Fred came in the back way because of the press,

and then they brought us into the basement.

We're currently in the basement of the premises.

The people present are Mr. Frederick Walter Stephen West,

accompanied by Mr. Howard Ogden, Mr. Scott Canavan,

and Mrs. Janet Leach, um, appropriate adult.

Officers present, Detective Chief Inspector Law, DC Savage.

- Is there anything in here that we've... - Along that line, that line there.

Okay, under here.

So it's just where you're standing then, Fred, yeah?

She's there, or somewhere just on the edge of there.

I don't think it's quite far over as that, but just on the edge of there somewhere.

Right.

It was strange.

I mean, because as he talked, everything was so matter-of-fact.

You know, he, he'd get a little bit upset,

but then compose himself very quickly and change,

you know, it was like his personalities were like two different people. You know?

One of the officers asked him to choose a spray can

to mark where the bodies were, which had been drawn on the diagram.

He sort of marked the floors, uh, quite near to the chimney breasts.

It's across there.

And who is that?

That's the second girl.

I just hated the man,

but I couldn't afford to let any of my feelings sort of come out,

because he seemed to sense that.

So then the trust wouldn't have been there.

I'd say that's probably where it came in.

He said, like, all the children slept down there.

It was really dark and damp.

The smell, it was awful. It was just...

I just...

I could smell it.

When I went to sleep at night, I could smell it.

Fred, is there anybody else in here?

No.

Are you sure?

You realize all this will come up, don't you?

Yeah. Well, I mean, what's one more?

Concrete from the cellar

of 25 Cromwell Street was removed from the house

as police continue their hunt for more bodies.

Today they announced that three more sets of human remains had now been found.

These were found in the cellar area,

and this brings the total in Cromwell Street to six.

The bodies are believed to be those of women as yet unidentified.

For the first week,

we were hearing about victims' remains being found.

With the discovery of each new body comes the task of identification.

Revelations in Gloucester have aroused fears

of thousands of people who have missing relatives or friends.

We knew just from a local police force, Gloucestershire,

that we had certain people missing on our books.

But then we expanded that out to our neighboring counties,

neighboring police forces.

We had thousands of calls.

The Missing Persons Bureau in London

has from the outset of this investigation

been of considerable assistance to us.

We would hope that persons who have for some reason distanced themselves

from their relatives or friends,

that they can make contact with their relatives

or contact with the Missing Persons Bureau and establish their safety.

There was a number coming along the bottom of the screen, so I rang it.

And then within an hour or two,

this detective came to my door and said to me,

"Can you explain why you think your sister Juanita is one of those?"

I said, "I've just got this feeling."

I was about 15 when Juanita was last known of.

The last time I'd spoke to Juanita,

she'd been kicked out of home because she was so naughty.

Well, she was Juanita.

I was in bed asleep, and I heard these stones being thrown at the window.

So I looked out, it was her, so I let her in.

And I said, "What happened last night?"

And she said, "Oh, Mum and them wouldn't let me in."

I said, "Well, you know the window will always be open for you."

She said, "Yeah, and you've got to remember

that I'll always be there for you."

"No matter what or no matter when."

"Just find me."

As a journalist, you want a story that's got legs,

as they say in journalism,

i.e. a story that's going to keep going.

And the West case had that quality.

It's a bit like a jigsaw puzzle.

You have some of the pieces and, you know, you do the border.

And some pieces join up, but there are missing pieces.

And early on, one of the pieces,

certainly that I tried to put in place, was how did Fred and Rose meet?

And the truth was slightly obscure.

But essentially, in 1969, Rose was a 15-year-old schoolgirl.

Fred West was a 27-year-old man.

And somehow he chatted her up and they bonded.

And almost immediately, she becomes pregnant with Heather.

I trained Rose...

...to what I wanted.

That is why our marriage worked out so well.

For a simple reason, Rose had had no wild life.

She just blended into my way of living.

Rose would act under your instruction?

Yes.

- Well, yeah. Yes. - To be fair to Rose.

Rose West was complex. Her relationship with Fred was complex.

Rose was bringing up a family, but at the same time,

Fred was also sending her out with these other men.

Statements that I've read, Mr. West, from people who know you...

This chap says he learned about your wife's sexual habits through you.

How she was a prostitute at the house.

I probed on that. She said, "Well, I did it because Fred made me do it."

I was in love with your father.

Whenever I made love with your father, that was it for me.

But I had to go out with this bloke I didn't like and climb into his bed

and make love all night and come home in the morning.

One of the big talking points of the West case is,

who was in control?

I think certainly when they first met,

Fred must have been the dominant partner.

He had to have been.

He had much, much more life experience.

I thought Fred must have bewitched her,

and she must have gone along with Fred's idea of what was okay,

sexually and otherwise.

My mum tells me, "Get an older man."

"He'll look after you. He's had his life. He's had his flings."

"You know, you'll be all right."

I mean, and I'm with this man. I am almost completely brainwashed.

You know, and I am doing what he says.

Now, how much he coerced her is really unknown.

As the investigation progressed,

the focus then was to go to speak to people

who would have knowledge and understanding of Fred and Rose.

What did you know about Fred and Rose's lifestyle?

Were you aware of any activities that were going on at the premises?

At that time, the house would be packed.

Right. I want to talk first of all, Mr. West,

about a statement of evidence that we've received

from a lady called Elizabeth Agius.

Rose started telling me about her personal life.

How did I feel about it, by she was a prostitute?

Um...

I just told her it was her business. It was nothing to do with me.

She did go into details that she had, like,

microphones or something in the bedroom.

Because if she ever had, uh, clients there,

Fred was always on the opposite side, into the next room.

And, um, he likes to listen to things like that.

But their life,

it was up to them to whatever I thought turned them on.

And, you know, I never took no notice, really.

Rose came across, in her early days,

as somebody who was sweet, vulnerable, gullible.

The more we looked into her, the more devious she appears to have come.

Fred and Rose, though a couple, was clearly engaged in activities

which we would consider not the social norm.

Has she been happy to go along with this?

Well, all I can say is that for that 23 years we've been together.

I mean, do you think she would have stayed?

She thinks just as much of me as I do of her.

You had these underlying, sordid activities

that were constantly going on at 25 Cromwell Street,

which people were aware of,

but for whatever reason chose not

to bring it to the attention of the police.

This lady says when she was shown around Cromwell Street,

she was shown a trapdoor which led to the cellar.

We went down there,

and Fred said, um, he wasn't sure what to make of this yet.

He said, "I don't know whether to make it a playing area for the children."

Or he nudged me and he used to say,

"Or else I could make this into my torture room,

and just think," he said,

"what I could do to you down here," he said.

"Nobody would hear me," he said, "'cause I'd make it soundproof."

- Did you consider going to police? - No.

What they did was their business.

I accepted them as they are, so long as I wasn't involved in anything.

It was extremely surprising to see

that this activity could take place

in a house in the middle of the town center.

But the burning question, the crucial question was,

what were the victims doing in 25 Cromwell Street?

How did they get there?

The conversation then got round to the fact that Fred used to go out

looking for young girls who were hitchhiking or thumbing lifts.

She says that when she asked why you did it,

"Fred said that he liked to pick up young women

to get them back to lodge with them."

"He said he could get them into prostitution,

and he liked them to be aged between 15 to 17 if possible."

What was going through my head at the time was,

"This is great, this is a breakthrough, great evidence."

A key feature of Fred's strategy

was simply to go cruising and to look for a victim of opportunity,

someone who seemed vulnerable.

But we also realized

it wasn't just people living in 25 Cromwell Street that went missing.

These victims were from all over the country.

250,000 people go missing in Britain every year.

The majority return home within a few days.

But around 3,000 vanish without trace.

What has happened to Lucy Partington?

Has she simply vanished for reasons which her parents aren't aware?

Lucy's bus was ten minutes late leaving the center of Cheltenham

and didn't arrive at the stop on Evesham Road until half past ten.

But by then, the 21-year-old student had vanished,

and there's been no trace of her ever since.

She was four years younger than me,

and, um, I was rather the bossy older sister.

We were all together at Christmas at my mum's house.

One of my brothers gave Lucy a lift to her friend Helen's

and offered to pick her up afterwards,

and she said, "No, it's fine. I'll get the bus."

And was never seen again.

What do you think has happened to your daughter?

Well, I don't know.

A very difficult question.

You know, I think that whatever has happened to her was against her will.

I'm quite convinced myself that she meant to catch that bus.

I don't think she would have accepted a lift.

I don't think it would have been in character with her.

The police searched. They dragged the lake by the bus stop.

They put up notices of missing person,

and nothing was found.

I would like this thing put to bed, as they say in journalist terms.

Yeah, I would like the thing... Have it finished. If she is dead, let's...

put an end to it. Let's have a funeral.

The whole thing is so uncertain, isn't it, at the moment.

And I would like to know what happened to her.

I don't like to think that I shall die without ever knowing what happened to her.

- Thank you very much. - Okay.

I first heard about Cromwell Street when I was at work.

We just felt very restless,

and it was, you know, very disturbing that all this was going on.

Maybe it was just because this was about missing people.

And this was about bodies being found,

and it wasn't very far from where Lucy disappeared.

I just remember saying to my mum around that time,

"I think it's going to be better to know than not to know."

And my mum said, "I'm not so sure about that."

I never actually ever knew their names.

I didn't want to know or make up a name, whatever it was.

No? What about Lucy?

She was well publicized as a missing girl.

The thing is, all these are so mixed up in my mind,

I haven't got a clue which is which.

You put them there, didn't you?

- Don't know whether you put them there? - No.

- Buried these people? - Yeah, buried the people.

But I mean, I didn't... It was done quick and a long time ago.

He did know a couple of names, but some were strangers.

Which, to me, put a different light on Fred at that point.

I started to imagine then

what these poor victims had actually gone through before they died.

Fred, you've got that awful smirk on your face again.

That's worrying me.

And I need to know we're not going into another world now.

No. But, I mean, every girl I picked up, I didn't put in the basement.

Where did you put them?

I dropped them off where they wanted to go.

In the early interviews,

what you see is a cunning man who's living in a fantasy.

I mean, each one was their own kinky sex, that's all it was.

I mean, that's why you probably find it hard.

It was what they... their thing that they wanted to try, do.

So far as Fred is concerned,

his approach is largely entirely matter-of-fact.

Really concerned about himself as opposed to the deceased.

It was just this urge at the time when they... they upset me,

that I went for 'em.

And the whole fear,

and this is something that we've got to go into,

was that the biggest fear that was in me,

was Rose finding out that I was messing with other women.

Frederick West seems unmoved by the fact that these people are dead.

And what we see are the hallmarks of the sadistic sexual psychopath.

More human remains have been found

at the house in Gloucester being searched by police.

The latest discovery in the cellar of the house

brings to nine the number of bodies found at the home of Frederick West.

The whole thing now, you've got them all.

Yeah.

So there ain't no more in the basement.

When the police excavation on Cromwell Street stopped...

...they were bringing the victim remains out.

Fleet Street is down there, BBC is down there,

the TV, Sky News, CNN, Canadian television, French television.

They're all there because victims are being brought out in black boxes.

It goes around the world.

When the victims' remains were all excavated,

and you saw the conditions in which those remains were coming up,

you saw they were dismembered, you saw evidence

that they had been taped and bound and gagged,

you start to think, how could anybody do that?

And then you think how those kids must have suffered

immediately before their death.

For every victim that we identified,

there would have been 10, 20, 30 names that remained missing

and were never found.

Eventually, we were able to put a name to all the victims.

25 Cromwell Street was the burial ground

for a total of nine young women.

They were Heather West,

Rosemary West's eldest daughter, who was 16.

Shirley Robinson, who was eight months pregnant by Frederick West.

Alison Chambers, who lived in a children's home in Gloucester.

Lynda Gough, who'd left home in 1973.

Carol Cooper, who'd run away from a children's home in Worcester.

Lucy Partington, who vanished after visiting a friend in Cheltenham.

Thérèse Siegenthaler, a Swiss student who'd vanished while hitchhiking.

Shirley Hubbard, who'd lived with foster parents in Droitwich.

And Juanita Mott, another lodger.

We were picked up in a car,

shielded from the press because they were camped outside,

and taken to the station, and we were told,

"Really sorry to tell you,

but it is confirmed that Juanita was found in the cellar."

You talked to Hazel about a girl from Newent?

Yeah.

If I said her name, which we now think we might have...

Yeah.

...would you think you'd recognize it?

I'll certainly try.

Juanita Mott?

- That's her. - And what did you do with her?

Buried her in that hole.

It wasn't like, "Oh, our little bubble's burst."

It was worse.

It was worse than you could ever imagine.

It was an explosion.

Poof, this is it.

Your life is never going to be the same because of what he did to her.

Up until that day, I honestly thought,

"One day she's going to get hold of us."

"Never know, she might just knock on my door one day."

But she never came back.

There was a phone call from the police saying they had some news for us.

Russell Williams arrived and then said,

Fred West had told them that one of them was called Lucy.

The first question that you always get asked is, "Are you sure?"

Because I guess there would always be a little...

...a little sliver of hope that it's not their loved one

and their loved one's gonna and walk through the door one day,

but we know that reality doesn't exist.

My mum didn't express much emotion at all,

but we met Dad off the train,

and he just broke down and burst into tears,

and I... we just held each other.

You don't really think.

You just feel

a huge amount of shock and denial.

That's right, you can't quite take it in. It doesn't feel real.

Especially because the deaths were so brutal

and meaningless.

It all becomes reality that, yeah,

it's all confirmed that you're never going to see her again,

and then you realize why she never got in touch, that all makes sense.

It makes you realize that it must have been complete hell for her at the end,

knowing that you're on your own.

Nobody knows you're there, so no one's gonna come save you.

No one's going to... There's not gonna be a knock at the door...

It's, um...

It must have been horrific for her, for all of them.

She was hidden. They were all hidden.

And my mum, having to see my mum's face, listen to this...

I saw my hero, my mum, my hero...

...crumble.

Since you've been spoken to,

we've been able to piece together

eh, a little bit more about each body as it's been recovered by the police.

Most of these people have got some sort of material with them.

- Oh, have they? - Yes.

I don't know, Hazel. No idea. I can't...

Well, why don't you know?

So that means then, that somebody else might be involved.

If you didn't put it there.

- Hazel. - Well, I don't know.

There is nobody else involved. I did it all on my own.

Right.

And there is nobody else. Let's get that straight.

Right, so...

Just because I don't remember what I did to each one in detail,

surely after these good 20-odd years.

Fred West had emphasized that there was nobody else involved but himself.

Rosemary West didn't know anything about it.

This was all done behind Rose's back.

I kept her pregnant. I kept her with other men.

Everything out of my way... when I did things.

You said the other day you and her mentally switched into each other.

- Yes. - You're "as one," you said.

That was your words.

But there's a difference, a lot of difference

between evil locking together and love.

Eh?

Rosemary West is the most important person in his world.

He needs to protect, to keep safe, Rosemary West.

I've been tempted over the years to tell Rose, I must admit.

- But I never ever did. - Why, Fred?

Um... Well, one reason, I didn't know how she'd take it,

what she'd do, whether she'd walk out on me,

or what would happen, or whether she'd think she was at risk.

I mean, Rose might look a bit hard faced and that, but Rose is as soft as a kitten.

At all times, Fred was seeking to protect Rose.

He had a notion that he would go to prison for however long it may be,

but she would live nearby, and she would visit him,

and that that relationship would continue, uh, unabated.

Mad and weird as he was, and mad and weird as she is,

on some depraved level, they also loved each other.

Rose was his whole world, and he wanted to save her.

If they think I've got fuck all to do with it,

they may as well put me in a cell and throw the key away.

Because I shall always protest my innocence,

and I don't care if I spend the rest of my life in the fucking nick.

I always sensed that there was more to this story

than I was getting from Fred.

And by more, I mean

the knowledge and involvement by Rose.

The police have gone to see a girl this afternoon.

Used to be the nanny?

Oh, um, Carol.

I caught the news, and all I can remember is it said

a man in Gloucester had been arrested for all the killings that went on.

And I just broke down.

I got onto the police straight away, and I just said,

"You need to really look into this because he did the same to me years ago."

"He was gonna kill me."

When Fred was being questioned, he's asked about Caroline Owens.

She lived at 25 Cromwell Street as the nanny in 1972.

So in '94, a detective was sent to see Caroline

and take a statement from her.

When I was actually living there, I wasn't aware

of what was actually going on,

um, especially with Rose and the male visitors to the house.

During a conversation one evening with Fred,

he said, "Me and Rose want you to join our sex circle."

And I think he thought that he could groom me.

To me, that was dirty, scary.

It wasn't me.

I left the Wests...

and went back home to live.

But on December 6th,

I remember going to hitchhike to see my boyfriend in Tewkesbury,

and I saw their car.

At the time, I was thinking,

they are gonna be really angry with me because of how I left.

I didn't think they would do anything really bad to me at all.

So I got in the car.

You pull into a gateway...

turn around and whack her one.

- She's semi-unconscious. - Rubbish.

And she's tied up and taped and taken back.

- And you were with Rose. - No!

I was always on me own when I went.

- You weren't. - No, you weren't.

You went with your missus.

- Rose sat on her. - No, she did not!

The truth is you will write Rose out of anything you can.

No! That is wrong!

There's these people buried in the basement, the garden,

and your wife didn't know anything about it.

It's just too ridiculous.

Fred was not on his own.

Rose was in the car.

This MO, the way that they abducted her

was very similar to how we perceived and imagined the other victims were taken,

that were taken from the streets, hitchhiking,

or waiting at the bus stop as Lucy was.

That's a blueprint of what happened to these other girls.

At some point, I blacked out.

And when I came back round, my hands were already tied behind my back.

And all the time he was saying, "Now, just calm down."

Uh...

"We're gonna take you back home. We're gonna clean you up."

Uh...

"Calm you down, give you a cup of tea, then we'll go take you back home."

At that time, I wasn't sure what was gonna happen.

When she's in the house, she describes how

both you and Rose undressed her.

They put a gag in my mouth.

My hands were tied behind my back.

I had a blindfold put on me.

And then I was put onto this mattress on the floor.

That's when the sexual assault started.

Early hours of the morning, all of that stopped.

He grabbed hold of me by the throat and lifted me up,

shouting at me and telling me

that he was gonna keep me in the cellar.

"And when they've finished with you,

we're gonna kill you and bury you under the paving stones of Gloucester."

What about that, Fred?

Absolute rubbish.

Eventually, she managed to escape.

If Fred had been imprisoned for the offense,

he would have come across the radar a lot more than what he did

when it came to starting to look for the abductions of these, uh, girls

that were happening around that time.

There'd been a court case in 1973,

and regrettably, scandalously, actually, the Wests had got away with a fine.

They should have been jailed, really.

The level of abuse was far more serious

than the way it was actually dealt with in the Magistrates', as a summary matter,

when really it involved rape

and should have been indicted and go to the Crown Court.

And the outcome at that time was a £25 fine, I think it was,

at the Magistrates' court for both of the Wests.

I think, yes, it is a missed opportunity.

It was a missed opportunity to raise the profile of Fred and Rose

to identify them as possible sex offenders

who could carry out abductions, kidnapping, and imprisonment.

Fred and Rose did get off lightly with it.

What they did was evil.

It's almost like, "Oh well, we got away with it."

"But only by the skin of our teeth. So next time, they've got to die."

In hindsight, did you ever think she was a "practice run" for you?

What do you mean, "practice run"?

The others ended up being taped, and they're dead.

The only difference is with Mrs. Owens is she's still wandering around, luckily.

Was it a practice run?

The relationship between Frederick and Rosemary West

was essential to this whole case.

When she came to Frederick West,

she was a relatively young woman.

A girl, almost, and that, yes, she had had a difficult early life.

She had had a sexually abusive life.

But it was Frederick West who taught her,

allowed her to fly in this sadistic, cruel world.

One day Rose said she was going out with Fred.

And I said, "Well, why are you going with him, you know?"

And she turned and said to me,

"So long as there's a woman in the car with a male,

there's always an easy chance for another girl

who they're going to pick up and get inside the car."

"Because she will be there with him."

What I'm seeing is

a series of behaviors that tell me

I'm looking at a pair of sexually sadistic predators.

Not one but two.

I could understand if it was very difficult

for you to tell us if Rose was involved.

I know that, and you know I know that, don't you?

We're not stupid, hmm?

You're not alone in this whole... saga.

Fred?

From the very first day of this inquiry,

my main concern has been to protect other person or persons.

I have not, and still not... told you the whole truth

about these matters.