Original subtitles

We're in an interview room on the first floor

at the police station at Gloucester.

Can you tell us your full name?

Frederick Walter Stephen West.

- And your address? - 25 Cromwell Street.

Things are happening at your house at the moment.

I'm stood at the back door of 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester,

looking down the garden towards the city center.

The police have been there this afternoon,

and they are in fact digging up your back patio.

Here's the, uh, first slab being removed.

We're concerned about the whereabouts of your daughter.

Is she under the patio at your house?

Oh, for God's sake. I mean, do you believe it?

You find her, and I'll be happy.

25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester

continues to yield its secrets.

Journalists and TV crews have traveled

from all corners of the earth.

Police say they're not sure exactly how many bodies there may be.

I've been told that there might be 12 people. Where does it end?

The priority now is trying to trace Mr. West's extensive family.

"We're going to do a thorough search at 25 Cromwell Street."

"We're not leaving until we've done that."

You're enjoying it.

Yeah, why not?

I don't know. I don't understand it.

You will in the end.

I was a journalist

on the city's local newspaper, The Citizen.

It was my first job, so I was very much a junior reporter at that time.

Quite green, very naive.

And then I was made the crime correspondent

not long, actually, before February 1994.

I had a phone call from the reception to say

that one of our paper sellers was down at the back entrance.

He told me that the police were digging up a garden in Cromwell Street,

which wasn't that far from the office.

So a photographer and I went down to take a look.

It was quite a scruffy street.

There were mainly Edwardian terraced houses.

Most of them had seen better days.

We found number 25.

It was at the end of a row of houses.

It was fairly run down,

but there wasn't anything remarkable about it.

You couldn't really see anything from the front,

so we went round the back.

There were police officers, we assumed them to be, with shovels,

levering up paving stones,

and they'd got about three or four up so far.

So obviously, they hadn't been long there.

We said, "Hello. We're from The Citizen,"

and we asked them what they were looking for,

and they refused to tell us.

The photographer took a photograph...

...and then we left.

Something important was going on, that much was clear.

We thought they were probably looking for a body,

because why else would the police dig up a garden?

But at that point, we didn't know who.

In 1994, I'd been in the police for 12 years.

You deal with things, difficult things.

But the West investigation did change me in terms of

what I thought was possible, what I...

...what I thought people could do to each other.

- Is it on, Dad? - Yeah.

So at the beginning of the investigation,

what we had was information coming from school and social services

who were involved in the West family at the time

about the way the children were being treated.

Get down. You might fall over.

We found out that Fred and Rose, they were a married couple.

They had ten children.

Some were theirs together, and some were from other relationships.

The younger children had been placed into care,

which took them away from the family.

Those children were still going to school, and there started to reverberate

a common theme between... between them all.

It was alleged by the children

that if they misbehaved, they would end up under the patio,

like their sister Heather.

It's not only the frequency that it was said,

but how many different children were saying it.

It got to a level that

it could not be ignored, because nobody could find Heather.

She had literally disappeared off the face of the earth,

and everyone was hoping that she was going to be found safe and well somewhere.

John Bennett was senior investigation officer.

He had overall charge of the case.

Darren Law was a detective assistant on the case,

and Hazel Savage, DC,

took on the mantle of being the officer in the case for the missing Heather.

Fred hadn't been arrested on that Thursday.

In fact, he had gone to the police station voluntarily

to help us with our inquiries.

It's Thursday,

24th February 1994.

My name's DC Hazel Savage.

Fred, Heather has not been heard of since 1986.

Did you report her as a missing person to the police?

No.

The children are saying that it was a family joke

that she was underneath the patio.

You're laughing.

Just supposing you did. I mean, you're not going to sit there and say,

"Your sister's under the patio."

We better pack it away, Hazel. We're talking rubbish.

We can't, can we?

You're digging me place up, so carry on.

- I mean, why bother? - That's right.

And obviously, if there's anybody under there, Fred, we will find them.

There you are.

In normal cases, you arrest somebody,

and then you put the evidence that you have found to the offender

and listen to their explanation if they're gonna provide one.

But we weren't in that position

because we were still gathering the evidence.

We didn't have enough to charge him with anything at that stage.

So later that night, he returned to Cromwell Street.

On Friday morning, we had a tip

that they were looking for a girl who hadn't been seen for eight years.

I went down to the register office and asked for the birth certificate

of anyone in the house that might match the date of this person who was missing,

and we were handed the birth certificate for Heather West.

And so I called the police and said,

"Is it true you're looking for Heather West?"

And they were a bit horrified that we'd worked it out.

There was some to-ing and fro-ing, but in the end, they admitted they were.

Our first story was front-page news, and it said, "Police Hunt for Body."

Detectives believe the solution to an eight-year mystery

may be buried in the back garden of this terraced house in Gloucester.

It belongs to a couple whose daughter vanished in 1986,

but no one ever reported that Heather West had disappeared.

By then, other local journalists had come down to Cromwell Street,

and the local TV news was there as well, reporting on what was going on.

We've undertaken the inquiries into her disappearance,

and because of the inquiries that we've made,

we're at the stage that we are today.

What has been found so far?

We have found some... some bones,

but at this stage, they're thought to be animal bones.

Digging was still taking place, and the police were controlling the house.

As the news broke and as the media became involved,

Fred asked to talk to the detectives.

We were invited into the living room in the address.

They'd both left the room, leaving myself and WDC Hazel Savage

sort of stood in the room,

wondering really what's going on at that point.

After a short time, Fred came back

and, uh, basically said something along the lines of,

"You better take me to the police station."

"I have killed Heather, but you're digging in the wrong place."

What is going on?

I was meant to have a career as an opera singer,

but having met a solicitor at a convention,

decided that I wanted to help people.

That was on the false assumption

that people would necessarily want to be helped.

That afternoon, I was heading out into the hills to Stroud Magistrates Court.

A call came through, which was that

Fred West had been arrested on suspicion of murder.

I'm trying to cope with this news,

um, and thinking I've got to get over to Gloucester as soon as possible.

I was also concerned, of course, to speak to Fred at the first opportunity.

So I then made a call to the Gloucester police station

to give him his first professional advice.

They put Fred on,

and I rather went

along the traditional, uh, lines of the, uh, defense solicitor,

which is to, pardon the French,

to shut the fuck up, um, until I get there.

Fred replied,

"Well, I've already admitted it."

And so you think, "Okay."

I was working towards a diploma in social work,

and I'd approached the Homeless Project

in the view of becoming an appropriate adult.

When someone gets in trouble with the police,

we'd go down to the police station

just to make sure that their, um, needs were being met

and they were being properly looked after.

I'd just finished college, and the phone was ringing when I came through the door.

It was the Homeless Project asking

could I go out to Gloucester police station?

The police officer came and took me down to the custody suite,

and I was introduced to Fred West.

He sort of stood up, introduced himself.

And that was it, really.

Soon after, we went into an interview.

This interview is being recorded at Gloucester Central Police Station.

I'm Detective Constable Darren Law, and my colleague...

- DC Hazel Savage. - Everybody introduce themselves.

- Frederick West. - Janet Leach, appropriate adult.

Howard Ogden, solicitor.

So here we are, concerning the murder of Heather.

We are all there with a different role.

We were subsequently to have an interview that was chilling

and affected everybody who was present for the rest of their lives.

Do you understand the difference between telling the truth

and telling fibs?

Yeah.

I never intended to hurt Heather at all.

All I wanted to do was persuade Heather to stay at home,

and if she wouldn't, let her go.

But by this time, I had no control over me thoughts at all.

There was a piece of electric flex, I believe it was 13 amp,

and I picked it up and I thought, "I better make sure that she is dead,"

so I tied it round her neck.

I then went back to the cupboard to try and find something to cut her up with.

Tell the officers then, Fred, what item did you use to complete

the exercise of dismembering Heather.

The bread knife.

A man is describing murdering and dismembering his daughter.

It wasn't with floods of tears and distress and anxiety.

It was simply a black-and-white set of facts.

When the tape finished,

all of us present in that interview just rose

and went to a tiny little tea area,

and we just had a group hug.

Complete strangers. Never met one another.

A silent group hug.

I think I was in a state of shock. I just thought, you know,

"What on earth are you actually doing here?"

You know, "You shouldn't be here," but...

He sort of said to me afterwards, "Would you come again tomorrow?"

And I said, "Oh, well, you know, I don't know about that."

And that's when the police said, you know, "Will you come tomorrow?"

Um... I should have really said no.

I got a call from my secretary

to say that Rose West had also been arrested

on suspicion of murder,

and I was taken to the holding cell where Rose West was straightaway.

She looked rather dowdy in slacks and a loose-fitting top.

It was put to her that Fred had confessed to killing Heather,

and that evoked a shriek from her.

And she was constantly saying,

"If Fred's done anything, it's that Fred West."

My job there is to act on the client's instructions,

and those remained very clear.

That it was nothing to do with her. It was all Fred West.

At that point, Fred and Rose's interviews

were what solicitors would refer to as a "fishing exercise,"

insomuch as we were still in the dark about a lot of these things

and still reliant upon them providing that information.

Fred was taken back to 25 Cromwell Street, still in custody,

to point out where Heather was buried.

I think maybe the strategy that Fred was hoping for is

if he makes admissions, points out where Heather was buried,

then the police would be satisfied with that and stop the digging.

That's the prisoner in front of you.

The appropriate adult, DC Savage, Mr. Ogden.

Where's the location? Where do you think she's buried?

Across there.

In the center of your screen is the position indicated

by the prisoner as to where the deceased was buried.

It was really strange. It was dark. It was raining.

He was upset about the state of his garden, more so than anything.

There's no footings under that building.

Oh. Right, okay.

- It's a separate matter, is that? - We haven't gone right to the edge.

He just kept looking at me and winking.

As if it was some sort of game.

When we got back, I said to him, you know, "What did you mean?"

"Why were... You know, what was you looking at me like that for?"

And he said, "Didn't you see that bone sticking out?"

And I said, "Well, no, I didn't." And he said, "It's just by the back door."

Uh, this is the support group beginning to dig in the area

where the prisoner indicated.

Okay, 19:52, and the boys have found something.

Uh, ladies and gentlemen, excavations have continued

in Cromwell Street.

Police officers searching the scene found what appear to be human remains.

I had a call from Gloucester Police to go up there,

and they brought a bone to the police station,

and it was obviously a human thighbone, a femur,

and obviously a youngish person and obviously female.

You can tell that just at a glance.

Off we go to Cromwell Street.

I scrabbled about a bit in the muck and the mud.

The bones are in a filthy state.

We washed them on the spot as well as we could.

Some of the bones had been deliberately damaged.

They had cuts on them from what could be an axe or a very sharp cleaver.

Professor Knight, the gentleman from the Home Office,

has looked at the bones, and he's saying

that you do not cut a full-grown body into pieces cleanly,

quickly, unless you are very well experienced at it.

He obviously hasn't done it, then.

Well, he probably hasn't murdered, no.

You know, there's a difference between thinking and knowing.

I'm taken to Cromwell Street to see the remains.

So in looking down into this pit,

there was the skeleton with the hair in place.

Long, black hair.

As lawyers, we deal with evidential matters

and paperwork and so on,

but here, you are looking at the result of criminality before your very eyes.

The kids were right when they talked about Heather.

We have found her.

This was meant to be finding Heather. End of story.

It turned out, tragically, that it was only the beginning.

Has Rose been told? How did she take it?

I expect she hates me at the moment.

All through the interview, Rose went, "No comment."

Ultimately, the decision's got to be made,

uh, about how much evidence there is to keep that person in custody.

As a solicitor, you have to believe your client.

Otherwise, you can't act for them,

and if she was saying she was innocent, then Leo had to say she was innocent

because that was his role.

He was saying, "She's answered all your questions."

"She denies an offense."

"You either charge my client, or you release them on bail."

"What's it gonna be?"

Rose was bailed, but the police were concerned about arrangements,

and so they decided it was essential that she would go into a safe house

and that the older children be with her.

We put a listening device into the safe house

to catch Rose from making any forms of admission

or providing any evidence to what happened to Heather and what she knew.

There was a win-win situation for the police in terms of,

"We've got nothing to lose and potentially an awful lot to gain."

It was just about waiting patiently.

We were trying to build up a picture

of what the house was like,

and we discovered that the top floor was given over to lodgers.

We spoke to a couple of ex-lodgers who said it was a strange place,

lots of men coming and going,

so we were beginning to build up a picture of a household that wasn't normal.

But beyond that, we... we didn't really know that much more.

I lived at Cromwell Street from October '76 to November '77.

I was basically a runaway.

When I left home, I was 16.

I didn't realize at the time that I was grieving.

My dad passed away when I was 14,

and I just went into self-preservation mode.

Initially, when I left home, I moved in with a friend,

and then I bumped into Fred and Rose's daughter.

She said, "My parents have got a bedsit they're renting if you're interested."

So I was taken to see them.

They just seemed like a normal couple, just renting a place out.

They had a room to rent, and it was mine if I wanted it.

I felt happy.

I had my own room. I had my own music.

I could put it on and nobody complained about it.

A fair few of the girls came from care homes.

There was a couple that were backpacking.

I think if you find yourself in a situation

that someone's gonna give you a hot meal and a bit of attention,

you're gonna be grateful, you're gonna be thankful.

Fred absolutely was besotted and adored Rose.

They were very loving to each other in front of everybody.

It didn't matter who was there.

They were constantly giving each other attention.

Rose definitely ran the roost. She was the one that shouted the orders.

I think I was probably a little bit frightened of her...

...because she seemed so stern.

It was just say hello to her, and have it over and done with.

You had to ask permission to go through the house.

A couple of times it was "No, no, no."

I can remember going out the back garden one day and Fred said,

"Be careful. I'm laying a patio."

I thought he was making it better for the children so they could play out there.

I first met Shirley Robinson when I was walking down the stairs

and she came out of her room.

I said, "Do you live here as well? Are you one of the family?"

"No, I'm a lodger."

She was just a year or so older than myself,

so she'd have been about 18.

She then explained that she was pregnant, and she said to me, "It's Fred's baby."

I went, "Yeah, whatever," not believing her,

thinking, "Maybe she's got a soft spot for the landlord," sort of thing.

We were in a lot of danger, but we couldn't see it.

Today, Heather's father, 52-year-old Frederick West,

appeared in court charged with killing her sometime between

May 28, 1987, and February 27 this year.

The search of the house and garden continued,

although detectives refused to say what they're looking for.

Every time a bone is handed from one person to the next,

there must be a special exhibit label signed

so that everyone knows who's handed what to whom.

And I always remember picking up a couple more bones

and looking up at Superintendent Bennett and saying,

"Well, we've got three thighbones."

That's the first time they knew there was more than one.

Are there anybody else's bones there?

Could there be anybody else's bones in any part of the garden?

That's a peculiar question to ask, innit?

I ask lots of peculiar questions.

If there's anything else, Fred, I'm asking you. Tell us now.

I can't make out what you're on about. Others?

I mean, there's one. Heather.

Why did you find that so hard, then, just to say one?

- Is there anybody else? - No.

Because if anything else is there, we'll find it.

Interviewing is all about how much power do you want to give the interviewee.

The power in the relationship was still with Fred

because we were still very much reliant on him providing us information.

Oh, boy.

- Hello. - That was good.

The more power you give, the more likelihood they're gonna talk.

But of course, there's a danger in that because Fred could say, "Well, actually,

I've given you all the information that I want to give you."

"This is what you've got to work with. I don't want to speak to you anymore."

We needed some help.

The detective rang me up to say, "Paul, we've got a problem. Can you help?"

"We have a man."

"He seems to be a warm, affable, straightforward sort of man,

and we have found in his garden

the remains of his daughter and, we think, another young woman,

and we don't know how to talk to him."

"Could you please come and help us to interview this man

in a way that allows him to explain what it is that happened?"

When I'm asked to help investigate any serious crime,

one of the key features that's of great importance to me

is to go to the scene.

This is the front door of 25 Cromwell Street.

This is inside the premises, with my back to the front door.

I look through the eyes of a psychologist,

not the eyes of a detective.

I needed to know everything about him.

I looked carefully at the furnishings, the knickknacks, if you like.

I was particularly interested and informed

by photo albums that I found in the drawer.

In my world, looking at family photographs allows me to see quite a lot

about the relationships between the people who are photographed and the photographer.

And what I didn't see

was any evidence of the usual family warmth pictures.

There was very little there that indicated a loving family domestic setting.

At the middle floor in this house, there is a lounge that is set up,

almost like the reception room of a seedy hotel.

We go from this room, up a flight of stairs, to a bedroom area.

On the other side, there's a hole in the wall,

and out of that hole, there are cables coming.

There are microphones and cameras that are run through into the four-poster bedroom,

where films and listening can happen.

It's clear that Fred had been able to adapt the building

to his sexual pleasure,

and that was important.

But it was also clear

that understanding the relationship between Frederick and Rosemary West

would be essential to this whole case.

We're going to talk to you about a few bits and pieces this morning.

And so, if you can... cope with me jumping around a bit, okay?

- But if you can't, will you tell me? - Yeah.

When you were about 30, you meet Rose, is that right?

She was working in a cake shop in Cheltenham.

- She's how old then? - Fifteen and a half.

I knew Rose for three or four months,

and then I took her out on her 16th birthday.

We had a good night. A month later, she was pregnant.

So a month over her 16th birthday, she was in the family way.

The police interviewers needed to allow Frederick West

the space to become himself,

and that meant allowing him to think

that he and the interviewer were in a shared conversation.

He would be allowed to smoke.

He would be allowed to wax lyrically.

He would be allowed to relax.

Ask him open questions, and let him talk.

Anybody can say what they like about Rose, but she is a perfect mother.

Why didn't you ever tell her that you killed your daughter?

That's the reason why, innit. We both loved Heather.

In another part of your garden, Fred,

the police have found another human bone.

Have you any knowledge where this other bone might've come from?

Yeah.

Shirley...

Robinson.

The girl who caused the problem.

And we just, bit by bit, got very friendly with each other.

We started talking about,

"When we're ready to move out of here, we'll move out together,

and we'll have a place where we can live, and you can bring the baby up there."

That was our... that was our aim.

One night I heard a child screaming and crying.

It was, "Stop it, Daddy. Stop it, Daddy."

Very, very high-pitched.

So I pushed it to the back of my mind.

Then a few nights later, I heard the same thing.

The third time, it was much clearer.

That's when I made my decision to leave.

I did think of going to see somebody, but I didn't know who to talk to

because I didn't think the police'd believe me.

I was a runaway.

You know, I was 17 by then.

It would have been a waste of my time, I thought.

We were having an affair... behind Rose.

Shirley fell pregnant.

At the time Shirley died, she was carrying your child?

Yeah.

I took Rose into hospital because Rose was in labor.

Okay.

I came back, and Shirley said, "You're taking me down to Bristol now."

And I said, "I can't. I got to go back to Rose."

She said, "I'm going down to tell Rose that this is yours."

I turned round and smacked her in the jaw.

She went straight on the floor.

Then I went and got a piece of flex and tied it round her neck.

Okay.

You said to me earlier that you dismembered her the same as Heather was.

I probably did.

I was looking at her body, and I thought, "Where's this gonna end?"

And by this time, I am realizing that that is three.

Two.

Sorry, that's two. Not three.

He suddenly thinks, "Oh, what have I said?"

These lapses in the cognitive control of the story

help the interviewer to see the limits of this man's preparedness,

and that's one of the reasons

that the police are able to go a little bit further

and to unwrap what's really happened.

You said to Mr. Ogden

you wanted to tell him about further matters.

Yeah.

- Is that right? - Right.

What do you want to tell us, Fred?

Just where the three are.

Now, when you say "the three,"

can you just remind me of who we're talking about?

Well, Heather, Shirley, and the other girl I don't know.

- Who is the third? - I don't know.

What did you call her?

Nothing. I don't recall her name at all.

What can we refer to her as now?

Shirley's mate. I mean, that's all I...

Shirley's mate. Okay.

We all realized that we were

in a bizarre and unique set of circumstances.

For example, "Shirley's mate." This is somebody that he's murdered,

uh, whose name he doesn't even know.

I'm the taller one. Alison is the shorter one.

Were you guys close?

Yeah. Yeah.

We didn't have a great childhood. Our parents were strict.

I had in my head, "When I'm 18, I can leave home."

"Follow the rules, put up with it."

Alison didn't.

She rebelled.

She'd be out till 1:00 in the morning, then our parents would phone the police

and then they'd go and find her, or she'd been by a friend, at a friend's,

and hadn't come home, that sort of thing.

All of a sudden, yeah, the police have been too much.

Yeah, you get told that she's, uh, being put into care.

She's hurt, she's crying, she's upset, she wants to come home and, yeah,

there's nothing you can do about it.

She got moved then to Gloucester.

I think that was when, yeah, she was about 16.

A few months later, we got told by social services that Alison had run away.

In '79, my mother received a letter.

"I am at present living with a very homely family,

and I look after their children and do some of their housework."

"They know that I was in care

and are more than willing to help me on my feet."

"We all get on great together and I have readily accepted them as a second family."

"But please note, you shall, are, and always will be my own family."

"I just wanted to let you know I'm safe

and shall continue to write to let you know how I'm doing."

"One thing I don't want anyone to do is to worry about me."

"I love and miss you all. Please believe that."

"Until I write again, take care of yourselves."

"All my fondest love, Alison."

May 26, 1979.

May 26, 1979, she wrote that.

Once you know everything,

you think of that letter, and it's like,

she was so taken in with how loving they were...

what a nice family they seemed to be.

Stay on this side.

Right, Fred. What I want you to do is, can you show me, first of all,

where you buried Shirley's friend?

Right by that.

Right in the middle of this, between the two walls?

Okay.

Just leave it there.

And now can you tell us where you buried Shirley Robinson?

By that slab there.

- Which one, Fred? - Which one?

That one.

This one here? The one right in the corner?

Yeah.

You said it was level with that new extension post.

You also said, Fred, yesterday, that you thought that you saw her...

- Yeah. - ...last time we were here.

- Right. - There was a big hole in there last time.

Or that was higher up.

And that post indicates the position

where Mr. West has indicated he's buried one of the bodies.

Whilst you're here, is there anything else that you want to look at?

We don't want to keep coming back here with you.

That's it.

No.

- You sure? - Yes.

You can take it all apart, there ain't nothing else.

For me, personally, it was a surreal moment.

You're there face to face with a man

who is telling you how he has killed a lot of women, basically.

I do actually recall driving home and thinking,

I just cannot believe this is going on.

In Gloucester, of all places, I can't believe this is happening.

In those days, it was the crime reporter's job every morning at 9:00

to go down to the central police station,

where you'd meet the duty inspector and he would give you a briefing.

But that morning I went in,

and I was told that they'd found two more bodies.

And that came totally out of the blue. It was totally shocking.

I left the police station. My heart was pounding.

And it's that feeling of knowing something that no one else does,

and you're about to change everyone's perception of what's going on.

I practically sprinted back to the office to make it in time

to write up the story for that day's paper.

And we knew that as soon as that paper hit the streets,

the national newspaper reporters would be down,

because it was no longer a domestic murder.

It was something much, much bigger.

The crowd grows bigger with every new development.

But morbid fascination in the secrets of number 25 Cromwell Street

spreads far beyond this close-knit neighborhood.

There was almost a carnival atmosphere.

You know, you had TV reporters doing pieces to camera.

People leaning out windows, watching what was going on.

There were rumors that there was a whole news desk,

plus reporters, holed up in a hotel in Gloucester.

The whole place was feeling quite swamped by the national media.

I was a staff reporter for The Sunday Mirror in London,

national newspaper.

We had millions of readers, and they enjoyed reading about the royal family,

so this was the era of Princess Diana and Fergie.

Politicians doing things they shouldn't do. That sort of thing.

You're dealing in stories that are sensational.

But the work was fun, and dare I say it, I was quite good at it.

I mean, I was young and full of energy.

A call came through from Gloucester,

and I was given the job of speaking to this caller

who had inside information, they said,

about the murder inquiry ongoing in Gloucester.

My news desk said, "Howard, drive to Gloucester."

A place I'd never been to in my life, didn't know where it was,

didn't know how to get there, had to look on the map.

And for the first time in my life, I drive into Gloucester.

The headlines, police are still searching the garden

of 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester's city center.

Television crews, reporters, and sightseers

have been gathering on the street for most of the morning.

Every national paper is there in strength.

You'd turn a corner, and you see someone you know from London

trying to speak to somebody on the quiet.

The press en masse is called "the pack" because they hunt like dogs in a pack.

It's a game, and it's also your job to get the story before they do.

You can't do what everyone else is doing.

You have to do your own thing,

and the thing you're looking for is an exclusive.

They worked into the night at 25 Cromwell Street,

digging methodically and urgently,

fearful, almost, of what they might find.

Frederick West has already been charged with the murder of his daughter.

Tonight he was charged with two others, including that of a former lodger.

The police believe she was Shirley Robinson, an 18-year-old,

who was heavily pregnant when she died.

A neighbor knocked on the door and said, "Watch the news."

It was just an absolute...

oh, I don't know, mind-blowing sort of thing.

I tried not to listen to it.

I tried to just switch off.

All I can remember them saying about Shirley,

um, is that she was carrying Fred's baby, and he disposed of the baby as well.

Whenever I think of Shirley, it hurts. But seeing her face again, it's...

She was there when I needed a friend.

She should still be here now.

You think, "Why has Alison never got in touch?"

That's one thing I could never understand, that she never got in touch with me.

You've heard these people talking that they've seen her.

You know, you're fighting with yourself 'cause you want to believe these people,

but at the same time,

something's telling you that they haven't seen her.

You want Alison to be there, but you just want her to be with you.

And I'm the big sister.

So here I am, Mr. One-Man-Band,

and your own life, separate from your professional life, goes on.

I continue to deal with concerns of the media,

trying to get in touch,

my partner, who's concerned about everything that was occurring,

and all this has to be dealt with

at the same time as dealing with these horrendous circumstances.

Scott Canavan was a clerk that I took on to train up.

He struck me as a streetwise individual,

and I felt that he would be a great asset, um, to me.

Howard said that he had a murder case and wanted me in on it.

I'd only worked as a clerk for a month, you know, um, let alone on a murder case.

It was almost like hearing somebody reading you a story.

You know, it was hard to picture, but the further the case went on,

the more realistic it became.

A difficult part of this inquiry for me

was helping the police to cross a threshold.

He has been stoutly denying that there is anything more wrong

other than the fact that he mishandled these terrible deaths

of the young women in the garden.

So the question was, well, why are these people buried in the garden?

And my answer is that because the house is already full,

and that's why it's overflowed into the garden.

The strategy that I put forward for the police at this stage

was to tell him clearly, in colorful language,

that we are now going to dig up floors in the house.

Most importantly, we're going to start digging in the cellar.

If you do that, he will suddenly start remembering different possibilities.

- Name? - Frederick Walter Stephen West.

- Legal representative? - Scott Canavan.

Right, I think it's only right to tell you that, um...

the police are actively involved in

digging up the rest of your house.

- Are you aware of that? - No.

How do you mean?

- Literally. - Floors?

- Yes. The whole lot. - Concrete's coming up?

Yes. The whole lot. The floor in the house.

The conservatory's being demolished,

and they do intend to certainly dig up the whole of the cellar.

You'll have the house down. There's no footings underneath.

Well, I'm sure the police are fully insured.

and whatever for the future,

but at the moment we're inquiring into serious matters,

of missing girls and missing people.

And bearing in mind what has happened already in 25 Cromwell Street,

it would be totally wrong of us

to not continue the investigation vigorously.

- Do you want to say anything else at all? - No.

Hazel stopped the interview, and the officers left,

and we went into another room.

I just said to Fred, "Look, you know, enough's enough."

"If there's more, then you've got to tell them there's more."

And he said, "No, I've told you everything."

"And there's not. There's not any more."

And I said, "Well, you know, I don't believe you."

Fred then went silent for about two minutes.

Sort of looking into oblivion.

And I sort of asked him again, I said, "Fred, is there any more bodies?"

And his words were, "There's a fucking load more."

I left the police station and went to phone my boss, Howard Ogden

because I just didn't have a clue what to do in that sort of situation.

My concern was to get Fred's admission to Superintendent Bennett

as soon as possible.

I recollect that I said, "I think you'd better sit down."

He was clearly shocked about something,

and he had this piece of paper in his hand.

"The note said, I, Frederick West, wish to admit

to an approx nine further killings."

It was very difficult to come to terms with

what we were faced with in those few moments.

John Bennett brought us all in and explained to us

that Fred had confessed to another series of killings,

and that was one of those heart-stopping moments,

as the realization of what we were facing started to dawn on us.

If you were going to murder people and bury them in such small property,

then how can you say you didn't know?

Rose must have known.

The burning question, the crucial question was,

how much she was involved.

When they arrested me, I was devastated, literally.

I was crawling around the police station.

I didn't know what was happening. I was just crying.

It's just all burning, you know?

He's telling her everything.

It won't make any difference.

You'll never get a confession for something I haven't done.