Original subtitles

I swore on the kids' lives that I wouldn't shop Rose for what she did.

I'd take the blame and be done with it.

And then Rose can get the children back, and they could just carry on.

And that's been worrying me.

They know that she's mixed up in it, don't they?

Gloucestershire police are facing an increasingly complex task

as the number of bodies recovered in 25 Cromwell Street continues to grow.

The police are still not ruling out the possibility of more discoveries.

So at that point, we had found nine bodies.

And we knew there was other members of his family

who were missing and unaccounted for.

So we knew it was a possibility that there was more bodies there.

Early on, the murder squad draw up a family tree, big family tree,

to find out who's missing.

And there was a question mark about Fred's first wife, Rena,

and her daughter, Charmaine.

No one's seen her since 1971, over 20 years.

Can we recap?

Yesterday, you indicated a field at a place called...

Kempley.

Who is buried there?

Rena.

Do you reckon you can... you'll be able to take us to the spot then, Fred?

Yeah, it's marked with a tree.

That's Mr. West, his solicitor,

an entourage of, uh, police officers.

The area that the prisoner was indicating

that, uh, the remains will be found

is under the, uh, nearest tree.

The body of Catherine Costello was found

in a cornfield near Gloucester earlier this week.

Police had been digging there after switching their operation from the house

where Mr. West lived and where nine other bodies were found.

Without Fred's indication of where Rena Costello is,

we wouldn't have gone and dug up a random field in Much Marcle.

So that information came from Fred.

So the question is, why was Fred telling us that?

And there was more information coming through all the time.

So, we actually came back here

late in the evening,

and, um, we walked straight across the field.

Um, it was quite dark.

But he really wanted to come back to this field

because this is where Ann McFall was buried.

When I came back from that field and said to Janet that there was a girl, Ann...

- Ann? - Ann McFall.

Ann McFall.

Ann McFall was a Scottish teenager

who Fred met in Glasgow when he was with Rena.

She, in fact, becomes the West nanny.

And she hadn't been seen since 1967.

You start to think, how many more victims were there?

But all I hope is that all efforts are made to find Ann altogether.

They will be.

That's what I want.

The police were still in the dark about a lot of things,

so they're still reliant upon Fred providing that information.

He knew the more that he could take on board himself,

the less that this was going to come onto Rose.

Where the difficulty was always going to be

was the death of Charmaine,

because he was not going to be able to put Rose out of the picture.

What we'd like to know, Fred, is what happened to Charmaine?

Did these dreadful things happen to this little child?

I don't know.

When she went missing,

we knew Charmaine lived with Fred and Rose at this previous address,

25 Midland Road.

We began to search the premises.

Arriving at the scene at 25 Midland Road,

this is Mr. Frederick West.

That room wasn't there.

- Yeah? - This was a hallway.

This was a breakfast room here.

Do you realize why you're here?

Yeah.

Tell us, then.

To tell you where Charmaine is.

Right. We need to know if you can help us at all.

Yeah.

He was sort of looking round the backyard.

There was, like, a crack going right up the house,

and there was, um, a mark on the wall,

and he said that's where Charmaine was, in the middle of the foundations.

Sorry, Fred, Charmaine would have been

- in there, where you're indicating? - Yeah.

Can you try and mark it with that?

How old was she, Fred?

She must have been seven or eight.

Dig site number three, and now an 11th body.

Late last night, a few feet under the kitchen foundations

of Frederick West's former home in Gloucester,

they uncovered human remains.

Pathologist Professor Bernard Knight is now examining them in situ.

His initial findings will determine the age and sex of the victim.

I don't know if you're aware or not,

Fred, there's been a find at Midland Road.

Ah, yes.

Any comment you'd like to make?

Just glad that they found her, that's all.

"Find her." By "her" you mean...

Well, it must be Charmaine.

Having had all the admissions from Fred,

we were still working so hard

to get the evidence to prove that Rose was involved.

How did Rose get on with Charmaine?

Well, Rose accepted them as my daughters, as far as I know.

As far as you know.

Rose apparently used to abuse Charmaine.

I can remember when we were in the house, Fred telling of how Rose used to make her

stand on a chair in the kitchen with her hands tied behind her back

for hours and hours on end as a punishment.

Did you kill Charmaine, Fred?

No comment.

- Fred, did that happen? - She was my daughter.

Why kill her?

I can't understand that.

I got no comment on that.

But it doesn't make sense to me, Fred.

Early in the investigation,

they found a box of letters,

including prison letters, between Fred and Rose.

Fred was serving a prison sentence for a petty offense.

And in one of these letters, Rose said to Fred,

"Darling, about Charmaine, she likes to be handled rough."

"Why do I have to be the one to do it?"

Charmaine started playing up.

Um, got cheeky towards Rose.

I said, "You're just going to have to try and control it until I can come home."

The evidence was mounting up

at the time of her death, Fred was likely to have been in prison.

We suspected the person responsible for the death of Charmaine was Rose.

But at that point, we had no way of proving it.

My job is identifying the dead

and making absolutely sure that we knew which set of remains were which.

What I'm doing is collecting information,

photographs from family, you know, anywhere they can get them.

And superimpose it on the remains and look for points of similarity.

So, of course, I need a top-quality photograph

and a lot of information in it.

And I just wasn't getting it.

You can imagine what they're like, you know, little snapshots.

Faded, a lot of shadow, no teeth showing.

And this set of remains, Charmaine,

I was actually thinking we've got a major problem.

I couldn't determine when this person died.

But if we could get some quality image photographs

that we know are Charmaine,

then I might be able to do something.

We were looking at something that was

almost unprecedented in modern times.

We're talking about a period of 30 years,

of people who were coming into contact with Fred and Rose West

who were not seeing the reality of their lives.

The government decided there had to be an inquiry.

For me, the task was actually trying to sort out

what actually went on with the children

in that house in Cromwell Street.

How come it looks all black and white?

It looks all blue, don't it?

We felt a lot happier to be at school, where we felt safe, um.

It was a better place to be than to be at home.

Get these rocks, Steve, they'll be nice.

Hello!

Mom always disciplined us.

She could never just hit us once and forget it.

She would just lose her temper in a big way over just a little thing.

And she wouldn't...

You know, once she started hitting us, I felt she found it hard to stop.

It was always our fault. It was always something we deserved.

It was obvious Mom and Dad didn't want us to say anything to anybody.

My girlfriend spoke to a teacher about, um, the beatings that I was having.

Um.

Really, in a way, I wanted them to do something about it,

but the risk was that we all split up, and that was something I didn't want.

We didn't have the courage

to be able to come out and say, "Look, this is happening to us."

What we found was that the surviving children in the West family

have experienced some appalling abuse.

They know how horrible it could get,

and they know that it could have got worse.

Faced with talking to the police,

the fear of what could happen must have been extraordinary.

I don't know if you've been told about Mae and Stephen at all?

- No. - Right.

They have told us that they are prepared to talk to us

about everything that they know about.

They're not going to lie. Mae's certainly not going to lie, anyway.

- Whatever Mae says will be the dead truth. - Will it?

It will be. Exactly.

Well, Mae has made allegations against you.

I don't believe it.

"About 1985, my dad began to touch

both myself and Heather in an indecent manner."

"He would touch me on a daily basis."

"Heather and I decided that when Dad had first started touching us,

that we would never give in."

"And we were both determined about it."

What about that then, Fred?

No comment.

If we're really looking for lessons from this particular case,

above all else, the importance of listening to children.

These murders would never have come to light

if it wasn't for the children of the Wests

saying that they had a sister under the patio.

They were brave enough to speak up.

By this stage, all victims have been recovered and identified.

That was the end of that part of the murder investigation.

We've got 12 victims,

we've got two suspects,

and now they've got enough evidence to charge Rose.

But she doesn't admit to anything,

so there's no smoking gun in this.

She's blamed her husband, who in turn took all the blame himself.

They were in it together, and they protected each other.

Frederick West is driven into Gloucester Magistrates Court.

Just minutes away from a reunion with his wife, Rosemary,

she arrived moments later.

This is the first time they'd seen each other

since they were arrested four months ago.

When I saw her in the holding suite,

she was maybe a little pensive

that she was getting into the dock with Fred West.

He imagined that she'd be maybe blowing him a kiss

and they might mooch along the bench to be closer in the dock.

No.

I go down there. Every seat is taken.

Fred West is brought up, so suddenly we see Fred West for the first time.

And I see this stocky, wild-looking man

with wild, curly hair, bright blue eyes, broken nose, gappy teeth.

And then Rose is brought up.

When Fred West was escorted into the dock,

he leaned forward and touched her shoulder.

She didn't acknowledge this gesture.

There appeared to be no communication between them,

Rosemary steadfastly ignoring him.

Later, when they were taken down, Fred West again tried to lean over

and touch his wife's back.

This time, the prison officer pushed away his hand.

That was the point. She made it obvious and public

that she was turning against Fred West.

Whatever Fred was trying to do to help her wasn't working.

So now she needed to distance herself.

You know what Rose is doing now? Distancing me and her.

See, I'm beginning to wonder, did Rose have any love towards me at all?

Or was I somebody there to use all the time?

I was easy touch and do as I'm told and not interfere.

He's starting now to see that this relationship is deteriorating

to the point where it may no longer exist.

"Why am I doing this? Why am I taking all the flak?"

Right,

I had asked you whether or not there was any other person

who was common...

to the 12 bodies.

Well, it's obvious there is, isn't it? Somebody else.

Fred West changes.

He realizes that his wife is betraying him.

Fred, monster though he was, is heartbroken, and he falls apart.

The reason I could not tell the truth is because I'm protecting somebody

and I am still protecting somebody.

I can't say it no plainer than that.

All I'd ask is a direct answer to a direct question.

Is Rose West the person?

The lines were becoming intensely drawn.

Fred West's whole situation was falling apart.

If I'm going to have any chance in this case at all,

I've got to go back and tell the truth.

Why should I take the rap? Rose broke every promise she made to me.

But I did none of it on my own.

I hated him. I hated what he did.

It's so unbelievable that you're trying to make sense of it every day.

I asked the police, "Could I see him?"

It was probably one of the hardest things I ever did, to face him.

He was just crying.

He was very, very down.

Um, I'd never seen him like that before.

And to see him cry was hard to sort of accept.

He told me that he would never tell anybody the whole truth,

that it was worse than I could imagine.

He promised me he would die with them never knowing

the full extent of what he did.

Good evening.

Frederick West, the Gloucester builder whose home concealed nine corpses,

has been found dead.

This lunchtime at Winson Green prison,

prison officers found him hanging in his cell.

There's little doubt that West's death

is a severe embarrassment to the prison authorities.

Yesterday, his son Stephen told the inquest his father

had said he planned to kill himself

in the belief it would free his wife, Rosemary.

He was yet again allowed to cheat the legal system

and all victim's families from doing the time for the crimes he committed.

We were all very, very angry.

Upset, but angry.

It was just... To us, it was like the chicken's way out.

Coward's way.

For months, I'd been involved in this dark depravity of the investigation.

We were just preparing for the court case.

The news hits.

The heart's been ripped out of the investigation.

It was devastating.

Rosemary West in public for the first time

since her husband was found hanging in his cell on New Year's Day.

According to Rosemary West's solicitor, Leo Goatley,

the case against her, which he claims was flimsy, is now even flimsier.

It was Fred who'd made admissions.

It was Rose that had always denied everything.

With him out of the picture,

it did occur to me, "Perhaps this is it, it's not going to go to trial."

I wasn't sure how she was going to feel.

They were husband and wife, and she loved him.

And I got to see Rose.

She was calm, she was quiet.

There was a tear in her eye, and yet a slight look of glee on her face.

And I think in her mind, she felt that she could well be off the hook.

Somebody had asked me,

as a family of a victim, what did I want to happen?

What would justice be?

I didn't think that anything would take away the pain.

But I had this real need to go and do something that was about reclaiming Lucy.

So I had initial contact with Marian.

And of course, the question is, when can we see her?

And I had to have a fairly honest conversation with her

about what she's going to see, what her expectations are.

But Marian being Marian, that didn't put her off one bit.

Russell arranged to meet us in a mortuary in Cardiff.

And I just went up and I... lifted the lid.

And there was Lucy's skull.

Such a beautiful thing.

And then I got the blanket

and I wrapped her skull in the blanket and put it back.

It was really the most healing part of the whole experience for me,

because it was like I didn't see the horror that had led to this.

I just saw the beauty.

And I just knew that it was the right thing to be doing.

I just wanted to reclaim Lucy as my sister.

If we just move across.

Yeah. The eyes, the eyes aren't bad there, actually.

- No. - It's just...

By this time, Frederick West was out of the picture.

And this particular set of remains, Charmaine, became absolutely crucial.

Having identified all the other sets of remains,

the one case that was really going to matter, Charmaine,

I couldn't do anything with.

And then this photograph appeared.

Miraculously.

We'd got the quality, we'd got the teeth visible,

and also it was dated.

We could then look at the extent of change

that had occurred since the photograph was taken.

And if we can estimate that period of time,

we've not only identified Charmaine,

but we've determined when she died as well.

And that was very, very crucial evidence in the case against Rosemary West.

We were able to positively identify

Fred was in prison when Charmaine was killed,

which then purely put the onus onto Rose

as being the perpetrator of that single crime.

This was massive for us.

This morning, Rosemary West was charged with the murder of Charmaine West.

Today, a spokesman said the Crown would be seeking

her committal to trial on the ten murder charges.

The whole country wants this horrible story to have a resolution.

And then midway through '95, the date was set,

Winchester Crown Court, October.

It was a cold day, but the sun was shining.

And, uh, our liaison officer met me for the trial.

And he said to me, "Would you like to go to the house?"

And, uh, I remember going in the street and standing in front of the house.

There was a wall there where she would sit when she was out having...

Out talking to friends, or the chip shop at the corner where she used to go.

So that was nice, him telling me things like that.

Then he took me around the back,

because I wanted to be where they'd found her.

It may sound weird...

I was glad she was found in the garden.

It just seemed that's where people get buried,

in the earth.

That's one small comfort I have from where she was laid to rest.

The next day then, a car was picking us up and taking us to the court.

My name is Brian Leveson.

In 1995, I was a Queen's Counsel.

I was approached by the Crown Prosecution Service

to prosecute the case.

I have prosecuted all sorts of crime.

But if I had to identify one case that lives with me the most, this is the case.

The leading counsel in the defense was Richard Ferguson QC,

one of the leading criminal barristers of the time.

No, I'm sorry. Professionally, we're not allowed to make any comment.

He led Sasha Wass, now Sasha Wass KC,

who was herself a very capable criminal lawyer.

I was asked whether I wanted to do this case,

and to be frank, there was no question of me turning it down.

It was an extraordinary case.

I was a junior counsel. I'd been doing criminal work for 13 years.

- Don't hold your breath. Okay? - Okay.

I'd done a couple of cases in which there'd been press interest,

but nothing like this.

There were press everywhere.

Hampshire police have mounted strict security along the route,

closing roads as the convoy made its three-minute journey

to Winchester city center.

It became like a piece of theater.

Murderer! Murderer!

Court three was a very large courtroom.

Rose is brought into the dock.

She's short, she wears spectacles,

she's got a gold cross round her neck.

She's doing her best to appear respectable.

And she's very subdued.

There's no show of emotion.

She just sits there and listens.

Rose West pleaded not guilty to all counts

and maintained her innocence from first to last.

One of the big challenges of the case

is that there was no evidence of a direct nature.

Nobody said,

"I saw Fred stab." Or "Rosemary strangle."

The case depended on circumstantial evidence.

Circumstantial evidence really relies on several different strands of evidence.

And in this case, the prosecution called several witnesses to say

that Rosemary West and Frederick West had acted together

in circumstances which were very similar,

said the prosecution, to the way in which the murder victims had been abused.

A succession of witnesses are called for the prosecution,

and I think maybe three or four in, we have Caroline Owens,

the one that got away.

Arriving in a closed van with other witnesses,

Caroline Owens came to Winchester Crown Court

with a first-hand account of what she claimed was a night of terror.

Caroline Owens became a really significant person,

because she was a documented case

of a woman whom the Wests had attacked together.

She comes into the witness box and she tells her story,

and it was the most powerful direct evidence against Rose.

I don't think

people realize how much

guilt survivors feel.

I realized they started killing three months after my court case in '72.

And to my mind, if I'd pushed the rape charge,

they would have been alive.

So, given that opportunity to actually be a witness against her...

kind of set me free a little bit.

Even though, like, all my little secrets and my little demons were out there

on view to the world,

I actually, for the first time in my lifetime, I think, felt self-respect.

I went in there to get justice for the girls that didn't make it.

Caroline Owens was a very powerful witness,

and she kept herself together throughout all of her evidence

right until the end, um, when she broke down.

She felt she had to do justice for the girls that didn't make it.

That was a very telling piece of evidence.

The whole lead-up to the trial, and the trial,

is very, very blurred, because all I can think at the time was,

"This has happened to Juanita. Oh my God, this has happened to Juanita."

"This is real."

"Now I'm going to have to re-hear it all again in a court, but I have to do it."

It was just panic attacks.

Anxiety was real bad.

You listen,

you know what's going on and you can hear the gasps of other people listening.

Me personally, I couldn't take it all in,

listening to the amount of stuff that went on.

It was just...

How? How could they do it?

How or why?

The job of the lawyer is to advise their client

as to the benefits and the pitfalls of giving evidence.

But the ultimate decision is always, always the defendant's.

Rosemary West, on trial at Winchester, accused of ten murders,

today became the first witness called in her own defense.

She was reminded on several occasions

that it was up to her whether she wanted to give evidence.

She had a certain confidence. She wanted her day in court.

The moment arrived at midday.

Mrs. West spoke of her troubled early life

and was often in tears as she described how she'd twice been raped

before she met Fred West at the age of 15.

She said that Frederick West had promised to love and care for her.

Because she was so young, she'd fallen for his lies.

And so she's led through her life with Fred at Cromwell Street,

whereby she gives us the impression that they lived separate lives

and Fred sent her out to have sex with other men,

leaving Fred at home.

And what Fred did at home when she wasn't at home, she didn't know about.

Rose West was very defensive and defiant

to the point of almost being convincing.

Uh, the stumbling block was when she was cross-examined.

Brian Leveson QC began his cross-examination.

He said, "You never saw anything that alerted you to the horror

of what had been happening at your homes?"

"That's right, sir," she replied.

Nor had she seen any unexplained bloodstains in the house

or anything to suggest that children had been sexually abused there.

Mr. Leveson then asked Mrs. West

about her eight-year-old stepdaughter, Charmaine.

He would be relentless, he wouldn't pause, he just kept going.

You could see her getting flustered and agitated

and frustrated by the process.

After further questions, she said,

"I couldn't have killed a little girl at that time or at any time."

"You abused that girl," said Mr. Leveson.

"Not to the extent you'd like to think," said Mrs. West.

"You killed her and kept the body for Fred to bury."

"No, sir, where could I have kept a body in Midland Road?"

She saw no evil, heard no evil, and did no evil,

whilst, of course, living in the same small house as a mass murderer.

As a journalist, as a reporter,

you're never supposed to pay witnesses, certainly before a trial,

but we found ways round it.

The money is paid after conviction.

And I confess, I offered witnesses money.

And the money goes up and up.

You start at 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, 30,000.

Press payments was an enormous issue in the trial

because it provided a hook for the defense to challenge the witnesses.

"You've said this not because it's true, but because you're being paid

to make it as newsworthy as possible."

And so, I had everybody researched for deals with the press, everybody.

Including the appropriate adult, Janet Leach.

As far as the prosecution were concerned, Janet Leach was going to save the case.

She hadn't entered into any agreement for her story,

and she was a completely clean skin,

so they felt very confident calling her as a witness.

Fred took a liking to Janet,

whereby he then confided in her things that he didn't tell the police,

and as a result, she becomes probably the star witness,

probably the biggest witness for the prosecution.

He told me at the beginning about the pact that they'd made

that he was going to take the brunt of it all,

and that it was worth it.

He was clearing up a lot of Rose's mistakes,

"little mistakes," she used to call them.

Rose was involved right from the onset.

It was time to tell the truth.

I felt, and I think the whole court felt, "This is the truth."

"Of course Rose is involved, and finally somebody is saying it."

That evidence, for me, was very powerful, and I'm sure it was for the jury.

Our approach was to ask a witness whether they had been paid,

and she denied vehemently that she had been paid for her story.

As far as that case was concerned,

you couldn't imagine things could become more extraordinary,

um, but they did.

The trial of Rosemary West has gripped the courtroom on so many occasions.

Today, on the 24th and final day of evidence,

another revelation which will dominate tomorrow's headlines.

Asked whether she'd told the truth last week

about her dealings with the media,

Mrs. Leach paused before saying no.

She had sold her story to my newspaper group,

and this emerges during her evidence.

She has a kind of breakdown. She collapses.

Everyone is shocked.

Brian Leveson is shocked. John Bennett almost has a heart attack.

This is really a body blow to the prosecution.

The trial has to be stopped.

Three days pass. A weekend passes.

Finally, we're told the trial is going to resume.

She was brought back in a wheelchair,

but in effect, she was damaged goods as far as the prosecution were concerned.

I was getting a lot of flashbacks and having panic attacks.

It was just all too much.

I felt that I was doing a duty,

but I was totally out of my depth.

Suddenly it's over,

and as I listened to the prosecution case,

by the end of it I was wondering, where was the evidence?

Where's the evidence this woman killed anybody? I haven't heard it.

She hasn't confessed. There's no forensic evidence.

There's no fingerprints. There's no murder weapon.

The outcome of this trial was far from a foregone conclusion.

It never gets any easier waiting for a jury...

but it's a very stressful time

because you want to do your best for your client,

and that means a not guilty verdict.

You're thinking, "Is there some point I've missed?"

"What are the jury thinking about?" You don't know.

Because it was by no means a given that Rosemary West would be convicted.

I think Rose...

I think she was confident about how things were gonna go.

Anything could happen.

I wouldn't have been surprised if she walked free.

And then, of course, you have this Tannoy system in the court.

"Everyone attending court number three, please return to court."

And you all pile back into court, and yeah, they've got a verdict.

Rosemary West has been convicted of

ten of the most horrific murders in British criminal history.

Mr. Justice Mantell didn't waste his breath on a long speech.

"Rosemary Pauline West," he said, "on each of the ten counts of murder

on which you have been unanimously convicted by the jury,

the sentence is one of life imprisonment."

He added, "If attention is paid to what I think,

you will never be released."

He then ordered the prison officers to take her down.

I remember John said to us, "Don't show any emotion."

We sat there stony faced.

What was happening inside was, I think, a degree of relief.

I was pleased mostly for the victims, for the families.

And the families.

No one can appreciate the pain and suffering they have been through

to learn about the terrible circumstances of this case

and the questions that it raises,

some of which, perhaps, will always remain unanswered.

In a black dress with white sleeves, she was led into prison

knowing she'll spend the rest of her life behind bars.

The woman who'd insisted she knew nothing about the bodies buried beneath her house

joins the ranks of Britain's biggest serial killers.

All the different families were there,

and Stephen was there as well.

I introduced myself and gave him a hug.

He was very shy.

He just said to me, "I'm really sorry about your sister."

I said, "It's not you to be sorry for, is it?"

I said, "But we've got to remember we're all in this together."

He said, "Thank you."

She's been found guilty, he's dead, it's over.

I can get on with my life, and we can move on.

But it doesn't happen like that.

I wish it did.

I think about the last time I'd spoke to her.

She said to me, "I'll always be here for you."

"No matter what or no matter when."

"Just like you are for me."

This is why I say to my children, every single time I say goodnight or goodbye,

I always say, "I love you," because you never know when's the last time.

I did lock it away in a box in my head like I do with lots of things,

so I've never really worked through it.

This, what I'm doing now, I think it's for Alison, mostly for Alison,

but also for me so that I can have a bit of closure,

because I don't have that at the moment.

Because of what's happened, I've had to face myself deep inside.

The whole process is about healing, it's about becoming whole,

it's about finding a way of living which brings something good out of it.

Everyone involved in this atrocious crime,

everyone is connected.

I did keep one card.

One card from Marian, which was sent to me when we were saying our goodbyes.

"To dear Russell,

thank you again for all your good humor and sensitivity. Are you blushing yet?"

"Your kindness made a big difference to the traumatic agony of it all."

"For the better, of course."

"Love from Marian."

In a way, she helped me just as much as I hope I helped her.

The shadow of being in the police stays with you for a long time,

but I started to realize that there is good out there.

To see it and to feel it and to be part of it,

that's what I want to do.