All language subtitles for Fred.and.Rose.West.S02E03.WEB.h264-spamTV

-Twenty-five Cromwell Street
in Gloucester

has become one of the most
infamous addresses in Britain.

For 20 years,
Fred and Rose West

quenched their appetite
for sex and murder

inside this house
of unimaginable horror.

When police began investigating

the disappearance
of their daughter,

it led them right
to the Wests' front door.

Detectives were only
just beginning to unearth

the murderous history
of Fred and Rose West.

-It was on a scale
that was really unprecedented.

-Children are their
things to play with.

They are disposable.

They're things that are to be
used and abused.

-I've never, for one moment,
doubted that Frederick West

was a truly evil man.

But he found, in Rose, the
perfect sorcerer's apprentice.

-This is the story of how
Fred and Rose West

became two of the world's

most evil killers.

[ Dramatic music plays ]

♪♪

♪♪

Fred and Rose West are one
of the most notorious couples

in British history.

For 2 decades,
they sexually abused,

tortured,
and murdered 9 women,

including their own daughter,
in their house of horrors.

And, between them,
were responsible

for another three victims

buried around Gloucester.

When the news broke
in February 1994,

the media were only
scratching the surface

of the couple's
terrifying life

behind the closed door
of 25 Cromwell Street.

-Five days and nights
into their excavation,

and forensic teams
have now unearthed

three sets of human remains,

all buried in separate places
5 feet under the garden patio

of this Gloucester home.

-It's horrible to think
that there are, you know,

dead bodies in a garden
just down the road.

It's just thoroughly disgusting.

I mean,
it's horrifying to think.

-Totally shocking, especially
around, you know, in Gloucester.

I mean, you wouldn't
expect this to happen.

-But Fred and Rose's
horrifying story

began many years before.

In 1969, 28-year-old Fred West
was married to his wife, Rena,

with a young family of his own.

But he had his eye
on a 15-year-old girl

named Rosemary Letts.

Rose and her family had recently
moved to the Gloucester area,

whereas Fred was born and raised

in the local village
of Much Marcle.

-Well, Fred was the oldest
boy in the family,

and he was very much the target
for quite a lot of abuse

at the hands of his mother.

So his mother sexually
abused him, essentially,

and he lost
his virginity to her.

And the family was
a very self-contained one.

Rose's childhood was similar
to Fred's in many ways in that

it was completely dysfunctional

and anti-social and abnormal.

So she was abused by her father,

who started raping her
from a very young age.

So what she took to be normal,
what she took to be acceptable

in terms of behavior
within a family,

really was anything but.

-Fred pursued Rose.

He was used to getting
what he wanted.

When the couple met,
there was instant attraction.

-Rose lived in the same village
that Fred had a caravan.

They met at the bus station
in Cheltenham.

She said that he could charm
the birds off the trees

even though
his appearance was shabby.

He had, well, very clean teeth.

-Well, these were two
incredibly damaged people.

They had both come
from abnormal families.

And I think, when they met,
what they saw in each other

was something familiar.

So they both would have realized
that the childhoods

that they had were
far from normal.

But, with one another,
they felt that familiarity.

-Maybe it was something
that Rose gave off implicitly.

But something in Fred connected
with what had happened to Rose

and the way she was

and the way she'd been
treated by her father.

And it was like a union
of two souls.

-I think it was
the perfect storm.

You know, the chances of these
two people meeting

was, you know, it must have been
a million to one.

But, unfortunately, they did.

-By 1970,
just a year after meeting,

they were living
together in Gloucester

with Fred's stepdaughter,
Charmaine.

His wife, Rena,
was nowhere to be seen.

Rose was pregnant with
the couple's first daughter,

Heather.

-I think, in the early days,

perhaps the more
dominant partner was Fred.

He was older.

He was more experienced.

He'd seen more than Rose had.

You know, she'd come from this
incredibly contained family.

But I think,
as their relationship developed,

she started to find her feet
and find her confidence,

and I don't think that Fred
ever really trusted her.

-For Rose and Fred,
it was all about sex

from the very,
very beginning.

Fred was the originator,

but he found the perfect
sorcerer's apprentice,

the perfect partner,
someone who shared his lust

and someone who understood him
and wanted to perform for him.

-I think we have a lot
of trouble

making sense of Fred
and Rose's relationship,

and the reason for that
is because we are people

with emotions
and normal feelings

and ideas of what acceptable
and unacceptable boundaries are

around relationships.

So I don't think I'd describe
their relationship

as a loving one.

-Fred and Rose's
traumatic childhoods

had a lasting effect
on the couple

and their twisted approach
to family life together.

-It's always a very
complicated question

to answer how many children Fred
and Rose actually had because

if you count Fred's
daughter, Charmaine,

along with Fred
and Rose's eight, it's nine.

But then you've got
to add Rose's

three mixed-race children,

all of whom were
fathered not by Fred.

All I would say is that
all of them were deeply hurt,

almost ruined by the parents.

-I think Rose's earlier
experiences within the family

of being abused by her father
wrote the script

for what would later play out.

So what she took to be normal,

what she took as
boundaries and rules,

really weren't going to
work in the wider world.

So what she was learning
about in those early years

would set her up to be somebody
who didn't quite fit in.

-And it was,
to some extent,

what Fred then adopted
as a family habit.

It was, if you like,
a West tradition.

I don't mean to say that
that wasn't disgraceful,

but it is, nevertheless,
part of the family history

and helps, helps, to explain
something of West's behavior.

-Two decades later,
it's 1992,

and Gloucester police
are searching for Heather West.

In 1987, aged just 16, Fred
and Rose's eldest child vanished

from the family home.

Fred had claimed
Heather had run away,

but she was never
reported as missing.

But after receiving
allegations of child abuse

at 25 Cromwell Street,

detectives began to look
into Heather's whereabouts.

Chief Constable Tony Butler was
in charge of Gloucester Police.

-One of the children
told a friend at school

about what was
happening to her.

That friend talked to
a patrolling police officer,

in fact, about what
her friend had told her,

and, as a result
of what the police...

The police officer
then took that back,

and it initiated a child
protection process

which led to the evidence
being gathered.

-Five of the West children
were placed into care,

and the police began
their investigations.

They were interviewed about
the darker side of their lives

at 25 Cromwell Street.

-What it brought to light
was a family joke,

and the family joke
was a simple one.

You better watch out because,
if you don't shut up

and stop causing your dad
or your mom any trouble,

you'll end up like Heather,

two down and three across
in the patio.

Fred had lain a patio
behind Cromwell Street,

was in squares which were
rather like a crossword.

The family joke
was that he buried

Heather at two down
and three across.

-And this issue, this
"Heather is under the patio,"

continued to be raised.

And so we started to take
this point seriously.

We knew Heather had disappeared,
had left the home.

So we tried to trace her.

And despite massive amounts
of inquiry to try and find her,

she just literally disappeared
off the face of the Earth.

-In February, 1994,
the police decided to find out

if the family joke
was more serious

than the children realized.

Armed with a warrant,
they began to dig

under the patio
of 25 Cromwell Street.

-When they arrived
with the warrant,

Fred and Rose were at the house,

and they went into
the back garden,

and the officers started
digging the garden.

-Sensing the end was nigh,

Fred asked to be
interviewed by police.

-Fred asked the officer

if they could go down
to the police station,

and so they left.

Fred said that he admitted

that Heather's remains
were in the garden,

but the police were looking
in the wrong place.

And, later that day,
he returned with the officers,

and he indicated where
he thought Heather was buried.

The following day,
officers digging in that area

recovered a femur,

and that was taken
for examination

by the forensic pathologist,

who confirmed it
was human remains.

And that turned out to be
one of Heather's remains.

-Rose was being questioned
at Cheltenham police station

when the news reached her
and her solicitor, Leo Goatley.

-When Rose was told
that Heather's remains

had been found,

she gasped loudly
and was very distraught.

How do you interpret that?

Was that a mother's
shock and distress,

or was it a murderer's
distress at being found out?

At that time, I believed that
she was shocked and distressed

and that she didn't know
the extent of Fred's activities.

And, of course, at that stage,
it wasn't about serial killing.

It was about Heather.

But, of course, the thing
unraveled pretty quickly

with the excavation.

-The police found more
than they bargained

for under the patio
at 25 Cromwell Street.

-When they found remains,

they found not just two legs
or two thigh bones,

but three.

The interrogating detective
said to West,

"Well, unless Heather had three
legs, there's another body."

"Ah, yes," Fred says, without
drawing breath or hesitating,

"That must be the other girl.
That'll be Shirley."

-The police were about to
unearth all the secrets

that Fred and Rose West
had been hiding

at 25 Cromwell Street
for over 2 decades,

secrets that would shock
the entire nation.

Fred told the investigating
officers the other body

was of his former lover,
Shirley Robinson.

Shirley hadn't been seen
since 1978.

When she disappeared,
she was heavily pregnant

with Fred's child.

West also admitted
that police would find

a third body in the garden,

who he claimed was
a friend of Shirley's.

Throughout the questioning,
he insisted on one thing,

that his wife, Rose, knew
nothing about any of the bodies.

-I think, when Fred was
protesting Rose's innocence

and taking the blame
completely upon himself,

I think, yes, at that point,

the power had changed
in their relationship

from him being the dominant
one in the early years

to her really pulling the
strings in those later years.

And I think he really didn't
trust her at this point in time.

He was really quite afraid
of what she might do.

So I think that was
definitely something

that had flipped
in this relationship.

-Well, I found him
quite a creepy bloke.

He would always be trying
to endear himself

to people
in a rather smarmy way,

a little kind of giggle,
making light of things.

But he was very
unconvincing, doing that.

And he would very
quickly realize

if you weren't impressed by him,

and then he would withdraw,

and I would sense
there was this other side

to him that would scowl
and be probably quite nasty.

Whatever his sort of murky
machinations within his mind

were,
once he realized,

he was probably better able

to actually charm
women than blokes.

It's possible that, you know,
with a little smile

and some sort of soft talk,

he was able to persuade
some young women

that he was safe to be around.

-To make things
more complicated,

Fred's story kept changing.

He alternated between admitting
and denying the killings

and told detectives that
all the deaths were accidental.

He wanted to get charged with
manslaughter and not murder.

It would be a hard job for
pathologists to prove otherwise.

-It's very difficult when
somebody has been buried

for years

to look at them in detail
as a pathologist.

You haven't got the skin.
You haven't got the muscles.

You haven't got the organs,
the things that you'd see injury

or disease in.

So you really have to comment
on what may not be there.

It makes the pathologist's
job a lot harder.

-Finding the cause of death
was difficult,

and so was identifying the third
victim buried under the patio.

There was approximately
10,000 missing women

recorded at the time.

By using dental records, experts
identified the third victim

as Alison Chambers,

who was just 16 when she
went missing in 1979,

meaning she cannot have been
a friend of Shirley Robinson,

as Fred suggested.

Marks found on her body

proved beyond doubt
she'd been tortured.

-Someone's behavior is
more in the realm

of psychology than pathology,

but quite clearly
there's potentially

the aspect of torture there,

potentially of sexual violence.

And when the pathologist
sees findings like that,

we're looking away
from manslaughter

and more into some sort
of act of cruelty.

-This proves that West hadn't
accidentally killed

these young women.

He tortured, sexually assaulted.
and intentionally murdered them.

But was Fred doing this
without Rose knowing?

The police weren't convinced.

-The most important thing,
of course,

was that these bodies
were recovered in the house

that she shared with Fred.

And it would appear
inconceivable

that she wouldn't have
had knowledge of this.

-The house itself was very,
very small.

It would have been inconceivable
that you could have kept

a young woman
or women in that house

without every occupant knowing
that something was going on,

no matter how much tape

you would have
put over their mouths,

no matter how much they'd been
concealed in the cellar.

You would know.

It would have been impossible
not to know.

-The police began to look into
missing persons' files

to try and find
any more potential victims.

But with about 10,000
missing women in the country,

it was a seemingly
endless search.

-Throughout that time,
we were trying to trace people

from children's homes

and make sure they were safe.

We were dealing with forensic
materials, I mean,

massive amounts
of forensic material, searching.

It was on a scale
that was really unprecedented.

-Two of the missing people
stood out, Lucy Partington,

a 21-year-old student

last seen at a bus stop
in Gloucester in 1973,

and Lynda Gough,

a 19-year-old who went
missing in the same year.

Her last known address,
25 Cromwell Street.

-Fred and Rose adopted
a sort of modus operandi.

They would identify
young women on the run,

if you like,
run away from home,

run away from a children's home,
run away from their parents.

They were vulnerable.

They would offer them a home.

And, time after time,
Fred would pick out, with Rose,

often at bus stops, young women
who looked a little lost.

-So they would always chose
people who would be

in that position
of vulnerability.

And the fact that they were
a couple, I think,

was quite helpful to them
in luring victims in

because the women
that they targeted

would be more likely
to trust a couple.

So, when they would pick
somebody up who was hitchhiking,

that played to the idea of,

"Well, there's a woman there,
so I'm going to be safe."

-Rose already knew
the language of grooming.

She was quite used to it.

And when you hear the victims
talk about how she spoke to them

in this sort of quiet,

soft, pleasing voice,
you knew that, again,

that was something
she had learned.

-Lynda Gough was never
officially reported as missing,

but her family searched for her

at the time
of her disappearance.

-Lynda Gough's mother,
she'd been round to the house,

knocked on the door, and it had
been answered by Rose West.

And she asked where Lynda was,
and she was told

that she'd gone away,
I think, to Weston-super-Mare.

But she was struck by the fact
that there was Rose,

standing there,
with Lynda's slippers,

wearing Lynda's slippers,

and she also noticed,
on the clothesline,

there were articles
of Lynda's clothing.

-Lynda's mother believed Rose
when she said her daughter

had moved on
from Cromwell Street.

But, as the press coverage began
to reflect the sheer enormity

of the unfolding story,

other women who'd encountered
the Wests came forward.

The police got a break when
Caroline Roberts contacted them

to offer her help
in the investigation.

She'd seen the investigation on
the news and revealed to police

she'd been sexually assaulted
by both Fred and Rose in 1972.

She'd known them for a while
after they picked her up

while she was hitchhiking

and even worked for them
as a nanny for a short time.

It was one horrifying incident
that caused her to lodge

a complaint against them.

-They invited her back
to the house.

When she got to the house,

having been assaulted
in the car by Fred and Rose,

she got back to the house,

and she was then bound
and subject

to some rather aggressive
sexual activity.

She managed to escape
subsequently

and reported it to her mum,

who then told the police.

Both Fred and Rose
were arrested for rape

and serious sexual offenses.

-At the time, she was scared
to face them at her trial

and ashamed
at what had happened.

The Wests were charged
with indecent exposure

instead of rape.

They were fined 100 pounds.

But, with the information
Caroline gave to the police,

they could link Rose

to the crimes and bodies
at Cromwell Street.

-So we had that evidence
that there was

an aggressive sexual nature
to her personality.

The details of sexual activity
that had taken place

had a number of similarities,

particularly talking about
bindings and gags and so on,

that were very similar,
if not identical,

to the material that was
recovered in association

with the victims
when they were discovered.

-This case was much more
about the accounts of people

and what the survivors
were saying

than what the pathology
can tell you.

There are things that they could
say that the bodies were

no longer able to speak to,

and that was a bigger
element of this case

than maybe the physical
findings by the pathologist.

-On March the 4th, 1994,

police moved their search
inside the house.

They had a feeling that,
down in the dark cellar,

they may uncover
even more bodies.

On the same day,
when news reached Fred West

at Gloucester Police Station,

he made a stunning admission
in a handwritten note

given to detectives.

It read, "I, Frederick West,
authorize my solicitor,

Howard Ogden, to advise
Superintendent Bennett

that I wish to admit to
a further approx. nine killings,

expressly, Charmaine,
Rena, Lynda Gough,

and others to be identified,"
signed F. West.

-Can you imagine the scene?

It almost defies belief.

They weren't sitting across
the table from a monster,

huge man with bear hands
and able to kill at ease.

Little insignificant chap who,
nevertheless,

confesses to nine murders.

It's at that point
that police realize,

I think probably for
the first time,

that they are dealing
with someone truly evil.

-Fred was, again,
taken back to the house,

and he indicated where some of
the bodies had been buried,

particularly the area
of the cellar.

And so what happened
then was that we undertook

a methodical search
of the whole property.

Fred maintained a position
that Rose was not involved

in these cases.

You know, that's the inference,
that he was trying to keep her

out of it.

-Fred took the rap for it.

They had an agreement
that she would stand by him

and visit him, and he'd hoped
to be out in so many years.

But the minute Rose heard
that he'd actually admitted

to the murders,

then she dropped him.

He was gone, and she
never spoke to him again.

She absolutely refused
to have any contact with him.

-On March the 5th, 1994,

the world's media
had descended upon the home

of Fred and Rose West
in Gloucester.

Police had exhumed three bodies
from their back garden --

their daughter,
Heather,

Fred's pregnant lover,
Shirley Robinson,

and missing teenager
Alison Chambers.

Now detectives were moving
their search inside the property

and began excavating the cellar
at 25 Cromwell Street.

-We started the excavations
in the cellar.

It was a difficult place
to do excavations.

And we had to be very careful
about recovering the bodies.

And, on the first day, we did
find two sets of human remains.

One turned out to be
Therese Siegenthaler.

And the second remains
were Shirley Hubbard.

-It was clear to pathologists
that much had been done

to try and hide the identity
of all the murdered girls.

-With Fred and Rose's victims,
one of their hallmarks,

as it were, was that the fingers
and toes were removed.

I think we can hypothesize

that there may be
different reasons for that.

Simple cruelty would be one.

But obviously most people
know that fingerprints

are a very good way
to identify somebody.

So removing them, particularly
in the '60s, '70s, '80s,

before DNA technology
was really recognized,

would be a way to limit

the chances of that person
being identified.

-And that was one
of our difficulties

when we were doing
the investigation,

trying to identify the human
remains and, in particular,

Therese's remains
because there was no evidence

she'd been anywhere
near Gloucester.

But we were able to, in liaison
with the Much Marcle police

and the missing persons
to come down

to sort of a short list
of people that it could be,

and then, through using
forensic techniques,

we were able to be satisfied

that we had identified
her remains.

-As the cellar
excavation continued,

officers escorted Fred
to a field near his home

at Much Marcle.

He told them, if they dug there,

they'd find the body
of his first wife,

Rena, not seen since 1971,

a year after Fred and Rose
had moved in together.

Rena and Fred had been
married for 9 years,

but she was never
reported missing.

-So he was taken out
to the fields,

and he pointed out,

in one field,
fairly close to a hedge line,

where he said that
he'd buried Rena Costello.

-There were now six victims.

And, back in the cellar
at Cromwell Street,

even more bodies
were being exhumed --

Juanita Mott,
a former lodger at the house,

missing since 1975
and Carol Cooper,

last seen walking home
from the cinema in 1973,

plus two familiar names that
police had been looking out for,

Lucy Partington

and, buried under the family
bathroom, Lynda Gough.

-This was a tragedy
for these young women.

I mean,
all murders are tragic

for the victims
and their families,

but it was the scale
of this, I think,

that took the media's attention.

I mean, it's almost
incomprehensible that two people

could abduct young women

or lure them to the house
and subsequently,

you know, sexually abuse
them and then kill them.

I mean, it is on a scale
that's almost incomprehensible.

-By the 8th of March, 1994,

less than 2 weeks after
beginning their search

at Cromwell Street,

police had found 10 victims.

Most of them had been buried
2 decades ago

when Fred and Rose
were at their most prolific.

-Aside from the sexual
element to the murders,

they were becoming,

I'd say, maybe closer in a way,
but I don't know whether closer

is the best word
to use to describe that.

I think they were
becoming more cut off

from the rest of the world.

This was something that only
the two of them understood.

It was something that we refer
to as a folie à deux,

a madness shared by two.

So I think it was kind of
cementing their relationship.

-They were, to him, no more
than sexual implements,

a kind of doll, if you like.

I know it's a horrifying
thought,

but they had no more humanity
for him than that.

He was a man capable
of absolutely no conscience

and absolutely no remorse.

And everything he did
was with Rose's help.

And the thought of having
some young woman

hung up in the cellar,
literally,

by her hands into a hook
for Fred and Rose to abuse

when they wanted to over
a period of days

almost defies belief.

It is that horrifying.

-Nine bodies had been exhumed
from Cromwell Street,

and one more, that of Rena West,
Fred's first wife,

in a field near Much Marcle.

But Fred wasn't finished.

Although he didn't admit
to killing her,

he told police he had a feeling
that Rena's friend, Anne McFall,

might be buried in
a neighboring field.

She's believed to be Fred's
first victim, killed in 1967

when she was 6 months pregnant.

-As he did with
all his killings,

he dismembered the bodies
before he buried them.

So he didn't bury them
in a skeleton.

He buried them in a tube,
if you like,

in which the body
was compressed,

the torso, head separated,
arms and legs separated,

and shoved into a smaller hole.

It made the search
for those bodies

a very complicated affair.

-The problem with
Anne McFall's body

was that the whole land
had been relandscaped.

And so there was this topsoil
that had been put on there.

Now, when you're looking
for human remains,

you can't just bring a big
digger in and shove it all out.

You are, literally,
doing it by spadefuls

and sieving every spadeful.

And we actually excavated
a whole the size

of an Olympic-sized
swimming pool.

We were almost giving up hope

that we were going
to find the body,

and we set a deadline
for ourselves that,

if we didn't find it
by date X, then we would stop.

But, fortunately,
a couple of days

before that deadline came in,

we found some bones and then
subsequently recovered the body.

-During the 2 months of digging
for Anne McFall's remains,

the police had arrested and
charged Rose West with murder.

For each victim, she claimed,
"I'm innocent."

The police's evidence
was circumstantial,

and defense lawyers
felt there wasn't enough

to connect her to the murders.

-Rose West said,
"I had nothing to do with this,"

and the Crown was saying,
"Well, we've got a statement

from so-and-so who says

that you were involved

in an abduction
and sexual abuse."

Well, to a point, you say,
"Well, so what?

What's that got to do
with murder?"

Fred had said,
in his interviews,

he fully admitted them and said

Rose had nothing
to do with them.

So the first point is to say,

"Well, what is the strength
of the case against Rose?"

She's denying it.

Where's the proof
that she was involved?

-While police continued their
search at Cromwell Street,

they also turned their attention
to a second address,

25 Midland Road,

Fred and Rose's first home
together in Gloucester.

Investigators believe
that somewhere in the house

or garden they might find
the body of Charmaine West,

Fred's stepdaughter from
his marriage to Rena.

An extensive search began.

-At the time of
Charmaine's death,

she was living at
25 Midland Road,

a house that, subsequently,
Fred and Rose had left.

But we went to the house,
and again,

excavating under
the floor of the kitchen,

we found Charmaine's body.

-Charmaine had not been seen
since she was 8 years old

in 1971

and had not been
reported as missing.

In the same year, Fred was
in jail for 9 months

for motoring offenses

and stealing fence panels
from his then employer.

The police were convinced they'd
finally got a breakthrough.

They were confident Charmaine
must have been murdered

by Rose while Fred
was serving time.

-Rose was jealous of Charmaine.

Charmaine was a very
bright little girl,

and I think Rose could see

that she was getting
the upper hand of her,

and she didn't like it.

The younger sister knew
to keep quiet.

It was best not
to antagonize Rose.

And Charmaine was
quite a feisty little girl.

-So there were
slight differences

in the modus operandi,

you know,
certainly with the others,

you can imagine Fred
going about his work

with a sort of builder's
precision and routine,

you know, severing
the limbs and the head,

digging a hole in the ground
and placing them in it.

Charmaine was different,
nevertheless,

Fred was charged with Charmaine

even though there were,
from the outset,

issues about whether
Fred was present

or whether he was in prison.

So there was always that
slightly nebulous issue

about how old, precisely,

Charmaine was and the dates
when she died.

-With the high profile
trials imminent,

the police had to somehow
prove that Rose West

was just as guilty
as her husband, Fred.

But before they got a chance,

there was a major setback
in their case.

In December 1994, 10 months
after police had begun

to search 25 Cromwell
Street for Heather West,

the bodies of 12 young women

had been unearthed
across Gloucester.

Fred West was thought
to be responsible

for all of the deaths,

and police were desperately
trying to find

some evidence
to prove that his wife,

Rose, was implicit
in 10 of the murders.

Both had been arrested, charged,
and were awaiting trial,

but on January the 1st 1995,

Fred West took his
secrets to the grave.

-Fred was in custody at
Winson Green Prison

in Birmingham
and on the 1st of January 1995,

he was found dead in his cell.

He died from hanging and it
was subsequently determined

that he committed suicide.

-Fred West was always
a cunning man.

He planned his suicide
as carefully

as he concealed his bodies.

He groomed the prison
officers into thinking

that he was absolutely safe,

harmless little man
who could do no wrong

and was very happy
to collaborate

with anything they wanted.

Indeed, he volunteered.

He said, "I'll mend shirts.

Don't worry, give me
something to do.

You know, pass time for me
while I'm waiting for my trial."

Painstakingly, over
a period of weeks,

he stitched together a rope,

partly from bits
of the blanket on his bed,

partly from pieces
of shirt, very carefully,

because he had decided
that he was not going to trial,

and that he was not ever going
to confess the true extent

of what his crimes
amounted to.

-There was a total loss of
control by Fred over Rose.

I have no doubt about that.

She made it abundantly clear
she wanted absolutely

nothing else
to do with him,

and she blanked him
in the dark.

Independent of his
relationship with Rose,

he lacked empathy with people.

You know, people are objects
to be used and abused.

The fact of the matter was,
he knew the game was up.

He had made the admissions.

The remains had been found.

The terrible story
of those victims unfolded.

-For those who knew
the West family,

this is just another
macabre twist in a story

that first came
to light 10 months ago.

In the words of one neighbor,

"If Frederick West
really did kill himself,

then it seems almost appropriate
that a man accused of taking

so many people's lives

should end up taking his own."

-Fred's suicide was a huge
problem for the police.

It put the entire case
in jeopardy.

-With the death of Fred,
we were concerned

that the press might feel,

"Well, the case against Fred
is now finished,

and therefore, we can
disclose information

because the case is closed."

That would have been a disaster
for us because it would have

then compromised
the trial of Rose West.

-The police were desperate.

While Fred had confessed
to 11 of the killings,

Rose had always claimed
her innocence.

Without any solid evidence,
there was a real chance

that Rose West was going
to get away with murder.

-I think it's the Crown
that need to review that case

and decide where they want
to take it from here.

I would hope that
they would drop the case.

-I thought it was possible

the case might
have been dropped.

There were a lot of
eminent observers

suggesting
that would be the case.

The DPP had a different view,
though, and in fact,

the case got worse against Rose.

They added on the murder
of Charmaine, which prior,

had been a sole charge
in relation to Fred.

I thought that was very curious.

Rose thought the case
was going to go away as well,

but it didn't.

-Prosecutors needed proof
that Rose alone was responsible

for the death
of her stepdaughter, Charmaine.

They turn to
forensic odontologist

Professor David Whittaker.

-The police brilliantly
discovered, I don't know how,

that a certain newspaper,
national newspaper,

had acquired a set of negatives,

and they were large
professional negatives.

And they showed
incredible detail

in some of the baby teeth,

the deciduous teeth,
of Charmaine,

which I was then able to match

exactly using

our facial superimposition
technology and show,

A, that they matched exactly
in terms of tilt and position

and grooving

and little rough edges
that were a perfect match,

but the position
of the teeth had moved,

so if we could calculate
that movement

and assess it of
being able to determine,

within reasonable accuracy,

the time elapsed between
the photograph being taken,

which the police had a date for.

It was written on the negative.

And the time of death.

And if that fit into the slot
where Fred West was in jail,

then clearly Mrs. West had
a lot of questions to answer.

-On the 3rd of October 1995,
the world's press

flocked to
Winchester Crown Court

to report on one of the
most sensational trials

of modern times.

-Rose's trial attracted
worldwide attention,

as you would expect.

It's very rare for a woman
to go on trial,

let alone for 10 murders.

I attended it from the first day
to the last.

It was an extraordinary event.

-As the trial began,
Rose West pleaded not guilty

to all 10 counts of murder,

the nine girls found buried at
Cromwell Street and Charmaine,

but the evidence against her
was irrefutable.

-So in court,
in front of Rosemary West,

I had all the technology
available

to reproduce
the imaging of Charmaine.

Dreadful thing to have
to do in court,

but the judge
and the prosecution insisted,

so Mrs. West actually saw

this imaging

developing in front of her,

and I think it was about
the only time

she looked a little bit upset.

-She marched into
the witness box

like a very angry
traffic warden --

plain shoes, weighty woman,
angry demeanor.

"This is all an outrage.
It was all Fred.

I had nothing to do with it.
I knew nothing.

It was completely inconceivable
I could have done this.

I couldn't have killed
my own daughter."

A tissue of lies.

-We think of Rose West
as this woman in the courtroom

in her 40s,

great big glasses that she wore,

quite a frumpy
housewife-looking.

Those murders had happened
a long time before then.

She actually was very young
when she committed the murders.

She was, in fact,
a teenage serial killer

because she committed
three murders before she was 20

and most of the murders were
over by the time she was 26.

-The evidence provided by
Professor Whittaker

convinced the jury

that Rosemary West
was guilty of all 10 murders.

-He was able to say,
and the jury accepted this,

that he could pinpoint
within a few days

of when
the child had been killed,

and we had evidence that Fred
was in jail during that time.

So Fred could not have killed
Charmaine at that time

because he physically
wasn't around.

He was in jail.

-I didn't think the trial
had gone well for Rose,

and the jury took
quite a long time.

It wasn't a 5-minute decision.

It was many hours.

They thought about everything
very carefully.

They came back,

and it was pretty well
unanimous on everything.

I mean, she was
totally defeated.

-When the first guilty
verdicts came back,

Rose did not flicker,
not a sign of emotion.

She just simply stood there.

There was no histrionics,
no shouting, no screaming.

There was no sign of any emotion
at all, really,

and I was left with
the overwhelming feeling

that one had been
in the presence of someone

who had lost contact
with humanity.

-Sentencing her, the judge,
Mr. Justice Mantell,

recommended that Rose West
should never be released.

She was immediately returned
to Holloway Prison.

-Rose has never confessed to me,

whether she's made any kind
of confession to anybody else,

I don't know,
but she certainly hasn't to me.

-I would say that, tacitly, she,
at various stages,

gave the impression to me,
with hindsight,

that she knew that,

you know, under the floor
in Cromwell Street,

there were a lot of secrets.

That's slightly different to
saying that she murdered people,

but then the nature of the case,
it was circumstantial.

-Three hundred miles from
Gloucester, Rosemary West

en route to the prison that
will be home for a lifetime.

-Today, Rose West is serving
life imprisonment

at Low Newton Prison in Durham.

In 1996, a year after
25 Cromwell Street

had given up its grisly secrets,
it was demolished.

In its place is now
a public walkway,

but nothing can erase

the painful memories
of Fred and Rose West,

and their house of horrors.

-This certainly was a unique
case in my experience,

and I was involved

as a detective investigating
murders right back in the 1960s,

and this is on a scale
that's completely different.

And I think in terms of its
complexity, I think, again,

it probably stands out
as unique in criminal history.

They were all young women
who had their lives

in front of them,
and it was cut short.

They're just brutal and selfish,

self-gratification
of Fred and Rose.

-I have never, for one moment,
doubted that Frederick West

was a truly evil man.

I think he was born and bred.

I think he only
ever thought of himself.

He was a psychopath
and a sociopath,

no concern for society,

no concern
for anybody but himself,

but he found in Rose the perfect
sorcerer's apprentice.

-Many of us reflect on
serial killer couples and say,

"Well, if they had never met one

another, would they have gone
on to kill?"

We know that Fred had already
committed one murder

before he met Rose, so I think
he would have killed again.

When we look at Rose, I think
she would have certainly gone on

to harm other people,

whether that was emotionally,

financially,

a non-physical kind of harm,

but I think having Fred
in her life opened up the door

to a different kind of harm,
a different kind of abuse.

-I've never been in any doubt
that Fred and Rose

committed far more
than 12 murders.

I've always believed
there are other victims,

and they were buried
in other places

or concealed in other places,

but to be fair
to Gloucester police,

they can't dig
out Gloucestershire

in the effort
to find more victims.

-Speculation about other
possible victims

of Fred and Rose West
will always remain.

Theirs is a case
whose shock waves

continue to reverberate
around the world even today.

The sheer depravity and
the unimaginable terror

of their victims

is why we should remember them,
not Fred and Rose,

and their house of horror.

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