Original subtitles

**

-Police began excavating here

when information was passed to them by a teenage girl.

She told them clues to the disappearance of Heather West

were lying beneath the paving stones.

-Heather, the first child of Fred West,

has been missing since 1987.

-Fred was very jolly, very amenable.

-What kind of a father murders his daughter?

**

-It was a story that was worth investigating.

You never know where it might end up,

and boy, did we not know where it was gonna end up.

-I thought we were looking for the body of one girl.

-The bodies just kept on coming.

First there was two, then there were five.

-These girls were tortured, raped, and destroyed.

-I had to explain to the police that this man is a psychopath.

This is a man for whom other people don't exist.

-She waved to me as I left,

and that was the last I saw of her.

**

-Suddenly, the world's media descended on Cromwell Street,

hundreds and hundreds of them.

-25 Cromwell Street became known

as the House of Horrors all over the world.

-Who are these girls that he's killed?

How did they come to Cromwell Street?

-Most girls would have run, but Rose didn't.

-They were married, husband and wife.

How could it be possible that these things were happening

without Rose knowing what was going on in the house?

-She must have known.

She must have been part of this.

-Police were convinced they should charge them both.

-Married couple accused of being serial killers --

Britain's worst serial killers.

-What are you talking about, some fantastic horror story?

Well, yes.

**

[ Camera shutter clicking ]

**

**

**

-You'll find Gloucester on the map

about 100 miles west of London, on the edge of an area

of outstanding natural beauty called the Cotswolds.

The Cotswolds is the fashionable area,

Gloucester very much the working-class area.

**

-Cromwell Street is a little road

really close to the center of Gloucester.

There was nothing posh about Cromwell Street.

It was exactly the opposite -- quite small, quite narrow,

had a very itinerant population.

People were coming and going all the time.

25 Cromwell Street started life as a derelict building.

Fred West took it on and proceeded to "do it up,"

which really meant making it habitable,

and in the early days, Fred and Rose

let out the top floor to lodgers.

All manner of strange people came and went.

There were hippies. There were runaways.

There were all kinds of people.

**

[ Bell tolling ]

**

-I moved into Cromwell Street when I was 16.

I was a little bit of a rebel.

I lost my dad two years previous to leaving home,

and I just decided I could make it out on my own.

I was gonna be independent at last,

and nobody could find me.

It was a start of a new life.

**

When I moved into Cromwell Street,

Fred was very jolly, very amenable.

He was always a very happy person.

Rose was very pleasant,

but she was a little bit aloof with me.

If she didn't want to speak to you,

she would just turn her back on you and walk away.

Fred and Rose's relationship

was absolutely besotted with each other.

They couldn't pass each other

without a little peck on the cheek.

They smiled at each other constantly.

**

The house was very homely, very welcoming.

Rose was an avid cleaner, so the house always smelled

of a disinfectant-type, bleach-type smell.

As you go through the front door,

to the left was Rose's room.

To the right was the living room.

Upstairs, there was another floor.

Straight up again was my room to the right,

which faced out to the front of the property.

I seemed to hit it off with Rose.

Eventually, we got to the stages of,

"Could you babysit the children?"

Which, yeah, yeah, that was fine by me.

There was Anna Marie.

There was Heather.

There was Mae, and there was Stephen.

Heather was 8 and a bubbly girl, up for fun.

We'd either watch a movie on the TV

or go out and play our silly little games.

It was a happy family.

**

**

[ Children shouting indistinctly ]

-Quite by chance, some of the West children

were outside playing in Cromwell Street...

and a policeman is walking down Cromwell Street

wheeling his bicycle.

And the girls turn to the policeman

and say, "What would you do

if a father was abusing one of his daughters?"

And the policeman reports the conversation...

and began a chain of events that was eventually to lead

the police to arrest Fred for...raping his daughter.

And at that point, Gloucestershire Social Services

took the five youngest West children into care.

**

When that rape charge comes to trial...

the daughter in question refuses steadfastly

to give evidence against her father,

and the judge in the case has no alternative

but to throw out the charges.

But the five children remain in care,

and while they're in care, the social workers come across

what they described as a family joke.

The younger children said, "Well, Fred used to threaten us.

You know, if you're naughty, you'll end up like Heather

under the patio in the back garden."

**

**

-The family joke kept cropping up,

so naturally, the police decided they would have to follow it up.

**

-Gloucester police discovered that Heather,

the first child of Fred and Rose,

has been missing since 1987 at the age of 16.

There was no National Insurance number.

There were no medical records.

There was nothing.

**

**

**

-The door was opened by Rose West.

"We have a search warrant to search the garden

for the body of your daughter Heather."

Rose's reply was, "Well, you can fuck off."

She had dark hair. She wore large spectacles.

She was slightly overweight,

and she was wearing a negligee and bedroom slippers.

Bearing in mind, this is early afternoon.

We walked through to the back garden,

and when I say garden, it was more a really large patio.

**

[ Upbeat music plays ]

-* From the Cotswolds to the...*

[ Singing indistinctly ]

**

-I was the news editor of a local radio station...

Severn Sound.

It was a radio station that people were fond of

because they like to know what's going on locally.

My relationship with the Gloucester police

was probably one of the best in the country

as a journalist.

I had the sort of contacts that people would die for.

[ Pager beeping ]

I'd not long finished reading the news

and my pager went off.

It said, "Police are searching for

a missing girl at Cromwell Street."

**

I went straight down to see what was going on.

I was skeptical about what they were gonna find there

because it just seemed a happy place.

I went to his next-door neighbor.

"Well, come on in," he says.

"Have a cup of tea."

And I said to him, "They're looking for

a young girl who's gone missing from next door.

They think the person there may have done it."

And that's when I first found out his name was Fred.

He said, "Fred? No, he's a lovely man.

Wouldn't harm a fly."

-Fred was well-liked in Cromwell Street.

A lot of people thought he was a good lad.

He was the odd-job man they would turn to

if they needed something doing at home.

-It's 8:00.

Good morning, I'm Gordon...

I went back and put a bulletin together.

It was obviously the lead story...

and as soon as that bulletin went out,

the newsroom phone wouldn't stop ringing

with the local paper saying, "How do you know this?"

I had no idea this would become the biggest story of my career.

[ Telephones ringing ]

**

-The general feeling was

if you're gonna bury a body there,

it's more likely to be at the back of the garden

than towards the house,

so we started lifting slabs from the back.

Rose was inside the house.

She would come and go, watching what we were doing.

Then by about 4:30, it got dark.

A police guard was put on the premises, and we went home.

**

-Fred West is about a dozen miles away working.

He doesn't actually arrive back in Cromwell Street

until after 6:00,

and then agrees to go to the police station.

Police made Fred aware of the family joke

about Heather being under the patio,

and he said, "That's nonsense.

Surely, you don't believe that."

All arrogance.

-His answer was, "Well, she just cleared off."

She'd gone to work in a holiday camp

in another part of the country.

She didn't leave any forwarding address.

That's the sort of child she was, he said.

-Fred returns home to Cromwell Street.

There's been no charge.

They found nothing.

**

[ Jackhammer whirring ]

-When we returned the following morning,

we carried on lifting up slabs

and cutting through the concrete.

Fred and Rose were both around.

We could see them looking through the windows.

They were extremely interested in what was going on.

**

-My name is Steve Scott.

My news editor and I agreed

that it was a story that was worth investigating.

You never know where it might end up,

and boy, did we not know where it was gonna end up.

**

Police began excavating here

when information was passed to them by a teenage girl.

She told them clues to the disappearance of Heather West

were lying beneath the paving stones.

-On that Friday, while we were digging,

two detectives came down to the house,

and a short while later, they left with Fred.

We were then told that Fred had been arrested.

-Fred was a petty thief.

Small-time informant, well-known to the police.

Packs what he calls his prison kit,

which includes a cigarette tin with roll-ups in it.

**

-My name is Howard Ogden.

I represent people who have been arrested

and are in police custody.

My office had been in touch and said,

"Fred West has been arrested in connection with

the suspected murder of Heather, his daughter."

So I rang through to the custody suite,

and Fred was put on the phone.

And I gave him what would be the time-honored,

traditional defense lawyer's advice --

to shut the fuck up until I get there.

To which he replied, "Well, I've already admitted it."

-I think when Fred was watching us,

he realized that we weren't

just gonna dig a hole here and there and then go away,

so he admitted to killing his daughter.

**

-Fred confessed that he killed Heather in a rage...

and buried her in the back garden.

**

-Everyone was absolutely amazed.

-What kind of a father murders his daughter?

That's just sick.

-When Rose was told that Fred

had confessed to killing Heather,

she said Fred had told her that Heather had run away from home.

She said, "If I get my hands on him, I'll kill him."

**

**

-The police smuggled him into the garden

disguised in a boiler suit

to avoid the attentions of the press,

who by now had become aware that something was going on.

**

-Fred arrives handcuffed to a police officer,

and he says, "You're digging in the wrong place.

You need to dig in this location."

Fred was more relaxed than I would have expected.

He didn't seem to be particularly worried,

and he was quite happy to indicate

where we would find the body of Heather.

**

We were expecting to just simply dig down there and find her,

but we didn't find her.

And it was very frustrating because we thought,

"Well, is he telling the truth?"

[ Siren wails in distance ]

**

-By the middle of Saturday, Fred changes his story again.

"No, no, I was lying.

Heather's actually in Bahrain,

and she's working for a drug dealer.

And she has a Mercedes."

It's a wonderful piece of fantasy,

but nevertheless, he maintains it.

And so he says, "No, nothing to do with me.

I didn't do anything."

**

-Whatever Fred was saying could not be relied upon.

**

And so we had to find a body.

We had eight members of the team lifting slabs

and cutting down through the concrete in different places.

The first thing you know about

when you're getting close to a body is the smell --

a very, very strong, acrid smell

that comes from the decomposing flesh.

Once you smelt it, you never forget it.

Finally, one of the team found a bone sticking out...

right at the top of the soil, just underneath the slab.

**

So at that point, they called in the home office pathologist,

Bernard Knight, and he said,

"Yes, that is definitely a human bone from a young female."

**

The next thing we found was a human skull.

We then found human leg bones...

and the rest of the bones were scattered around in that area.

It was clear that the body had been dismembered.

The whole team were very shocked.

-Police have found Heather's body...

but there's an issue.

-Professor Bernard Knight knew what he was talking about.

He said, "We are either looking at

the world's first three-legged woman,

or there's another body around here somewhere."

I thought we were looking for the body of one girl.

I had no idea it was gonna turn into a mass-murder inquiry.

**

**

--The remains taken away earlier

are now being examined by a pathologist.

Forces across the country have been alerted

to check their missing-persons files,

as detectives refuse to rule out the possibility

of finding more bodies.

**

-The initial interview with Fred will never be forgotten.

You couldn't have made it up.

**

**

**

-There was West describing killing his daughter

in the most matter-of-fact, banal way.

"Oh, I think I might have used that knife from the --

I'm not sure I did.

Anyway, what I did was I,

you know, disarticulated her legs and cut off her head."

Wasn't said with any...venom.

-You immediately saw darkness in Fred because of his eyes.

They were emotionless.

The account that he gave that it was all okay, really,

because he had closed her eyes, a nice, fatherly thing to do

if you're going to murder your daughter.

As a defense lawyer, you do your utmost not to be fazed,

not to show it on your face,

but nonetheless, it was utterly chilling.

**

-I never thought that Fred was capable of anything

as heinous as what he'd done with Heather.

It hurts.

**

-One of the most remarkable moments

is when he's told they found three thigh bones.

"Now, Heather didn't have three legs, did she, Fred?

Who's the other body?"

-"Oh. Shirley."

**

-"Shirley who?"

-"Shirley Robinson,"

the one that caused all the trouble."

**

**

-Shirley was a lodger in the house.

She was in the room below myself.

I think she was about 18, 19.

She was a beautiful person.

**

Had many a nights up giggling like two little schoolgirls,

laughing about makeup, music, things that we liked.

**

She was my best friend.

**

-My friend's dad had two houses on Cromwell Street,

so I practically grew up on Cromwell Street.

I'd always be there.

I met Shirley probably as soon as she came on the street.

She was about three years older than me,

and I just had a crush on her.

She was lovely.

I can remember asking friends on the street,

"Have you seen Shirley lately?"

And they said, "No.

We just thought she'd moved on."

-Shirley was in some ways Rose's double.

She was the same height, the same build.

She had the same haircut.

I'd been there about eight months,

and one day, I said to Shirley,

"Oh, put a bit of weight on there, girl."

She said, "No, I'm actually pregnant."

I went, "Okay," and it came about in a conversation that...

the dad was Fred.

-Fred's explanation for Shirley causing all the problems

was that she'd fallen in love with him

and had photographs of the two of them taken together.

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

And she thought she was gonna be the next Mrs. West,

and, well, couldn't let that happen.

"I'm devoted to Rose. I really am."

And so she had to be terminated.

**

-Every day, more details emerge about the bodies

found under the patio at number 25 Cromwell Street.

This is the face of the second woman named,

18-year-old Shirley Robinson,

a lodger at the house and heavily pregnant.

-When I heard they'd found Shirley, as well,

I was absolutely devastated.

It was like being hit by a bus.

**

-When we found Shirley's body,

we found the remains of the unborn child, as well.

**

The baby had been removed

and dismembered prior to being buried.

**

I remember one of my colleagues made the comment,

"What a bastard he must be,"

because that took it to a different level of depravity

to do something like that,

especially when this is your own child.

**

-Rose was separated from Fred, of course, by this point,

and she'd been interviewed repeatedly.

When Rose was questioned about Shirley Robinson,

she said she didn't know anything about her.

Cromwell Street had a lot of lodgers,

and Rose's persistence was always that,

"Well, there were so many people coming and going,

I didn't know who they all were."

**

Fred continued to be interviewed.

And then he says, "Well, there's, um,

there's a -- there's a third body in the garden."

Shirley's mate.

**

-Fred would describe her

as a friend of Shirley who came looking for her.

-I was gobsmacked.

The bodies just kept on coming.

First, there was two, then there were three.

We just kept thinking, "When will this ever stop?"

**

-The moment we discovered that it wasn't just Heather West

that was buried under that patio,

the world's media descended on Cromwell Street,

hundreds and hundreds of them, and I'm not exaggerating.

[ Camera shutters clicking ]

The tabloid press in the UK in the '90s were all very powerful.

There was this cutthroat atmosphere

that operated between them.

They would be out to get the biggest story,

the biggest front page.

They would do anything to make sure

that their paper sold more than the others.

The competition involved great journalism,

but sometimes, it involved money.

-Anyone who had any connection with the Wests

instantly became fodder for the tabloid press.

"We will bid more for your story if you'd only tell us,

or we'll pay you more than they'll pay you."

It became a feeding frenzy.

-You could quite easily make £10,000.

Whether it was true or not,

it doesn't really matter if you're a tabloid newspaper.

It was more about sensationalizing a story.

The eyes of the world were on Gloucester.

**

-This was a huge case for a small police force.

What was the truth, and what was a story?

The police were trying to slow down the investigation

because their instinct was, "This is going too quickly.

We're gonna miss something. We've got to be careful.

We've got to get this right."

**

-My name is Paul Britton.

In 1994, I was the head of

the Regional Forensic Psychology Service.

Gloucestershire Police wanted my help

to make sense of what had happened,

and in particular, to help them to talk to,

to unravel, Mr. Fred West.

They had a man who was affable, friendly,

who liked being with them,

and that did not sit easily with the remains of three young women

that had been dismembered and decapitated.

**

I was able to build a clearer picture of Fred

from his background.

If I'm psychologically profiling someone,

I have a number of questions that are key.

The first question, "Who are you?"

is usually the one that the police are interested in.

The second one, "How did you come to be there?"

helps me to give the police a strategy

of how this person functions and operates.

**

**

-Fred was born in 1941.

His father was a farm laborer,

and his mother had been a live-in maid.

His father got up early to milk the cows, 4:30.

It was a house used to hard work, manual labor.

They were very much living in the past.

**

-Frederick West in his early days

was exposed to several factors

which would definitely feed into his later choices.

He watched his mother, for example,

slaughtering farmyard animals.

He knew that his father had a disregard for women in general.

They were there to be used as needed.

West was introduced to sex at a very early age.

It was almost a rite of passage.

Fred said he was taken to bed by his mother

pretty much as soon as he'd reached puberty.

**

That's very hard to imagine in the modern world.

It instilled in him the sense that a mother

was entitled to break in her children,

and a father was equally entitled

to break in his daughters.

**

**

-The police wanted to get as much information

while Fred was talking as they possibly could

because they didn't know when he would stop.

**

-Fred had to be guarded 24/7.

Sooner or later, my number came up,

and I was asked to go in for eight hours.

It was quite a surreal experience.

We watched "The Dam Busters" and "The Great Escape."

He was getting really worked up whether Steve McQueen

would actually jump the fence on his motorbike.

At times, I had to pinch myself.

On the one hand, he's a sadistic murderer.

On the other hand,

he's a chappie who can sit with me for eight hours

playing dominoes and enjoying watching films.

**

-Fred could entice you into this spell that he wove.

If you look at any pictures of West

with a prison officer or a policeman,

they're often laughing.

-I had to remind the police that this man is a psychopath.

This is a man for whom other people don't exist

in the real world.

They don't have feelings.

They don't have rights.

And then, the question was asked of me,

"Well, why are these girls buried in the garden?"

And my answer is, sadly,

because the house was already full of other bodies.

**

-And tonight, a chilling prediction from the man

leading the investigation.

-I have reason to believe

that there may be other remains in the area,

but I am not in this position at this time

to explain that further.

**

-Is it possible there were more victims?

Inevitably...

their attention turned to the cellar of Cromwell Street.

**

-One night, I remember Fred said,

"Hey, come and have a look at what I've done."

So off I went down the steps

into this very dark, dank cellar.

It straightaway put my hackles up.

It seemed to stretch the whole of the house

and half the width of the house.

Fred said, "I've decorated the cellar for the children."

He'd painted it.

He'd done graffiti of cowboys and hearts on the walls.

There were some toys in the corner, and it smelled.

It was damp. It was dark.

It was miserable.

**

And I went, "Lovely.

I really need to go up now because I'm claustrophobic."

And that was my tour of the cellar

that absolutely freaked me out.

**

-Fred was not stupid.

He knew that the game was up,

and it's important that if you are accepting of the situation,

that you make sure that those investigating are aware.

**

"I, Frederick West...

authorize my solicitor, Howard Ogden,

to advise Superintendent Bennett that I wish to admit

to a further approx nine killings.

**

**

-When the Sunday Mirror newspaper broke the story

of the number of victims buried inside Cromwell Street,

they coined the phrase "House of Horrors."

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

It was a perfect phrase.

It draws you into the story,

and as a result, 25 Cromwell Street

became known as the House of Horrors all over the world.

**

-The feeling in Gloucester was red-hot.

Everyone was talking about it -- in the pubs,

in the shops, everywhere.

-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.

-The staff on the local newspaper

are trying to convey the mood of a community in disbelief.

-It was a shocker for the police,

and it was a shocker for everyone else on the story.

It was a complete revelation.

-Who are these girls that he's killed?

How did they come to Cromwell Street?

Did they go there voluntarily?

There were so many questions that were flashing

through your mind about what he was admitting.

You just didn't know where to start, almost.

**

-He went into a sort of trance, as if he was at a seance.

He wasn't connecting with the world anymore.

He was in his own bizarre universe,

and he would describe, "Oh, that's the Worcester girl,"

or, "That's the Dutch girl."

-He said that the girls were entering into his soul.

In Fred's sick mind, he was concerned

that they shouldn't flee because they were about to be revealed,

but Fred was specific and accurate

as to where the police should dig.

-The people who were there that day with him

found it very creepy, indeed, very eerie.

He was describing women who he'd killed and buried

in the cellar of his own house.

-This is where these young girls were destroyed.

West is able to re-experience it.

People with him will not understand

what it is that's happening.

There will be all sorts of mystical interpretation,

but it's not that at all.

It's simply the wild animal re-experiencing its kill.

**

**

-Human remains found in the cellar

are carried away for forensic examination,

in what many detectives believe will turn into Britain's

biggest-ever mass-murder investigation.

**

-When I was told what had happened to some of the victims,

it made me sick to the stomach.

-When the bodies were found in the basement,

they had all been dismembered.

There were nooses.

One skull had been wrapped in thick duct tape.

Obviously, these girls had been tortured.

**

In the basement, there were low beams,

and in two of these beams, some holes that had been drilled

about two, three inches in diameter.

Fred said that he'd put a pole through these holes,

and with one of the victims, he had hung her upside down

with her ankles tied to the pole.

-Initially, bondage and the restraining of the victim

is something that had a functional value.

If the girl is tied, bound, incapacitated,

then you can do what you want to her.

Later, it became something that was important in itself.

The seeing of the young woman's fear

becomes more valuable for Fred West

than the sexual return itself.

You're looking at a profound, sexually sadistic killer.

-Various bones were missing.

It's entirely possible that Fred removed the kneecaps

to prevent the girls moving.

They weren't capable of walking.

He removed the fingers and toes as trophies,

so you have the dreadful task of assembling the bodies

of these young women, who were all naked.

All had been abused.

All had been mutilated and dismembered,

and all of whom had been buried...

in what was supposed to be a children's playroom.

-This was a real modern-day horror story.

It was if you're gonna keep finding bodies

and it's never gonna stop.

It just seemed to get worse and worse.

**

-How could it be possible

that these things were happening in this cramped,

little semi-detached house in Gloucester,

without Rose knowing what was going on in the house?

**

**

Rose is truculent, belligerent.

She says, "Oh, Fred does what he wants.

I knew nothing about it. I'm always busy.

I was pregnant all the time."

-She was quite in control of herself,

quite sure of herself,

and at times, quite verbally aggressive

in answering questions.

In fact, a few times, she actually swore.

-The police decided that they would put

she and Stephen and Mae, her eldest surviving children,

in a safe house, where she would remain

while Fred was continued to be interviewed,

and they would bug the safe house

to see if she would admit anything.

**

-They had many, many hours of taped conversations,

but there was nothing that they could use.

-Apart from swearing profusely almost all the time,

Rose did not admit one single thing

in her period in the safe house.

-Police in Gloucester searching 25 Cromwell Street

last night discovered yet a further set of human remains.

They were found in the bathroom area on the ground floor.

-The police have now established

there are nine victims in Cromwell Street,

but Fred had confessed to a further three victims.

Where were they?

-Detectives are now liaising with colleagues

in the north and in Scotland,

trying to trace Catherine Costello,

Mr. West's first wife.

Relatives haven't seen her for 20 years.

**

-Before Fred met Rose,

he was living with his first wife, Rena Costello,

and their two children, Charmaine and Anna Marie,

and a young woman from Scotland called Anne McFall,

who came to babysit the children.

-Fred confessed to killing both Rena and Anne McFall

and said he'd buried them in fields near the village

where he was born and raised in Much Marcle.

-Fred claims Charmaine is in the back of the car asleep

when he kills her mother, Rena.

He doesn't know what to do with this 8-year-old child,

and so he takes her back

to where they were then living in Gloucester

and kills her and buries her.

**

-At Midland Road, they found the body of Charmaine West,

a daughter by Mr. West's first marriage.

**

-Earlier today, the search switched

from inner-city Gloucester

to open fields near the village of Much Marcle.

**

**

-This was very early in the morning

in one of the most beautiful places you can imagine,

with a church bell ringing,

with the daffodils just coming out.

Yet there we were with Fred and a whole load of officers

whose duty was gonna be to dig.

-Fred pointed out where he thought he'd buried Rena at...

But of course, the landscape had changed dramatically

in the intervening 20 years.

**

It took them 12 days to find Rena West's remains.

It took them 55 days to find the remains of Anne McFall,

and by the time they'd finished,

they dug out roughly the size of an Olympic swimming pool.

-Yesterday evening, they uncovered body number 12.

Detectives won't comment on speculation

they belong to Anne McFall, once Frederick West's nanny.

**

The home office pathologist, Professor Bernard Knight,

will again visit Cromwell Street this afternoon,

when he'll examine the last set of remains

where they were discovered.

**

-Because West had given very little detail

about who these girls were,

it was a very complex task trying to identify them.

They, of course, inquired of others' forces

about missing persons.

They inquired of Interpol, at one point,

because Fred identified one of the victims as "the Dutch girl."

There was literally a flood of information.

-The inquiry was receiving calls from all over the country,

so there was a huge amount of work

with all these names coming up.

-One of the people that the police turned to

was Dr. David Whittaker, a forensic expert on dentistry,

and that became very significant.

**

-Dr. Whittaker had devised and perfected a process

whereby if he had a skull with teeth

and a photograph of the victim,

then by superimposing the photograph on the skull,

he could confirm their identity, and also, he was able to tell

how old they were within a month or so when they had died.

-The police have got literally a mountain of remains,

and they've got photographs of missing girls

and they've got skulls.

-Identifying these victims took thousands of police hours.

**

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

-The first victim to be identified was Lucy Partington,

a student who had gone missing in 1973, just after Christmas.

-Over 100 police searched the local parks and grounds.

There was a big poster campaign,

a big campaign through the media,

but that came to nothing.

**

-It's 20 years now, and clearly, if the last chapter

could be written, as it were,

it'd be slightly less of a burden to have on our minds.

**

-Fred confessed that he'd picked her up at a bus stop

the day after Boxing Day.

**

-It was a bitterly cold night.

She was waiting for a bus.

As it turned out, the bus was 10 minutes late,

and she was given a lift, she thought, home.

-Fred was convinced he was a lothario, and he would brag.

He claimed that they'd had a rampant two-month affair.

His explanation to the police

was that he didn't want Rose to find out about it,

and so he killed her and buried her in Cromwell Street.

**

**

During the investigation, the police discovered

that West had gone to A&E in Gloucester

about a week after Lucy Partington had disappeared.

He had a severe cut in his hand.

Now, I'm not in any doubt that that cut was a result of him

dismembering Lucy Partington's body.

He must have kept Lucy Partington alive

for some time in the cellar at Cromwell Street,

probably immobile.

May well been bound, may well have been gagged.

It's almost too awful to contemplate

what must have happened.

It is...horrifying beyond words.

**

**

-Carol Ann Cooper, picked up on the side of the road,

killed in Cromwell Street.

Therese Siegenthaler was hitchhiking across Europe.

Fred called her "the Dutch girl."

In fact, she came from Switzerland.

Shirley Hubbard was the youngest at 15,

disappeared from a bus stop in Worcester.

-We now have hitchhikers identified as victims...

all buried while Fred lived at Cromwell Street.

**

It becomes increasingly clear that Fred has essentially

been...trawling the streets of Gloucestershire

looking for victims.

Fred was effectively a poacher on the loose,

looking for prey who could be enticed back to Cromwell Street.

Many were people who were on the edge, the fringe of society.

Not a lot of people would come looking for them.

Some of the girls who became victims

had been lodgers in Cromwell Street.

-Juanita Mott, another local girl.

We know that she went to Cromwell Street.

She disappeared off the face of the earth.

And Alison Chambers,

who Fred described as a friend of Shirley Robinson,

who was, in fact, a lodger.

Linda Gough -- Linda got to an age

where she wanted to spread her wings,

told her parents that she was working as a nanny

with a nice family.

When her mother went to check on her,

she saw Rose West wearing some of Linda's clothes.

It's inconceivable that these girls could have been

kept in that cellar without Rose knowing.

It's just beyond belief that she was not involved.

-There was always something to weave all these girls together,

and that one thing... was Fred and Rose.

**

**

-There were undoubtedly many involved in the investigation

who wanted Rose arrested and charged, as well.

-But Fred is still insisting

that Rose had nothing to do with it

and it was all him.

-Everyone felt some empathy for her, thinking,

"Oh, God, she's been living with this monster,

and she didn't know."

And then after a while,

when we knew more details about the murders,

people then began to conclude,

"Well, come on, she must have known.

She must have been part of this."

**

**

-I did a lot of research on Rose's background.

It looked like a very nice upbringing,

but behind closed doors,

there was something very different.

Her father, Bill, was an absolute monster.

This very, very violent, man --

every day, in the most terrible ways.

He'd throw stuff at the wall.

**

Hit his wife, hit the children.

But Rose had a way of making her father, Bill, laugh,

so she was spared all that

because he saw something else in her.

**

And so from quite a young age, he began to groom her.

She would just drop her dressing gown,

walk around naked in front of him.

Rose had been completely sexualized at a very young age.

It was appalling.

**

In the year that Rose was 15,

her sister asked her to look after the mobile caravan

where they would serve teas and coffees

to people who were working in the area.

And she'd off and disappeared

and was having sex with these men.

-One of the things that Rose learned as she was growing up

was that she could use sex to manipulate men.

-Remember, she'd been abused.

She became a sexualized object

and will be marked with it so that it will never go away.

**

-Fred and Rose met at the bus stop in Cheltenham.

She said that he had gunky teeth.

His teeth were slightly green,

but when he went and sat next to her on the bus

and engaged her in conversation,

she said that he could have charmed the bees from the trees.

-They met in 1969.

Fred was considerably older than Rose.

He was 27.

She was 15.

They married 12 months later.

Went to live together on a caravan site.

**

-Rose's upbringing from a distance

looked different to Fred's, but it really wasn't.

So when they met on the bus,

it was an accident waiting to happen,

a perfect storm.

-Fred West empowered Rosemary.

We know that in her background, sexual activity

was something that she used to pacify men around her.

Frederick West lifted her from that

so that he took her from being an object

and made her a partner.

**

**

-It was Rose who had the really voracious appetite

for aggressive, hardcore sex, hardcore porn, hardcore BDSM,

and Fred was quite happy watching her.

**

-Fred had drilled little holes,

peep holes, because Fred was nothing if not a voyeur.

Fred took out adverts in local publications

advertising Rose's services.

**

He liked to watch people having sex...

and his favorite performer was his wife, Rose.

-It was something that she and Frederick shared.

This was her pleasing him, as well.

She's giving him something that he couldn't ordinarily expect.

He is a voyeur to what is literally happening feet away,

and Rosemary is giving him this as a gift.

-She didn't care if she had sex with men or women.

If she wanted to do something, he'd let her do it,

but it didn't make her a killer.

**

-During the investigation, the police come across a case

which throws a totally different light...

on Rosemary West.

**

**

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

-Caroline Owens knew the Wests

because she spent some time with them as a lodger,

but she'd moved out.

And then, as luck would have it, one day,

they saw Caroline hitchhiking on the side of the highway.

**

Rose was in the car with Fred.

Caroline gets into the car.

It's a two-door car,

so Rose has to adjust the seat and gets into the back with her.

Soon after that, Rose starts fondling her.

Caroline objects to this.

Fred punches her in the face,

basically knocks her unconscious.

When she comes round, she's in Cromwell Street,

and then the nightmare really begins.

**

-She was bound.

She was held captive.

She was beaten with a leather belt in her genitalia.

She was raped by both Frederick and Rosemary West.

And then, one of the things happened

that changed everything for the future --

she escaped.

**

**

[ Siren wails ]

-Caroline wasn't treated particularly well by the police.

They probably had the attitude of,

"Well, you're a girl on your own.

It's your own fault."

And so she decided to go with the lesser charges,

and she wouldn't have to give the same degree of evidence.

-The Wests were convicted

basically of an indecent assault,

and they were only fined £25.

-Which is just ludicrous.

The fact that Caroline Owens escaped was a mistake --

a mistake that would come back to haunt them.

**

**

-There is a progression in the offending career of the Wests.

In the early stages,

Fred West would tend to operate singly

when he was acquiring his victim.

In the middle stages,

you see the abductions from the street.

It's high-risk.

Of course, with a woman in the car,

the potential hitchhiker or person at the bus stop

would have a different attitude.

We know that a woman in the car means it's much safer, don't we?

How wrong could you be?

They get past that by taking people into their own home,

the lodgers.

Then you move on.

As that begins to wane, remember,

these are creative people.

These are people who look for new experiences.

They turn their attention to their own children.

**

-Fred's attitude to his children,

especially the girls, is that it was the father's right

to teach them about everything in life,

and even that being sex.

-It's important here to understand

that Rose isn't just a bystander.

She's fully involved in guiding what's happening,

so in a sense, they are seeding the future.

**

**

-I was in my bedroom,

and it was the middle of the night.

And I heard Heather screaming,

"Stop it, Daddy, stop it, Daddy!"

I thought Heather was being chastised for being naughty.

Then I was told... by one of the children

that it was Fred's right to...

I think the words were "break his daughters in."

It took me a little bit of time to put two and two together,

and then I realized what they were saying.

I always sit and think to myself, "If I'd reported it,

would anything ever have been done?"

And I always answer myself, "No.

I was a runaway.

Nobody would believe a runaway."

-It's thought that what happened at Cromwell Street

was all behind the facade of a family home,

but, of course, it never was a family home.

It was a pleasure dome for Rosemary and Frederick West.

-I couldn't listen to that anymore,

so I made the decision to leave.

But I made the decision not to tell them.

I was frightened to tell them,

so I left it until the day that I was leaving.

And I said, "My rent is due today,

but I'm actually moving out."

To which Rose said, "When?"

I said, "Now."

She seemed a bit shocked.

Shirley knew I was leaving.

I told her my decision.

I said to her, "I'll keep touch.

I'll come back when I know baby's due."

And she waved to me as I left.

**

And that was the last I saw of her.

**

[ Siren wails ]

-Fred West always said all along that it was just him.

He didn't want to implicate Rose.

He just wanted to keep her sweet

for when he came out from serving his sentence.

-Fred had a notion that Rose

would come and visit him in prison,

that she'd have a rather lovely little cottage close by,

that she'd cook him something nice,

and it would all be terribly charming and lovey-dovey.

[ Siren wails ]

-Police still have no direct evidence

linking Rose to the murders.

Nevertheless, the case of Caroline Owens

and the joint abduction and the joint abuse

by both Fred and Rose

convinced them that they should charge them both.

They were gonna use that as the lever

to convince the jury that they were partners in crime.

"Look at what had happened before,

and look at what happened now."

It was what was called in court similar fact evidence.

**

**

-Frederick West, minutes away

from a reunion with his wife, Rosemary,

is driven into Gloucester Magistrates Court.

She arrived moments later,

this the first time they'd seen each other

since they were arrested four months ago.

**

-When I went into the court, it was heaving with people.

Rose was brought to the left-hand side,

and Fred came up the steps on the other side.

I remember looking at her and then looking at him,

and as soon as he approached there, he looked at Rose,

sort of like...

to give her a sort of a -- and she went like that.

She literally dropped her head and blanked him.

-Every single pair of eyes,

and there were a lot of them in that courtroom,

was focused, laser-focused, on her reaction.

That day was the moment that we all realized

things were about to change.

**

[ Projector whirring ]

**

-West had seen them -- himself and Rosemary --

as a pair, as united.

But she is seeing this as a lifeline.

"Maybe if I can help the world to know that I was coerced,

that I was pushed into it, maybe it will go better for me."

He knows now that all of their previous fantasizing

is coming to nothing.

**

-Fred is mortified and in a fit of pique,

goes back to the police station, changes his story completely,

says it's no longer him.

He didn't do it. He just buried the bodies.

Someone else did it, and that someone else was Rose.

**

**

-There was a huge sense of anticipation ahead of the trial.

These are a married couple, Britain's worst serial killers,

and that they were gonna be in the dock together,

fighting each other,

really was gonna be the trial of the century.

-Detectives had a long conversation

with the governor of Winson Green Prison

and said Fred is a prisoner at risk.

He will potentially try and take his own life.

You must guard him very, very carefully.

**

-Rose West was kept in

the segregation unit at Holloway,

which means she was separated

from the rest of the prison population.

She had a cell to herself...

about 8 or 9 foot long and about 3 1/2, 4 foot wide.

It wasn't a luxurious cell by any stretch of the imagination.

Rose liked spending money at the canteen --

confectionary, biscuits, that sort of thing.

She asked the governor for permission to have

plastic knitting needles, which was agreed,

although she had to hand them out

every night before lights-out.

Child murders are seen as the lowest of the low,

and other prisoners knew that she was down there

and would call out, shouting obscenities.

[ Indistinct shouting ]

**

-I was at my sister-in-law's house for the New Year,

and, uh...I was sat there, and pager went off.

[ Pager beeping ]

"Wow.

Fred's killed himself."

-Prison guards found West hanging in his cell

at Winson Green on New Year's Day.

Postmortem results have confirmed Frederick West died

from a starvation of oxygen to the brain caused by hanging.

-Everyone was absolutely livid.

The nationwas livid.

Fred had cheated justice, which is a travesty.

-It was just shocking,

but then, that shock turned to anger quite quickly

because how on earth can one of the most high-profile prisoners

this country has ever had

be allowed to commit suicide ahead of his trial?

-He hanged himself and took the coward's way out.

**

-I got a phone call from the duty governor

saying that Fred West had committed suicide

at Winson Green Prison,

and he was coming down to tell Rose.

And it was literally two steps from my office

to Rose's cell door.

I opened her cell door, said, "Rose, the duty governor's here.

He has something he needs to speak to you about."

She was on her bed knitting.

He said, "Rose, I'm really sorry to have to tell you this,

but Fred has committed suicide."

There was nothing from Rose -- no exclamation, no tears --

but there was just a glint,

a flicker of emotion in her eyes,

almost pleasure that Fred had died

because she now thought that,

"If Fred's dead, they've got nothing on me."

-She was a psychopath.

There would be that sense of relief.

"He's gone.

Thank goodness for that."

-Was Rose about to get away with murder?

**

**

-With Fred now dead, there is every suggestion

that any case against Rose will just fall.

Fred was the vital cog, and there's a real danger

that Rosemary West will never come to trial.

-Legal experts say any statements made by West

before he died are now inadmissible as evidence.

According to Rosemary West's solicitor,

the case against her, which he claims was flimsy,

is now even flimsier.

**

-The police redouble their efforts to make sure

that Rose is not gonna escape justice.

And in particular, they take the look at the death

of Charmaine, Rena's daughter, in 1971.

**

-Fred always claimed that he had killed Charmaine

after murdering his first wife, Rena,

but the police knew from Fred West's records

that he'd served another term of imprisonment

for petty burglary in 1971...

roughly the time that Charmaine was murdered.

**

Rose was Charmaine's surrogate mother.

They didn't get on well.

When Charmaine disappeared, the school that she went to

wanted to know why she was no longer in class.

Rose told them that she'd gone away with her mother, Rena.

So the focus now falls on Rose.

**

Police went back to Dr. Whittaker

to see if they could get a more accurate time frame

on when Charmaine was actually killed.

They were able to get a photograph

which was taken when Charmaine was at school...

and he was able to superimpose

the photograph that he'd obtained

on the skull that the police had recovered.

Dr. Whittaker was able to tell within a matter of days,

weeks maximum, that, in his opinion,

Charmaine was alive on a certain date

when Fred West was in prison,

and she was dead on a date when Fred West was still in prison.

-It was a little bit more complicated than that

because he gives them a date in June

but with a two-week window on either side,

so it's not absolutely conclusive.

**

-Rose West stood trial at the start of October 1995.

She was charged with 10 murders --

all of the murders at Cromwell Street,

plus the murder of Charmaine.

There were queues to get into

the public gallery every morning.

It was, like, the hottest ticket in town.

-There was a great deal of apprehension

from the officers who had been involved in the case

because it was almost a 50/50.

What would happen if she was found innocent?

What a travesty that would be.

-The most telling testimony

came from Rose's other stepdaughter, Anna Marie.

Anna Marie had to divulge the most personal details

of the way that Fred and Rose

had sexually abused her down the years,

and Caroline Owens told her story of

how she bore the guilt as the one who got away.

**

-It emerged that a number of prosecution witnesses

took money from newspapers to tell their story,

and of course, when you do that,

it's very easy for the defense to say,

"Well, how are we supposed to believe what you're saying?

Your story has been embellished."

-This was a case with Caroline Owens,

who had told police investigators

that Rose was complicit,

and when it was put to her that it was in her interests

that Rose West was found guilty, she wept openly

and she said that she was telling her story

because she wanted justice for the women

and girls that had been killed by Fred and Rose West.

**

I think everyone was surprised that Rose took the stand.

The defense probably thought they had to do something.

It was possibly their last throw of the dice.

-Her evidence really fell into two parts.

One, "I couldn't possibly have done it

because I was pregnant all the time,"

and two, "Fred never told me anything."

-There were times when she appeared to shed a tear,

but then you could see that she'd actually

poked herself in the eye.

She was not a credible witness.

-As the trial of Rosemary West on 10 charges of murder

reaches its final phase,

Mrs. West was brought the quarter of a mile

from Winchester Prison to the city's Crown Court

to hear the judge, Mr. Justice Mantell,

summarize the evidence.

**

-There was a sense among the media

that if the jury came back

and convicted Rose of killing Charmaine,

there was every chance

that she would be convicted of the other crimes.

**

And that was one of the first verdicts returned.

She was found guilty of Charmaine.

**

The following morning,

the jury came back within half an hour

and convicted Rosemary West of all the other crimes.

Mr. Justice Mantell's words still ring in my ears.

"If attention is paid to what I say,

you will never be released."

Effectively, Mantell said,

"You will spend the rest of your life behind bars."

**

**

-I was with the support group.

We were in our van on patrol, and we had the radio on.

And it was announced that she'd been found guilty,

and everyone cheered because justice had been done.

-Frederick West was a farmyard killer...

and then he met Rosemary West.

It was her rage, her sexual lust,

that was unleashed.

What we don't know, really, is if she didn't have the venue,

the house and Frederick West there

to be her mentor and counselor,

would it have gone to the heights that it finally went to?

Their joining together took things to a place

that very few people can contemplate.

-There are very, very few man-and-wife killing teams...

and this was one of the most remarkable.

Even the Honeymoon Killers in the United States,

who killed in the '40s, the end of the '40s,

only had 4 victims, not 12.

**

-There was quite a public debate

about what should happen to 25 Cromwell Street.

There was some suggestion

that it should be turned into some sort of museum,

but the local council was never gonna let that happen.

And eventually... it was demolished.

**

-The West case, of course, was notorious,

and there wasn't a person in the country

who was not aware of it.

But do we know the whole truth

about what Fred and Rose West did?

I'm not sure we do.

I think a lot of secrets died with Fred West.

-I'm quite satisfied that there are,

as yet, victims who haven't been found,

and I know this is shared by investigators.

But they can't keep digging forever.

-Rose convinced herself so much

that she was nothing to do with those killings

and it was all Fred that she now believes it.

I mean, she believes she is innocent.

**

**

-There were many missed opportunities

to stop Fred and Rose.

They were hiding...

in plain sight.

-You had young women

who were simply falling off the edge of the world

in and around Gloucestershire,

but no one seemed to be asking the questions.

Why not? Because such things never happen.

"What are you talking about?"

"Some fantastic horror story?"

Well, yes, but nobody knew it was true.

-The legacy of the West case is to remind us all

of the capacity of man and woman to do the most evil deeds,

and present a bland face to the world.

But I do believe it's important to confront evil,

and not to sweep it under the carpet.

Fred and Rose West fundamentally threatened

our concept of family and innocence.

I think it cost this country its innocence.

**