In January of 1968, Rose and other girls of the community began to fear for their safety. A fifteen-year-old girl named Mary Bastholm disappeared from a bus stop in Gloucester. Mary had been on the way to visit her boyfriend, carrying a Monopoly set. All that the police found at the bus stop were a few pieces of the Monopoly set. The disappearance was thought to be linked to several other rapes in the area.

Rose was cautious for awhile, but her boredom and loneliness drove her to seek out male companionship. On one occasion, an older man, who had taken advantage of her naïveté, raped her.

Early in 1969, Daisy Letts became tired of being her husband's punching bag, took fifteen-year-old Rose, and moved in temporarily with her daughter Glenys and her husband. Without her father watching her, Rose spent a lot of time out at night. Her brother-in-law, Jim Tyler claimed that Rose carried on with a number of men much older than she was and that Rose had even tried to seduce him.

In mid-1969, Rose moved back with her father, an action that surprised everyone. Some said that Rose and her father had an incestuous relationship and that Bill Letts had a reputation for molesting young girls, but all of this was unsubstantiated rumor.

Thus in her early teens, Rose Letts seemed destined for a dull and unhappy life: she was not very smart and not very pleasant tempered. She was an underachiever, a rebel against authority and unfocused toward any productive goal, aside from finding a lover older than herself.

Then she met Fred West.
 

Love and Death

However limited Bill Letts was as an ideal parent, he saw Fred West as a completely undesirable boyfriend for Rose. When Bill found that Rose was sleeping with Fred, he raised a fuss with the Social Services. When that was ineffective, he showed up at Fred's trailer park and threatened him.

Meanwhile West was sent to prison for various thefts and failure to pay fines for previous offenses. Rose went back to stay with her father until he found that she was pregnant with Fred's child. At age 16, Rose left her father's house to take care of Charmaine and Anna Marie, as well as deal with Fred, who seemed to always be in trouble with the law.

In 1970, she gave birth to Heather. With three children to care for, a boyfriend in jail and constant money problems, Rose's temper flared constantly. She resented having to take care of Rena's children and treated them badly.

One day in the summer of 1971, Charmaine was suddenly missing and Rose told her sister Anna Marie that Rena had come to get her. Colin Wilson believes that Rose "simply lost her temper, and went further than usual in beating or throttling her. She was, as Anna Marie said, a woman entirely without self-control; when she lost her temper, she became a kind of maniac."

Since Fred was in jail when Charmaine was murdered, his involvement probably extended to burying her body under the kitchen floor of their home on Midland Road where it lay undiscovered for over 20 years. Before he buried Charmaine, he took off her fingers, toes and kneecaps. Fred would hold this criminal secret over Rose for the rest of her life.

When her father came to take her away from Fred, Fred reminded her: "Come on, Rosie, you know what we've got between us." Bill Letts noticed that that statement upset Rose. "You don't know him!" she told her parents. "You don' t know him! There's nothing he wouldn't do -- even murder!"

Gloucester had a large population of West Indians that created entertainment and extra income for both Rose and Fred. Rose invited many West Indian men over to their house on Midland Road to have sex with her -- either for cash or fun. Fred, the voyeur encouraged this behavior and watched through a peephole. As over-sexed as he was, Fred was not at all interested in ordinary sex. It had to involve bondage, vibrators, acts of sadism or lesbianism to get him involved. Fred took erotic photos of Rose and ran them as ads in magazines for "swingers."

When Rose murdered Charmaine, she created both a problem and an opportunity for Fred regarding his first wife Rena. It was just a matter of time before Rena came around looking for Charmaine. In fact, in August of 1971, Rena sought out Walter, Fred's father, in hopes that he could tell her what happened to Charmaine.

Fred saw that he had no choice but to kill Rena. In all likelihood, he probably got her very drunk and then strangled her at his house on Midland Road. He then dismembered her body and mutilated it in the same odd way that he had Anna McFall's body: he cut off Rena's fingers and toes. Then he put her remains into bags and buried her in the same general area as he buried Anna McFall.

Later that year, Fred and Rose became friendly with their new neighbor, Elizabeth Agius, who babysat for them several times. When Fred and Rose returned home, Elizabeth asked them where they had been. The surprisingly candid answer was that they were cruising around looking for young girls, hopefully young virgins. Fred thought that with Rose in the car that a young woman would not fear taking a ride with them. Elizabeth assumed at the time that they were joking. Another time, Agius was openly propositioned by Fred. And still another time, she was, according to Colin Wilson, drugged and raped.

In June of 1972, Rose had another daughter by Fred. They named her Mae West. This time, the child was legitimate, Fred and Rose having married in January of that year at the Gloucester Registry Office.

Fred and Rose decided they needed a house to raise their growing family and also accommodate Rose's prostitution business. Number 25 Cromwell was just the place. The house was not much to look at on the outside, but the inside was large and had a garage and a good-sized cellar. They took in lodgers to help pay the rent.

Fred had plans for the cellar and told Elizabeth Agius that he was either going to make it into a place for Rose to entertain her clients or he would soundproof it and use it as his "torture chamber."

The first client was his eight-year-old daughter, Anna Marie. He and Rose undressed her and told her that she was lucky that she had such caring parents who were making sure that when she got married she would be able to satisfy her husband. Anna Marie's hands were tied behind her and a gag put in her mouth.

Then while Rose held the girl down, her father raped her. The pain was so severe that the girl could not go to school for several days. She was warned that she would be beaten if she ever told anyone about the rape. Another time, Anna Marie was strapped down while her father raped her quickly on his brief lunch hour.

In late 1972, Fred and Rose picked up a 17-year-old girl named Caroline Owens and hired her as a nanny. They promised Caroline's family that they would watch out for her while she lived with them.

Caroline was very attractive, so much so that Rose and Fred competed with each other to seduce her. In short order, Caroline found the Wests repugnant and told them she was leaving. The couple abducted, stripped and raped her. Fred told her that if she didn't do what he wanted, "I'll keep you in the cellar and let my black friends have you, and when we're finished we'll kill you and bury you under the paving stones of Gloucester." Terrified, she believed him. When her mother saw her bruises, she got the truth from her and called the police.

There was a hearing in January of 1973. Fred was thirty-one and Rose a mere nineteen -- and pregnant once again. Fred was able to con the magistrate into believing that Caroline was a willing partner. Despite Fred's criminal record, the magistrate did not believe the Wests were capable of violence and fined them each.

For some time, the Wests had been carrying on a friendship with seamstress Lynda Gough. Eventually, Lynda moved into 25 Cromwell Street to take care of the children. Something went amiss in the relationship and Lynda was murdered. Fred dismembered her and buried her in a pit in the garage. True to his ritual, he removed her fingers, toes and kneecaps. When Lynda's family came looking for her, they were told that she had stayed there but had left.

A hideous pattern was emerging. Young women would come to stay at 25 Cromwell either as lodgers or friends or nannies, but so few ever made it out with their lives. The house was slowly becoming a monument to the depravity of its inhabitants.
 

House of Horrors

1973 was a year for the Wests to celebrate. They walked away from Caroline Owens' rape and abduction charge with only a fine and they murdered Lynda Gough with no police repercussions at all. Then in August, their first son, Stephen, was born.

Emboldened by their success, they abducted fifteen-year-old Carol Ann Cooper in November and amused themselves with her sexually -- that is, until she outlived her entertainment value and was snuffed out by strangulation or suffocation, dismembered and buried. She joined the growing city of the dead at 25 Cromwell Street.

Industrious Fred, persistent in his home improvements, had enlarged the cellar and was demolishing the garage to build an extension to the main house. No matter that these improvements were done at very strange hours.

A little over a month later, university student Lucy Partington had gone home to her mother's house to spend the Christmas holiday. On December 27, she went to visit her disabled friend and left to catch a bus shortly after 10 P.M. She had the misfortune to meet up with Fred and Rose, who probably knocked her out and abducted her. Like Carol Ann Cooper, she was tortured for approximately a week and then murdered, dismembered and buried in Fred's construction projects. He cut himself while dismembering Lucy and had to go to the hospital for stitches on January 3, 1974.

Lucy, like Carol Ann Cooper, was reported missing, but there was nothing to tie the two girls to the Wests.

Between April of 1974 and April of 1975, three young women -- Therese Siegenthaler, 21, Shirley Hubbard, 15, and Juanita Mott, 18, met the same fate as Carol Ann Cooper and Lucy Partington. Their tortured and dismembered bodies were buried under the cellar floor of the West's house.

Bondage was becoming a major thrill for Fred and Rose. Shirley's head had been wrapped entirely with tape and a plastic tube was inserted in her nose so that she could breathe. Juanita was subjected to even more extreme bondage:

Juanita was gagged with a ligature made from two long, white nylon socks (similar to those worn by Rose), a brassiere and two pairs of tights, one within the other. She was then trussed up with lengths of plastic-covered rope, of the type used for washing line. The rope was used in a complicated way, with loops tied around her arms and thighs, both wrists, both ankles and her skull, horizontally and vertically, backwards and forwards across her body until she could only wriggle like a trapped animal. Then the Wests produced a seven-foot length of rope with a slipknot end forming a noose. This was probably used to suspend Juanita's body from the beams in the cellar. (Sounes)

Incredibly enough with this charnel house in his cellar, Fred continued to attract the police with continuous thefts and fencing stolen goods. It was necessary for Fred to keep stealing to pay for his home improvement projects. His home improvement projects were necessary to keep the monstrous habits of his wife and himself covered up with layers of concrete.

In 1976, the Wests enticed a young woman, designated as Miss A by the courts, from a home for wayward girls. At Cromwell Street, Miss A was led into a room with two naked girls who were prisoners there. She witnessed the torture of the two girls and was raped by Fred and sexually assaulted by Rose.

One of the girls that Miss A saw was probably Anna Marie, Fred's daughter who was a constant target of the couple's sexual sadism. As if Fred's rape and torture of his daughter was not enough, he brought home his friends to have sex with her.

In 1977, the upstairs of the house had been remodeled to allow for a number of lodgers. One of them was Shirley Robinson, 18, a former prostitute with bisexual inclinations. Shirley developed relationships with both Fred and Rose. Shirley became pregnant with Fred's child after Rose was pregnant with the child of one of her black clients.

While Fred was pleased that Rose was carrying a mixed child, Rose was not comfortable with Shirley carrying Fred's child. Shirley foolishly thought that she could displace Rose in Fred's life and, in the process, jeopardized her own existence. Rose made it clear that Shirley had to go.

And go she did, seven months after Rose gave birth to Tara in December of 1977, Shirley joined the rest of the girls buried on Cromwell Street. The cellar being full, Shirley was put in the rear garden along with her unborn child. This time, Fred dismembered Shirley and their unborn baby.

In November of 1978, Rose and Fred had yet another daughter who they named Louise, making a total of six children in the bizarre and unwholesome household. Fred also impregnated his daughter Anna Marie, but the pregnancy occurred in her fallopian tube and had to be terminated.

In May of 1979, Rose's father died of a lung ailment. Several months later, the Wests were up to their old tricks and murdered a troubled teenager named Alison Chambers after they raped and tortured her. Like Shirley, Alison was buried in the "overflow" cemetery in the rear garden.

The children were aware of some of the goings on in the home. They knew that Rose was a prostitute and that Anna Marie was being raped by her father. When Anna Marie moved out to live with her boyfriend, Fred focused his sexual advances on Heather and Mae. Heather resisted her father and was beaten for it.

In June of 1980, Rose gave birth to Barry, Fred's second son. Then again, in April of 1982, Rose gave birth to Rosemary Junior, who was not Fred's child.

In July of 1983, Rose gave birth to another daughter who they named Lucyanna. She was half-black, like Tara and Rosemary Junior. Rose became increasingly irrational and beat the children without provocation. The stress of so many children in the household took its toll on Rose's already bad temper.

The Wests probably continued to carry on their sexual abductions, but did not bury any of these new victims at 25 Cromwell St.

In 1986, the wall of filial silence that has protected the Wests, was broken. Heather told her girlfriend about her father's advances, her mother's affairs and the beatings she received. The girlfriend told her parents, who were friends of the Wests, and Heather's life was in jeopardy.

After her parents murdered her, they told the children that she left home. Fred asked his son Stephen to help him dig a hole in the rear garden, where Fred later buried Heather's dismembered body.

Rose built up her prostitution business by advertising in special magazines. She and Fred were on the lookout for women who they could get to participate in their various perversions as well as prostitute herself under Rose's direction. One such woman, Katherine Halliday, became a fixture in the West household and saw first hand the black bondage suits and masks that they had collected, plus the whips and chains. With good reason, Katherine became alarmed and quickly broke off her relationship with them.

As time went on, Fred and Rosemary became increasingly concerned about creating a minimum façade of respectability, not because they cared what people thought of them, but because they were concerned that knowledge of what had gone on in their house would jeopardize their freedom.

The West's long run of luck was coming to an end. One of the very young girls that Fred had raped with Rose's assistance told her girlfriend what happened. The girlfriend went to the police and the case was assigned to a very talented and persistent Detective Constable named Hazel Savage. Hazel knew Fred from his days with Rena and remembered the stories that Rena had told her about Fred's sexual perversions.

On August 6, 1992, police arrived at 25 Cromwell Street with a search warrant to look for pornography and evidence of child abuse. They found mountains of pornography and arrested Rose for assisting in the rape of a minor. Fred was arrested for rape and sodomy of a minor.

Hazel Savage went to work interviewing family members and friends of the Wests. When she talked to Anna Marie, she heard for the first time the shocking story about how she had been so severely abused. She also expressed her concerns about Charmaine, who Hazel had known from her experiences with Rena.

Hazel had all she needed to bring child abuse charges, but she needed to further investigate the disappearance of Charmaine, Rena and Heather. Hazel was not satisfied that Heather had disappeared without a trace. Insurance and tax records showed that Heather had not been employed nor had she visited a doctor in four years. Either she had left the country or was dead.

The younger children were taken from Rose and put into government care. With Fred in jail and the police closing in on her, Rose took an overdose of pills and attempted suicide. Her son Stephen found her and saved her life. Later, she escaped from her loneliness by stuffing herself with candy and watching Disney videos.

Fred didn't do much better in prison. He was very depressed and sorry for himself. Actually, his luck was holding -- for the time being. The case against the Wests collapsed when two key witnesses decided not to testify against them. But the seeds of their discovery had been sown. The strange, inexplicable disappearance of Heather was firmly implanted in Hazel Savage's mind.

Hazel took over the case and launched an inquiry into Heather's whereabouts. When no sign of the girl was found, Hazel feared that that the rumor was true that Heather was buried under the patio. The West children were questioned repeatedly. Fred had threatened them that if they didn't keep their silence that they would end up under the patio like Heather.

Detective Superintendent John Bennett was in charge of the media-sensitive case. Finally the warrant to search the Cromwell Street house and garden was signed, but the logistics of digging up a fifteen by sixty-foot garden were nontrivial. Furthermore, Fred's extension to the house was built over a portion of the garden. The search would be very expensive and be certain to attract attention of the media.

Things improved for the investigation after Fred confessed to killing his daughter and after human bones other than Heather's were found in the garden. When Rose was informed of Fred's confession, she claimed that Fred had sent her out of the house the day Heather disappeared and had no knowledge of Heather's death.

The police set about the grim task of digging up the large garden. Fred had been released temporarily until there was evidence to hold him. But, as Fred watched the police dig up the garden, he knew it was a matter of time before they found Heather and the others buried in the rear garden.

Fred told his son that he had done something really bad and would be going away for awhile. Steve remembered that "He looked at me so evil and so cold. That look went right through me."

Finally the police found the remains of a young woman, dismembered and decapitated. Then another victim was found. When the police heard about the disappearance of Shirley Robinson, the scope of the investigation widened.

To protect Rose, Fred claimed responsibility for the murders himself. He was charged with the murders of Heather, Shirley Robinson and the as yet unidentified third woman. Furthermore, an investigation was opened into the disappearance of Rena and Charmaine. For some reason, Fred decided to tell the police about the girls buried in his cellar. Fred admitted to murdering the girls, but not rape. These girls, he maintained, wanted to have sex with him.

As Fred chatted about his murders, the police tried to grapple with the evidence. Lining up bodies with names was not an easy task. Nine sets of bones were discovered in the cellar and the police did not know whose they were. Fred was not much help since he could not remember the names and details of some of the women he had picked up. Considering the many women who go missing every year, extensive work had to be done to match up missing person's reports with the remains.

As the case developed, Rose abandoned Fred to save herself. She tried to position herself as the victim of a murderous man, but she was not particularly convincing. Police worked continuously to tie her in to the crimes.

The bodies of Rena, Anna McFall and Charmaine were found as Fred continued to cooperate with the police. On the Mary Bastholm case, Fred decided to quit cooperating and her body was not found.

At their joint hearing, Fred attempted to console Rose, but she avoided his touch. She told the police he made her sick. The great partnership in crime was over.
 

Endgame

Rose's rejection was devastating to Fred. On December 13, 1994, he was charged with twelve murders. Again, Rose brushed him off. He had written to her, "We will always be in love... You will always be Mrs. West, all over the world. That is important to me and to you."

Just before noon on New Year's Day at Winson Green Prison in Birmingham, when the guards were having lunch, Fred hanged himself with strips of bedsheet. He had clearly planned his suicide well in advance so that he would not be discovered.

Despite the paucity of direct evidence linking her to the murders, Rose went to trial on October 3, 1995. A number of witnesses -- including Caroline Owens, Miss A, and Anna Marie -- testified to Rose's sadistic sexual assaults on young women.

The goal of the prosecution, led by Brian Leveson QC, was to construct a tight web of circumstantial evidence of Rose's guilt. The defense, led by Richard Ferguson QC, tried to show that evidence of sexual assault was not the same as evidence of murder. That Rose did not know what Fred was doing when he murdered the girls and buried them in various places.

Ferguson made the mistake of putting Rose on the stand. Her defiance came through very clearly to the jury. Furthermore, the prosecution learned to extract damaging testimony from her by making her angry. She left the jury with entrenched beliefs that Rose had treated the children badly and that she was completely dishonest.

Finally the defense played the recordings of Fred West describing how he had murdered the victims when Rose was out of the house. Unfortunately for Rose, Fred was shown to be lying on key issues, which threw his entire statement into doubt.

The most dramatic evidence was given by Janet Leach, who was called as the "appropriate adult" (witness) to Fred West's police interviews. Privately, Fred had told her that Rose was involved in the murders -- and that Rose had murdered Charmaine and Shirley Robinson without him -- but that he made a deal with his wife to take all the blame on himself.

Janet was so stressed by this confidential confession that she suffered a stroke. It was only after Fred's death that she felt that she could tell the police what he had said to her. After her testimony, she collapsed and had to be taken to the hospital.

In his summary, Leveson called Rose the "strategist" and the dominant partner. "The evidence that Rosemary West knew nothing is not worthy of belief." Ferguson, in his summary, stressed that the evidence only pointed to Fred.

The jury took very little time to find Rose guilty of the murders of Charmaine, Heather, Shirley Robinson and the other girls buried at the house. The judge sentenced her to life imprisonment on each of ten counts of murder.

Bibliography

There are at least four paperback books written on Fred and Rosemary West.  None of these books are readily available outside of the U.K.  The Crime Library recommends the Howard Sounes book as the best overall story of the complete case.  Sounes was a reporter who broke the first major stories on the case.

Masters, Brian, She Must Have Known:  The Trial of Rosemary West.  London: Corgi Books, 1996.