Fred West

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Fred West
Fred and Rosemary in the mid 1980s
Born	September 29, 1941(1941-09-29) Much Marcle, Herefordshire, England, UK
Died	January 1, 1995 (aged 53) Winson Green Prison, Birmingham, England, UK
Penalty	committed suicide before trial
Status	deceased
Occupation	Labourer, abattoir worker
Spouse	Rosemary West

Frederick Walter Stephen West (29 September 1941 – 1 January 1995), better known as Fred West, was an English serial killer.

Between 1967 and 1987, he and his wife Rosemary tortured, raped and murdered at least 12 young women, many at the couple's homes. The majority of the murders occurred between May 1973 and September 1979 at the couple's home in Gloucester. Rose also murdered Fred's daughter Charmaine while he was serving a prison sentence for theft. Most of the victims were lodgers who lived relatively transient lives and whose disappearance would not attract great police attention, apart from the murder of Lucy Partington, which did.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 Marriage to Rena Costello 1.3 Marriage to Rosemary Letts 1.4 Investigation, arrest, and conviction 2 In popular culture 3 Further reading 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Fred West was born in Bickerton Cottage, Much Marcle, Herefordshire, to Walter Stephen West and Daisy Hannah Hill, a poor family of farm workers. He was the first of their seven children (Walter had been married before, in 1937 at the age of 23 to Gertrude Maddocks, who died after being stung by a bee in 1939).

It is believed that incest was an accepted part of the West household, and that his father taught him bestiality from an early age. Fred recalled, in police interviews, that his father had said on many occasions "Do what you want, just don’t get caught doing it".^[1].

At school, West did not excel, though he showed an aptitude for woodwork and artwork. He left school at the age of 15 in December 1956 and began work as a farm labourer. Two years later, in November 1958, he injured his head seriously in a motorcycle accident, which put him in a coma for eight days. He fractured his skull, broke his arm and leg. His family said that West's personality changed after this, and he became prone to sudden fits of rage, whereas he rarely lost his temper before. Two years later, he was unconscious for 24 hours after hitting his head in a fall from a building's fire escape.^[2]

He was fined for theft in Hereford in April 1961, and again in Newent in October 1961. In the same year Fred was 'kicked out of home' for sexually abusing a close family relative, it was believed that this was his sister, however, it was more likely a cousin. Although a strong history of sexual abuse in Rose's family has been proven, it never was in Fred's. He moved from the family home to live with an aunt a hundred yards away until he moved to Gloucester, where he took a job in a slaughterhouse.

During this period West worked as an ice cream van driver in Glasgow. On November 4, 1965, he accidentally ran over and killed a four-year-old boy with his ice-cream van. ^[3]

[edit] Marriage to Rena Costello

In November 1962, the 21-year-old West married his former girlfriend, Rena Costello, who was pregnant by an Asian bus driver. Her daughter, Charmaine, was born in March 1963, and in July 1964 Rena bore Fred a daughter named Anne-Marie. They all moved down to Gloucestershire at the end of 1965, when West feared for his safety after the boy in the ice cream truck incident was killed. In August 1967 West murdered Ann McFall, his 18-year-old girlfriend, who was 8 months pregnant with his child.

During the 1960's West and his family lived at a Caravan Park in rural Gloucestershire.

Whilst still married to Rena Costello, West met his next wife, Rosemary "Rose" Letts, on November 29, 1968; Rose's 15th birthday. On 17 October 1970, 17-year-old Rose gave birth to their daughter, Heather. Fred West was imprisoned for theft on 4 December 1970 until 24 June 1971.

[edit] Marriage to Rosemary Letts

After Heather's birth, and shortly before Fred's release, it appears that Rose killed Fred and Rena Costello's daughter, Charmaine. Rena Costello was killed in August 1971 by Fred West. On 29 January 1972, Fred and Rosemary married in Gloucester, and on 1 June that year, Rose gave birth to their daughter, Mae. Like Fred, Rose came from a family where incest was considered normal and even after the birth of her fourth child Rose's father, Bill Letts, with Fred's approval, would often visit the West's for sex with his daughter.^[4]

In December 1972 the Wests carried out a sexual assault on 17-year-old Caroline Roberts (then called Owens), and Fred West raped her.^[5] But she dropped that claim, and the following month the Wests were fined for assault, but not convicted.

Their only known victim after 1979 was their daughter, Heather, who was killed in June 1987 at the age of 16, though the police believe the couple murdered many more people. There were no recorded murders between 1975 and 1978, and 1979 and 1987 and then up to August 1992, after which the murders almost certainly stopped. During questioning after being arrested, Fred West had confessed to murdering up to 30 people, but the police have yet to name any more suspected victims, even though the police and several crime experts have spoken of their doubt that the 12 known victims were the only ones killed by the pair. This is mainly due to the fact that they were known to have killed seven people in six years, but only one in the 14 years preceding their final arrests in February 1994.

[edit] Investigation, arrest, and conviction

In May 1992, West raped his 13-year-old daughter at Cromwell Street and filmed it, and then raped her twice afterwards. She discussed the incident with her brothers and sisters, who told friends at school. On 6 August 1992, the police decided to investigate, eventually leading to Fred West being charged with 12 counts of murder, with Rose as an accomplice. She was also charged with child cruelty, and the remaining children were placed in foster care. The rape case against the Wests collapsed when the two main witnesses declined to testify at the court case on June 7, 1993 but for the Wests, the damage had been done. The inexplicable disappearance of their daughter Heather, six years earlier, was a mystery that the Police vowed to solve. After taking statements from the social workers, about the joke about "Heather being buried under the patio" and the children themselves, they obtained a further search warrant in February 1994, allowing them to excavate the garden in search of Heather. They started searching the house and excavating the garden on February 24, 1994.

After Fred's arrest, the following day, the police uncovered human bones.^[6] West confessed, retracted and then re-confessed to the murder of his daughter, denying that Rose was involved. Rose was not arrested until April 1994, initially on sex offences but later charged with murder. Further bodies were found and, on March 4, 1994, West admitted that he had carried out nine more murders, including those of his first wife and Ann McFall.

Fred and Rose West were brought before a magistrates court in Gloucester on June 30, 1994; Fred was charged with 11 murders and Rosemary with 10. Immediately afterwards, Fred West was re-arrested on suspicion of murdering Ann McFall, whose body was found on June 7, 1994. On the evening of July 3, 1994, he was charged with her murder.

On January 1, 1995, Fred West committed suicide whilst on remand in his cell at Winson Green by hanging himself. His brief funeral was held in Coventry on March 29, 1995. West was cremated with only three people present.

The evidence against Rose was circumstantial; unlike her husband, she did not confess. She was tried in October 1995 at Winchester Crown Court, found guilty of all 10 murders and sentenced to life imprisonment.^[7] The trial judge recommended that she should never be released, and 18 months later Home Secretary Jack Straw agreed with this recommendation.

In October 1996, the Wests' house, along with the adjoining property, was demolished and the site made into a pathway. Every brick was crushed and every timber was burnt to discourage souvenir hunters.

[edit] In popular culture

• Harold and Fred (They Make Ladies Dead) was a 2001 comic strip in Viz, also featuring serial killer Harold Shipman. Extracts from the strip were subsequently merchandised as a coffee mug. Viz also featured a spoof advertisement for 'Little Ted West,' a "collectors' item" teddy bear with the hair and clothes of Fred West, which came complete with a teddy-scale shovel.
• The crime served as a loose basis for the ninth episode of the fourth season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, titled "Resilience."
• In a 1998 interview with Charlie Rose, English novelist Martin Amis revealed that his cousin Lucy Partington, who disappeared in 1973, was a victim of Fred West and his wife.
• In the Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps episode "Croppity Crops", Johnny is planning on self-sufficiency and compares himself to "that guy off the telly, from the '70s -- always in the garden, curly hair" (meaning Tom from The Good Life.) "Fred West?" says Kelly. "That's the one", replies Jonny.^[8]
• In a 2003 Halloween edition of The Now Show on Radio 4, when the cast were suggesting up-to-date costumes for trick-or-treating, Fred and Rose West were among the names mentioned. Others included Osama bin Laden and Michael Howard.^[9]

[edit] Further reading

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• THE WEST MURDERS: DMP (Transcripts of interviews of Fred West & other related people)
• MEDIA INFORMATION PACK (detailed report by police)
• CourtTV Crime Library- Fred and Rosemary West
• A Horror Story by Theodore Dalrymple