Authors: Paul Britton
As far as the police were concerned the case seemed relatively straightforward. Three young women had been killed by Mr West who maintained that he had acted alone. His wife was on bail because they felt that Rosemary, at the very least, was an accomplice or was covering up for her husband. It wasn’t a question of there being more victims - the focus of the investigation was on Fred and the girls in the garden.
Later I met with Detective Constable Hazel Savage and Detective Sergeant Phil Onions who were conducting the interviews. Bennett and Moore made the introductions and we pulled several chairs around a formica-topped table in a large and deserted police canteen. Only two of a dozen fluorescent strip-lights were on, casting gloomy pools in the darkness.
Hazel Savage was in her late forties with short dark hair and glasses with heavy plastic frames. She had an intensity about her and I recognized a woman who had probably devoted her entire working life to the police and spent most of it as a constable.
As Bennett had explained to me on the way down, Hazel more than any other person was responsible for the digging. She had been involved in building the case against the Wests for abusing their children and had stayed in touch with the family afterwards. It was she who started asking questions about what had happened to Heather and began looking for the teenager, checking databases, talking to her friends and becoming close to her brothers and sisters. When one of them suggested that Heather was buried in the garden, Hazel stepped up her search and eventually convinced her superiors to get a search warrant.
As we sat and went over the details, I was struck by Hazel’s intimate knowledge of the family. It was far beyond what I would normally expect of a police officer and was more in the province of a social worker who had spent weeks or months of contact. It was obvious why the files held so much information about the family.
At every opportunity, as we talked, Hazel would interrupt and comment not just on facts but with opinions on how the different children felt about what had happened and to what extent they were frightened of their parents. This was unusual coming from a police officer and it was obvious that she was deeply, deeply involved. Yet I sensed a vulnerability in her. The precise shape of it wasn’t clear but her colossal personal investment in the case, while not necessarily unhealthy, could create problems.
‘What more can you tell me about Mr and Mrs West?’ I asked, looking for the fine nuances and subtle shadings that would reveal more about them.
‘He’s a queer ‘un,’ said Moore.
‘What do you mean?’
‘He’s more than happy for Rose to have sex with other men.’
Hazel said, ‘They have a bedroom on the top floor which is done out like a sort of bridal suite - there’s a four-poster bed specially carved. This is where Rose took her men friends. Whoever Fred brought home.’
‘Brought home?’
Bennett said, ‘It’s a form of quasi-prostitution.’
Hazel explained, ‘Fred would pick up men in local pubs and bring them home. There’s a room on the first floor that looks like the reception area of a brothel. It’s all done out in red velvet, with a hand-carved bar. Fred brings the chap in, pours him a drink, they get chatting and then Rose would take him upstairs to the four-poster bed.’
Moore said, ‘Fred listened to it all from the next room. We found video and listening equipment and some homemade pornographic tapes.’
‘There’s more,’ said Hazel, glancing at John Bennett. ‘Rose made the men use condoms. She used to save the sperm and then she and Fred would inject it into their daughters, trying to impregnate them.’
‘The genetic theories again,’ commented Bennett, raising an eyebrow.
They went on to describe how 25 Cromwell Street had become a boarding house during the 1970s when the upper two floors were converted into cheap bedsits and West would advertise the rooms in local newspapers and at the social security office. Dozens of teenagers and young people were believed to have passed through the address.
At the same time, Rosemary West also began advertising her services, using the name ‘Mandy Mouse’ in sex contact magazines.
Understandably, considering the deaths on the one hand and the history of the sexual assaults on the other, the police thought they were describing separate events and aspects of the Wests’ behaviour, but I didn’t see them as disconnected. I could see a continuous thread of profound depravity and sexual deviation; and no matter how terrible the current position appeared to be, I knew the reality would be far worse.
The three women in the garden may have died for the sake of convenience - because they got in the way or caused problems - but it takes an unusual kind of person to dismember a body; to cut through the flesh and sinew and bend back the joints until they break and separate.
We had a man who seemed to be relaxed, even blase when acknowledging that this is what happened. A man with a clear history of sexual aggression in partnership with his wife, including allegations in 1972 of abduction, rape, sadism, restraint, sexual torture, physical abuse and threats of killing. Twenty years later, we had evidence of gross sexual deviancy where their own children were systematically abused. In between, three women had died and been dismembered.
I felt a cold emptiness deep in my stomach. It happens every time I encounter a history with such features, because I know that there will be bad news for families and more work for the police.
‘What are we dealing with?’ asked Bennett. The faces around the table were concentrated on mine.
‘You are looking at evidence of predatory and sadistic sexual psychopathy,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen it before and dealt with it clinically but this case has a particularly dreadful feature. We have a combined depravity - a husband and wife whose energy bounces off each other, each legitimizing the actions of the other. They are both involved and are equal partners. They didn’t just kill for the sake of taking a life, their victims were playthings who were tortured and abused.’
I went on to explain the continual process which had a marker in 1972 with the attack on Caroline Owens and then, two decades later, the more refined sexual depravity with their children. There could not have been a silence in between, that’s not the way these things work. Mr West didn’t just wake up one morning and find he was a sexual psychopath. It starts early in life and it doesn’t end until either it burns out towards the end of the fourth or fifth decade of life - if it burns out at all - or until they get caught.
‘So what exactly are you saying?’ asked Bennett.
‘I’m saying that you are dealing with prolific murderers - what people now call serial killers. You have found only three of their victims.’
As the knowledge sank in, Bennett was the first to speak.
‘Let me be quite clear about this. There are missing girls all over the country; families who haven’t seen their children in years. If this gets out then every one of those families is going to be wondering …’
I was painfully aware of the consequences. Wounds would be opened that could literally never be closed for the families involved. If it is confirmed that their daughter is a victim, the uncertainty is ended, but then they simply step from one level of torment to another and begin speculating about what might have happened. Only in this case, I knew that they could never imagine the dreadful reality.
‘But where are they?’ asked Moore. ‘Where are these other victims?’
‘Everywhere he’s lived. Everywhere he’s worked,’ I said. ‘Sometimes sexual psychopathic murderers get comfortable with disposing of bodies in a particular way - some leave them in ditches, some put them in rivers, some bury them. Mr and Mrs West looked after them - they kept them close.’
‘So that’s why he used the back garden?’
‘Not exactly,’ I said. ‘He used the garden because the house is full. You should take it apart, every square inch, the floors, the walls, the roof. There’ll be more bodies, I’m sure of it.’
As they asked more questions, I tried to give them a suitable explanation but knew it wouldn’t be complete until I knew more about Mr and Mrs West and how they interacted. I talked about how their sexuality had developed in a way that blended powerful sexual desire with aggression and the need to dominate. ‘They derive pleasure from the pain and terror they instill in their victims and this is more important than any intercourse or sexual union, which may never actually occur. It’s not necessary,’ I said.
Bennett asked, ‘They were tortured?’
‘Almost certainly.’
Expelling a deep breath, he half closed his eyelids and leaned back.
‘How can you be sure?’
‘You’re dealing with people for whom the limits and features of what you and I would regard as ordinary sex have long ago dissolved. Enough is never enough. Even the act of dismembering the bodies is going to give these people pleasure.’
Moore said, ‘The press are going to have a bloody field day with this.’
Bennett replied, ‘No, they’re not. The lid stays on.’
The immediate task was to construct an interview strategy that would encourage Frederick West to talk freely and to hopefully reveal how these things came to happen. I asked the interview team how he had reacted so far - was he fighting them, or refusing to talk, or only conceding things when he knew the truth would come out? Did he boast of his exploits and see himself as someone unique who they hadn’t seen before?
‘Actually, he’s quite friendly,’ said Hazel. ‘He wants to be liked. If he thinks things are going well, he seems to enjoy himself.’
Phil Onions added, ‘He’s pretty well impervious to the physical side of it - not deeply troubled by hearing the gruesome details. He won’t talk about them.’
‘He doesn’t make admissions,’ interrupted Hazel, ‘although he’s got this thing about not lying to us - not directly anyway. It’s like when we asked him about Heather being under the patio and he denied it over and over again. Then when he realized we were going to keep digging till we found her, he sort of said, “Oh well, in that case, she’s not under the patio, she’s in the garden.” He didn’t want to be caught lying.’
This is one of the characteristics I expected.
‘You have to understand that Mr West is a man who has no desire to get it off his chest,’ I said. ‘He has managed to deal with the police and hold them off for years and years. He’s going to come across as a pleasant, almost avuncular figure, a little lost and bewildered. He seems to talk easily, enjoying the audience. He wants to be approved of and will never say, “I am a depraved sadistic sexual murderer and nothing pleases me more than taking women and torturing them.”
‘Mr West is not an intelligent man but neither is he stupid. He has killed for years and years and been involved in the legal process before. He knows precisely what he’s done but he also knows that the people interviewing him don’t and never will.’
My advice to the interviewers was to let him talk. Once he started, even though he was controlled and would steer them away from certain areas, he would keep talking and this would reveal details that could be used to construct later interviews.
I advised them to focus on open questions which invite Mr West to wax lyrical. They should avoid any show of repugnance or shock and be totally non-judgemental. ‘You can show disbelief but not in a disparaging way. He has to understand and know in his own mind that you’re interested in him and want to understand.’
I knew it would be a long process. There were layers that had to be peeled back that, hopefully, would eventually reveal not only what happened at 25 Cromwell Street, but elsewhere and also what had occurred over the years in Fred West’s life that had led him along this path.
It was after 10.00 p.m. when I left Gloucester Police Station armed with my own notes and the other materials available. I knew there was still a great deal to learn about Mr and Mrs West but one thing was painfully clear. Britain had stumbled onto a new pair of serial killers and the biggest question wasn’t why, or where - but how many?
In southeast London Mickey Banks was pressing for a national TV appeal to bring the Plumstead murders into the spotlight and produce a possible breakthrough. He had a very difficult investigation on his hands because of Samantha Bissett’s large number of friends and acquaintances - many of them with rather non-conventional lifestyles who were difficult to track down.
Even though Banks and his team were now convinced that they were looking for a stranger killer and a serial sex offender, they couldn’t simply look at the psychological profile and disregard the traditional pathways such as searching for jilted lovers, former boyfriends or family feuds. All of the usual avenues of investigation and conventional motivations for the murder had to be covered to guard against any future suggestion by a defence team that police targeted a particular suspect or type of suspect and failed to follow up other important leads.
Most of Samantha’s newer friends she had met through the local nursery and church groups, but she had also kept in touch with people from her past who tended to be more transient - living in squats, bedsits and caravans. Equally hard to find were the men who met her through contact magazines. Many of these services involved the advertiser having a prerecorded message and people being invited to ring in and leave their details. The numbers changed regularly and nobody kept copies of the tapes. Even so, detectives managed to take statements from more than 100 people who fell into this category and, in doing so, had to eliminate a thousand others.
Samantha had been establishing contacts that might have been leading her towards prostitution which meant that any one of these men could be a possible suspect. Because of her easygoing lifestyle and the legacy of her past, I knew that many men would perhaps view her sexually as being easily available.
Banks had talked to Crimewatch UK about doing a possible reconstruction but the initial response from the BBC had been lukewarm. Apparently, the producers felt there wasn’t enough detailed information to produce an accurate picture of events. This is the down-side to such a successful show. I’m sure that in its early days Crimewatch UK was probably grateful for any cases that the police put forward, but now it could pick and choose which crimes to cover.