Authors: Paul Britton
All too frequently, children are exposed to pornography and, in particular, pictures and literature with a coercive element. They may find that they become sexually aroused by seeing images of women being bound or hurt and they begin to associate coercion and dominance with pleasure.
Any or all of these factors will be in Fred West’s background but he’s not alone in having experienced them; they occur in many people’s lives but for the vast majority of them, the wider social experiences of extended family, important friendships, school and their contact with the world are sufficient to compensate for these developmental deficits and to resocialize the growing child. In this way, they come to fear the consequences of serious wrongdoing.
However, in a very small number of cases this doesn’t happen and we are left with a young man who isn’t bound to society or its rules. He feels neither the warmth of genuine emotional empathy nor the repugnance of causing pain. At the same time he has a strong sexual need and a widening gap between the sexual contact he manages to find and his growing urge to control and dominate his partners.
Over time, he becomes more forceful in pushing his demands on women. He won’t describe this as coercion or regard it as rape because he has no feelings other than his own. It doesn’t matter what the woman thinks or says. ‘I want it now and she’ll go along with it,’ he thinks. Soon, however, this isn’t enough and he needs even more control. In most relationships men and women place demands on each other such as fidelity and not being taken for granted. Mr West isn’t able to take this responsibility and is annoyed when someone expects it of him.
At some point he kills a woman, perhaps because she makes too many demands and becomes an irritation. Maybe she’s pregnant and asks him, ‘What are we going to do?’
‘What do you mean “we”?’ he says. ‘Well, you got me pregnant.’
‘Listen, we had sex together. I liked it and it didn’t do you any harm, so what’s the problem?’
But it is a problem, so he kills her because there is no reason why he shouldn’t as far as he’s concerned. It’s no different to putting a stray dog down. By the same token, he knows that he’ll be sent to prison if caught, so he buries the body and makes up a story to cover her disappearance. This is how Mr West eventually explained all his murders to the police and, from everything I knew about him, killing for convenience was very likely to be his early motivation. However, given what was done to the later victims in Cromwell Street, it’s clear that a watershed was reached during one of these convenience killings … he became excited.
As he took hold of her, perhaps putting his hands around her throat, he saw her face distort and the terrible fear in her eyes. And as he squeezed her windpipe, he realized that he had an erection and his arousal became greater and greater as the woman struggled and died. It’s not simply the act of killing that excites him, but her response to being killed. It is the terrified look on her face, knowing that there is absolutely nothing she can do; she is completely at his mercy.
Although he won’t necessarily have a rich detailed fantasy of what happened, Frederick knows that it felt sexually wonderful - so good that he wants to do it again. Even the disposal of the body is pleasurable because he can do what he likes to it. He can have sex with the passive corpse - not necessarily because it is different or particularly pleasurable but because it further demonstrates his power. The same is true of dismembering the body and concealing it. This was a new experience for him and later, when he masturbates, the image will come up again and again in his mind.
Meanwhile, he carries on with his life - working, drinking with his mates, offering his help when they need a hand to build a patio, or paint their house. He doesn’t feel remorse - the word means nothing to him. No-one suspects or confronts him because he has a very loose social network of friends and acquaintances who drift in and out of his life. He lives in a caravan and has the space to operate in without attracting unwanted questions. For this reason, no-one raises the alarm when his first wife Rena Costello goes missing in 1969. Why should they? After all, Fred is a nice chap.
Eventually, he takes up with a young girl, Rosemary Letts, fifteen, who has already experienced the world of sex. Her personality is not as fully formed as his, although within two years she, too, is a fully fledged sexual sadist.
There are two possible pathways to this. The first is that sexually she is effectively a blank canvas and when she fell under his control he simply painted the picture of the person he wanted her to be. The other possibility is that she already had a sadistic streak that would have been manifest in her own early life perhaps through cruelty to animals and to those around her.
Many of the factors that set Frederick on the path to becoming a sadistic sexual murderer will also have been present in Rosemary’s childhood. She, too, had grown up without adopting or acknowledging the moral strictures which make sadism repugnant and inhuman to most of us. In all likelihood, she hadn’t experienced the feelings of warmth and reward that come from mutually consenting and caring sexual intimacy and this left her pliable.
The precise reason doesn’t alter what then happens. She is drawn to Fred and in the early stages is probably quite passive - a turn-on for a man who more than anything else wants to control. She is open to whatever he puts before her and doesn’t find herself responding with repugnance. To begin with, they possibly act out scenes of domination and humiliation, not for real but like many ordinary couples who might dress up in provocative clothes and play sexual games.
Then, in just the same way that a man might introduce his girlfriend or wife to his hobby - for example, ballroom dancing - Fred acquaints Rose with his pastime. He opens the door to sadism and discovers that they enjoy the same ‘music’ and ‘dance steps’, only in this case the ‘music’ they hear is the screaming and pleading of dying young girls.
The key to all that follows is that Rose responds with delight and sexual excitement. She discovers that her own sadistic potential can be unleashed and revelled in by Fred. For her, this form of sexual expression makes up for all of the emptiness in her early life.
Under his tuition, Rosemary learns quickly and becomes as good a ‘dancer’ as he is and probably better. She can hear far more subtle rhythms and beats in the ‘music’ and begins to produce new ideas and new steps. What was once quite crude becomes refined and they both begin to devote more and more of their life towards their deviant dancing until it becomes the centre of their being.
By the time Caroline Owens is abducted in 1972, it is Rosemary who seems to be choreographing the torture and abuse as well as being directly involved. She is the first to start kissing Caroline in the back seat of the car without any direction or urging from her new husband.
Frederick has found a soulmate - someone who shares all his needs, hopes and fantasies - and it becomes the most important relationship in his life.
Rosemary’s sexuality grows, flowers and becomes rapacious. Although quite capable of an orgasmic relationship with her husband, it’s not enough, she wants new foods and flavours. She takes a succession of partners, perhaps both men and women, but even with another lover in her arms, her husband is part of the act because the sex enriches them both. He procures, introduces and approves her lovers; listening and watching what goes on.
They begin to turn their home into a playground - it’s not a torture chamber or a dungeon, for them it’s a theme park separated from the rest of the world where it’s safe for them to experiment. By now, neither is passive, both have a gnawing need to control, dominate and inflict pain.
This is how they measure their reason for being.
They practise and develop a methodology, discussing how to capture people and confine them. And then one day they pick up a young girl. Exactly how she is lured into Mr West’s car may never be known. However, the case history gives some clues.
Mr West knows where to find potential victims and has an image of what he’s looking for. She has to be young, perhaps with long hair, or full breasts, or wearing certain types of clothes. Or maybe she has a look about her that he can’t easily explain but when he sees her, his hormones begin racing and Mrs West’s sexual ambiguity attracts her to the girl.
If she appears passive they will know that this person will be so terrified they can play on her fear and reach notes that they’ve never heard before. Or if she is proud and resistant, they will revel in the knowledge that they can reduce her to a pleading, compliant bundle and, then literally, to a pile of flesh and bones.
How does he get her into the car? When Rosemary is with him, it’s easy. The young woman sees a woman in the car and relaxes; after all, sexual assailants don’t come with their wives, do they?
‘Look my wife is ill, can you help?’
‘She’s having a baby and we’re lost.’
‘It’s dangerous walking at night, can we give you a lift?’
The number of ploys are endless. All that has to happen is that she comes within arm’s reach. Mr West is strong and brutal; he can easily drag her into the car and quickly tape her head and hands.
Or perhaps he uses the long confidence trick, chatting to the girl after she accepts a lift. The casual conversation adds to his pleasure because he gets to know a little bit of her history.
Then, in a blitz attack, her head is taped and hands are bound. She is taken to Cromwell Street and abused during the journey because the temptation is too difficult to resist.
The anticipation is joyous. Mr and Mrs West have managed to capture someone, which in itself gives them an enormous sexual buzz. The thrill is so intense that in the early murders the torture and abuse could well have been over quite quickly. They rushed the killing and for days afterwards savoured the pleasure.
As time goes by they extend the process and get as much as they can from each victim. They learn that you don’t have to kill someone straightaway - you can delay it, teasing it out and heightening the pleasure. Each time, their methodology is refined and improved upon.
We know from the abduction of Caroline Owens that they talked of surgical intervention and operating on her genitalia. Although horrifying to contemplate, I would expect they did, indeed, begin ‘operating’ on victims, explaining what they were doing and talking to each other as it took place.
We know that six of the victims were found with evidence of having been gagged or having had their heads completely taped. One of these ‘masks’ was found with a narrow plastic tube inserted into the front and bent upwards to enter the nostril. Not only did it keep the victim alive but it gave the Wests a way of introducing things into her body. We also know that their victims were found naked, dismembered and with evidence of bindings within the burial pits. Given the other evidence, they were most likely suspended, beaten, physically mutilated and used sexually by both husband and wife.
At some point in the process, skin was probably bitten and blood began to flow. Flesh was cut away possibly before and after death. A meal can be a very special event. People dress up, have a glass of wine, sit at a neatly set table and eat a nicely prepared dinner. It’s a shared experience. Of course, I can’t be absolutely certain that cannibalism took place, but the unusual scraping marks on the long leg bones make it a very strong probability.
This is supported by what we know about sexual psychopaths and their crimes. Some stop when they reach a particular plateau of sexual pleasure that is gained from a particular set of stimuli. With Mr and Mrs West there is no evidence of this - only a constantly escalating and growing need. When people have a continual desire for new excitement and to reach new heights, they introduce fresh elements into their repertoire. In a case where you have a couple who embark on a pathway of degradation, humiliation, sadism, control and murder, it is but a small step to go on to something like cannibalism.
Mr and Mrs West buried their ‘treasures’ close - in the cellar and the garden. Just as someone takes great care in selecting and hanging pictures in a room, they took similar care with placement of the bodies. The masturbatory return is important to them; it is reassuring to be able to go down to the cellar and lie on a child’s bed, knowing what lies eight feet below.
What people find most difficult to understand is that this couple were able to live in the ordinary world as good neighbours, who may have had their idiosyncrasies but in the main seemed to be like anyone else; yet at the same time - in parallel - they existed in a dimension that very few people could conceive of as being real at all. What happened to these young women is probably beyond the ability of most horror writers to imagine let alone describe.
This is what prevents people from understanding. They can’t readily grasp the intense pleasure, joy and exhilaration that Frederick and Rosemary gained from the terror and dying of their victims. For a sadistic sexual psychopath enough is never enough. The urge for discovery and expansion goes on and on and doesn’t stop.
It showed in their dealings with their own children. Here were home-grown human beings they had complete control over; valuable assets which could be realized. And while Mr and Mrs West were cautious during their abductions, they became increasingly reckless in what they did with their children. Other people like teachers and social workers were bound to become involved eventually.
Back at the station, I spent more than an hour explaining my conclusions to John Bennett and Terry Moore. Afterwards, in a quiet corner of the Police Social Club I met for an update with the interview team. Beer was on offer but I opted for lemon and lime because of the long drive home.
West had come to acknowledge more about the crimes - accepting that the bodies were bound - but refused to admit suspending or torturing victims. In the same way he was still desperately resistant to the notion of implicating his wife.
‘How can that be?’ asked Bennett. ‘If he’s this psychopath, why isn’t he saying, no it’s not me it’s her? That’s what she’s doing - she’s been saying, “If anything happened, it’s Fred’s doing.” Why is he protecting her?’