Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers (18 page)

After a few months of this Rose had had enough. She left, taking Heather, and went back to her parent’s house but her father said that she couldn’t stay permanently, that she had to remain in the marriage. After a
few hours Fred turned up and said ‘Come on Rosie, you know what we’ve got between us’ - presumably a veiled reference to Charmaine’s murder and illegal burial. He also said that if she wasn’t back in a few minutes her place in the marital bed would be taken by someone else.

Rose turned to her parents and said ‘You don’t know what he’s capable of - even murder,’ but they thought that she was just being melodramatic. Fred said that he’d wait for her in the van and after a few moments she walked towards it with the baby and climbed inside. It’s not clear what motivated her return the most - the fear that he would tell the authorities that she’d killed Charmaine or the fear that he would replace her, Rose, with another woman and that she’d never be loved by anyone else. Earlier she’d professed her amazement that he thought so much of her. After all, she’d been brought up to see herself as worthless, stupid and bad.

Within months of Rose and Fred getting back together, he started to say that he wanted her to have sex with coloured men because they were genitally bigger than white men and could last longer. She could have as many coloured lovers as she wished in their Gloucester
home and enjoy the resultant orgasms as long as he was allowed to watch.

Fred wanted to know how far Rose could widen vaginally using different vibrators. He wanted to know how much semen another man produced. The wrongly-raised builder wanted to measure everything as if it was a building work project. He wanted to watch and hear rather than to directly participate.

Despite his flaws, the teenage Rose continued to cohabit with him and asked him to become her husband, to give her increased stability. Fred might have wanted a wife that couldn’t testify against him. So they booked their wedding for 29th January 1972 at the local Registrars.

Fred worked all morning then turned up at home just before the ceremony in his dirty working clothes. Rose was mortified that he wasn’t prepared to make the slightest effort. She had to beg him to get changed.

It is telling that he conveniently forgot he was still married to Rena and put his marital status down as bachelor. Many writers made the assumption that he’d killed Rena by this stage, but it seems that he killed her later after she started trying to track down Charmaine.
Pretending to be a bachelor meant nothing to Fred as - like most serial killers - he lied constantly.

One of Fred’s brothers and a friend acted as witnesses and they all had a swift drink then went back to work. Rose asked for an alcoholic drink but Fred, who was virtually teetotal, snapped at her and bought her a soft drink. He was already intent on controlling her and would later get her to sign a slave contract saying that she would do whatever he desired.

In the spring of that year Fred found the family a bigger house at 25 Cromwell Street, a few minutes walk from their existing flat in Gloucester. He worked all hours of the day and night to turn part of the house into cheap bedsits for students and other young people who wanted to tune in and drop out.

Fred himself didn’t take drugs but he let it be known that he was liberal minded, that his lodgers could have a wild time. Rose also showed her liberal side, having sex with several of the male lodgers and, later, making passes at the female ones. Again, Fred made it abundantly clear that he didn’t mind. Whenever possible he would turn conversations with the lodgers round to sex or home-based abortions or to what bodies mutilated in car crashes looked like.

Rose began to prefer females because they were softer and warmer, more giving. As long as Fred could watch or hear about it he was rapt.

Life went on in a semblance of domesticity for a few months then Fred heard that Rena, his first wife, was back in the area, having formerly been living in Scotland. Worse, she was at Fred’s parents house and was asking to see her daughter, Charmaine.

Fred was horrified. Rena probably wouldn’t care about his bigamous marital status - but if she found out that her child was dead she’d go to the police and he and Rose would go to jail.

In August or September 1972 he consequently arranged to meet Rena at a quiet pub and got her very drunk. He probably walked or carried her to his car, pretending that Charmaine was waiting for her at his home.

What happened next can never fully be known - most writers have speculated that he strangled her and dismembered her in the field where her body was ultimately found. But a length of piping was found in the grave, something that he could have used to let her breathe whilst the rest of her face was tightly masked to prevent her screams being heard. So he probably took her, semiconscious, to an abandoned outhouse and abused her before driving her body to its lonely burial plot.

Anne Marie wouldn’t find out for many years that
her mother, Rena, had died. Anne Marie hadn’t been quite as unhappy as Charmaine, because Fred was her natural father and he occasionally made a fuss of her. But all that was about to change…

During their first year at Cromwell Street, Fred spent a great deal of time doing building work in the cellar. One day, he and Rose started grinning strangely at eight-year old Anne Marie. Then they marched her down the stairs, saying that they were going to break her in, something that all good parents did.

Anne Marie was uneasy, but, as always, she did what she was told. When they got to the cellar, Rose stripped her. The child started to cry, but Rose was impervious to her tears. She forced her down onto a mattress then sat on her face. Rose also scratched her stepchild’s chest until it bled.

At a later date such scratches would be found on Anne Marie when her school took her swimming - and Heather would refuse to go swimming because the teachers would see her many bruises - but the authorities didn’t intervene.

Fred now tied his daughter up and raped her, whilst a smiling Rose looked on. Rose then followed her usual tactic after any kind of abuse, by threatening the victim.
She also kept Anne Marie off school for the rest of the week as she was bleeding internally and found it hard to walk.

Some time after the rape, Rose tied the child to a metal frame that Fred had made and beat her then assaulted her sexually with a vibrator. (Later she would make her son Stephen strip, then tie him up in the
bathroom
and beat him in an equally sexually-sadistic way.) Rose was by now placing photographs of herself in contact magazines, so had as many willing partners as she wanted. She was also having consensual
sadomasochistic
sex with a female neighbour, but she
clearly
found it more exciting to have an unwilling victim - and found an easy target in her helpless stepchild Anne Marie.

Over the years there would be more and more helpless children in Rose’s care because she gave birth almost annually. Fred would father Heather, Mae, Stephen and Barry by her. She would also have a miscarriage and possibly an early abortion. Later Rose would go on to have four children by her Jamaican lovers, children who Fred was proud of, though their dark skin made it absolutely clear that they weren’t genetically his.

Sadly, despite his pride at their births, he would treat
these children as badly as he treated the ones he had sired. Rose’s relationship with her own mother had been strained for many years but after she gave birth to half-caste children Daisy told her not to visit again and ignored the letters that Rose sent.

Rose would later say that she had so many children because her husband refused to wear condoms and because the pill made her sick - but it’s more likely that she was repeating history and having as many children as her own mother had had. She would also recreate the hellish fear and tension of the household that she’d grown up in - only this time she’d be the one in charge.

Like her father before her, Rose was only kind to children whilst they were babies that had no strong personalities of their own. As soon as they began to walk and talk she would fly into her frequent rages, hitting the children because they dropped a fork or trampled a little mud into the carpet. She made them finish every meal even if they strongly disliked that particular foodstuff and clearly saw children as having absolutely no right to respect, choice or love.

Once when they were talking to each other from their beds, she threw them outside in their nightwear and locked the door, leaving them frightened and frozen.
Her children would frequently be seen at hospital Accident & Emergency departments, but, again, the authorities failed to intervene.

However, for a few weeks there was some happiness in Anne Marie’s life when Rose took on a live-in
babysitter
, Caroline Owens. Seventeen-year-old Caroline got on very well with Anne Marie and little Heather. Rose also had a new baby, born that May, who she called Mae. But Rose made it clear that she wanted to have a much more intimate relationship with the pretty babysitter. She kept coming into the bathroom when Caroline was having a bath and would talk to her whilst suggestively stroking her hair. Caroline’s own childhood had been unhappy so she welcomed Rose’s friendship, but she didn’t want to indulge in lesbian sex.

Fred told the babysitter that Anne Marie wasn’t a virgin but when Caroline looked horrified he added that she’d broken her hymen in an accident on her bicycle. Meanwhile Rose’s advances intensified so Caroline left.

But Rose wasn’t prepared to let this object of desire get away. She had power over her children and over the men who she met through contact ads - by now Fred
had installed secret peepholes and recording equipment in the master bedroom and Rose would position her lovers so that Fred got the best possible view of her having sex with them. Most of these men were so impressed at her sexual skills that they became regular visitors. Now she wanted to exercise the same power over Caroline.

She and Fred decided to kidnap the girl. They recalled the route she travelled to visit her boyfriend - and knew that she had no reason to fear violence from them.

On 4th or 6th December 1972 the Wests drove along until they saw the unsuspecting teenager. They picked her up, but as soon as she got into their car she detected a strange atmosphere. Rose said that they should chat and quickly got into the back seat with her. Fred started driving and Rose began to touch Caroline’s breasts. She protested but Rose continued to assault her, stroking her legs and trying to kiss her on the lips. Caroline tried to fend the older teenager off - despite her life
experience
, Rose was still only nineteen - at which stage Fred turned around and punched Caroline, knocking her out. They then parked, taped her limbs together and drove her to Cromwell Street.

She regained consciousness as they neared the Wests house, and found that Rose was still grinning strangely. They marched her into the house and up to their bedroom, where Fred beat her vaginally with a belt buckle,
causing her intense pain. Both Wests extensively caressed her and Rose went down on her - until then, the teenage Caroline hadn’t even known about oral sex. Though they blindfolded her, she could feel Rose’s long nails entering her intimately.

A long night of such abuses followed, during which she had sticky tape wrapped around her face - this would become one of the Wests’ trademarks in their later sexual murders. She could hear Rose laughing after she was gagged and bound. At one stage Rose went away for a few minutes and Fred raped her and then cried. He said that Rose had devised the plan to kidnap Caroline because she had especially strong
lesbian
desires when she was pregnant. (Rose must have been a month or so pregnant with Stephen at this time as he was born in August 1973.) As the sexual assaults continued, Caroline fully expected to die.

Early the next morning she heard visitors arriving at the house and tried to make a noise to let them know that she was there. Enraged, Rose put a pillow over Caroline’s head and began to suffocate her. Fred was also very angry when he re-entered the room. By
breakfast
time, however, the couple seemed to have worn themselves into a post-orgasmic lull, and they began to speak to her normally, asking if she would become their live-in babysitter again.

Acting for her life, Caroline said yes and they freed her from her bonds. She was allowed to clean herself
up, then she helped Rose tidy the house and care for the children. When all of them left the house to go shopping, she said that she’d go back to her mother’s house and pack a bag.

Instead, Caroline went to her mum’s house and bathed repeatedly. When her mother saw the injuries caused by Fred punching her and by the actions of ripping the brown tape off, she asked her daughter what had happened. Caroline told her and her mother contacted the police.

The police went round to Cromwell Street and were met with verbal abuse from Rose. She denied everything, but the police found one of Caroline’s buttons in the Wests’ car. They also found the sticky tape used to bind the terrified teenager. Fred should really have been charged with rape - but Caroline was too afraid to testify in court against him. Instead all parties settled for the more minor charge of assault.

Rose and Fred answered this charge in January 1973. Their solicitor managed to play down the abduction till it sounded as if a consensual threesome had just gotten slightly out of hand. As a result, the couple were merely fined a total of one hundred pounds. Letting one of their victims go had clearly backfired against them. The
sensible solution would have been to stop creating victims - but instead, Fred and Rose decided that their next sexual plaything would have to die.

Rose would ultimately be found guilty of all of the murders that are listed below - but a very few writers and at least one of Rose’s children believe that she played no part in the deaths, that they were all committed by Fred West acting on his own.