Fred west biography book

All the while, Mae screamed, "No, Mum! No, Mum! Even Fred occasionally became the recipient of his wife's violence. On one occasion in August[ 92 ] Rose chased after Fred with a carving knife in her hand; Fred was able to slam shut the door of the room into which he had run as Rose lunged at him with the knife, resulting in the knife embedding itself in the door, and three of Rose's fingers sliding down the blade, almost severing them from her hand.

In response, Rose calmly wrapped her hand in a towel and said: "Look what you done, fella. You've got to take me to the hospital now. In Septemberthe Wests led eight-year-old Anna Marie to the cellar at 25 Cromwell Street, where the child was forced to undress, with Rose tearing her dress from her body upon noting the child's hesitation.

Everybody does it to every girl. It's a father's job. Don't worry, and don't say anything to anybody. Rose occasionally sexually abused Anna Marie herself, and later took extreme gratification in degrading her with acts such as binding Anna Marie to various items of furniture before encouraging Fred to rape her, and forcing her to perform household chores while wearing sexual devices and a mini-skirt.

Rose was always present in the room when these acts occurred, [ ] to ensure Anna Marie did not reveal her true age. Several hours later, Fred arrived at the pub to collect Rose and Anna Marie. Once they had left the premises, Anna Marie was bundled into her father's van and beaten by Rose, who asked her: "Do you think you could be my friend?

In Octoberthe Wests hired year-old Caroline Owens as their children's nanny. They had picked her up one night on a secluded country road as she hitchhiked from Tewkesbury to her Cinderford home, having visited her boyfriend. Learning that Owens disliked her stepfather and was looking for a job, the Wests offered her part-time employment as a nanny to the three children then in their household, with a promise she would be driven home each Tuesday.

Several days later, Owens moved into 25 Cromwell Street, sharing a room with Anna Marie, who Owens noted was "very withdrawn". Rose, who had begun to engage in prostitution by this time, explained to Owens that she worked as a fred west biography book when the younger woman enquired about the steady stream of men visiting her. Owens also noted Fred talked about sex almost incessantly; her suspicions as to his sexual overtones were further heightened when Fred boasted that many of the women he claimed to have performed abortions upon were so overjoyed that they would offer him their sexual services as a reward.

Knowing Owens' habits of hitchhiking along the A40 between Cinderford and Tewkesbury, the Wests formulated a plan to abduct her for their shared gratification. Fred later admitted that the specific intent of this abduction was the rape and likely murder of Owens, but that his initial incentive was to determine whether his wife would be willing to at least assist him in an abduction.

On 6 Decemberthe couple lured Owens into their vehicle with an apology for their conduct and the offer of a lift home. Rose joined her in the back seat, with the explanation she wanted a "girls' chat" as Fred drove. Shortly thereafter, Rose began to fondle her, as Fred questioned whether she had had sex with her boyfriend that evening.

At one stage, Fred remarked that Owens' clitoris was unusual, [ ] then lashed her genitals with a leather belt. When Owens screamed, Rose again smothered her with a pillow and further restrained her about the neck before performing cunnilingus on her. Quickly realising the gravity of her situation, Owens ceased resisting their sexual assaults.

The following morning, having noted Owens' screaming when one of his children had knocked on the door of the room in which she was restrained, Fred threatened that he and his wife would keep her locked up in the cellar and allow his "black friends" to abuse her, and that when they had finished, he would bury her body beneath "the paving stones of Gloucester".

He and Rose then calmly asked Owens whether she would consider returning to work as their nanny. Seeing her escape avenue, Owens agreed, and vacuumed the house to indicate her belief in becoming an extended member of the family. Later that day, Owens escaped from a launderette she and Rose had entered and returned home. Although initially too ashamed to divulge to her mother what had happened, when her mother noted the welts, bruises and exposed subcutaneous tissues on her daughter's body, Owens burst into tears and confided what had happened.

Owens' mother immediately reported her daughter's ordeal to the police, and the Wests were arrested and charged with assaultindecent assaultactual bodily harmand rape. The case was tried at Gloucester Magistrates' Court on 12 Januarybut by this date, Owens had decided she could not face the ordeal of testifying in court. Three months after the Wests' assault trial, the couple committed their first known murder.

The victim was a year-old named Lynda Gough, with whom Fred and Rose became acquainted through a male lodger in early Gough regularly visited Cromwell Street, and engaged in affairs with two male lodgers. On 19 April, she moved into their home on Cromwell Street. On or about 20 April, [ ] other tenants were told that she had been told to leave the household after she had hit one of their children.

This story was later repeated to Gough's mother when she contacted the Wests to enquire about her daughter's whereabouts. When Gough's dismembered body was found, the jaw was completely wrapped in adhesive and surgical tape to silence her screams, and two small tubes had likely been inserted into her nasal cavities to allow breathing. Long sections of string and sections of knotted fabric were also discovered with her remains.

Gough had likely been suspended from holes carved into the wooden beams supporting the ceiling of the cellar Fred later admitted he had devised for the purpose of suspending his victims' bodies, and likely died of either strangulation or suffocation. From their later investigations, police and forensic experts concluded all the victims found in the cellar at 25 Cromwell Street had been murdered in this location, and that, like Gough, each had been dismembered in this location.

The first of these victims, year-old Carol Ann Cooper, was abducted on 10 November Cooper lived in the Pines Children's Home in Worcesterand was abducted after spending the evening at a cinema with her boyfriend. She had been waiting for a bus in Warndon when she vanished, and was likely dragged into Fred's car, [ ] where her face was bound with surgical tape and her arms bound with braiding cloth before she was driven to Cromwell Street.

At the Wests' fred west biography book, Cooper was suspended from the wooden beams of the cellar ceiling before her abuse and murder. As had been the case with Lynda, Cooper died from strangulation or asphyxiation, before her body was dismembered and buried in a shallow, cubic grave in the cellar. Over the following 17 months, four further victims between the ages of 15 and 21 suffered a similar fate to that endured by Gough and Cooper, although the disarticulation conducted upon each successive victim, plus the paraphernalia discovered in each shallow grave, suggests each victim was likely subjected to greater abuse and torture than those previously murdered.

Following the murder of year-old Juanita Mott in AprilFred concreted over the floor of the entire cellar. He later converted this section of the household into a bedroom for his oldest children, [ ] and he and his wife are not known to have committed any further murders until Maywhen Fred—either with or without Rose's participation but certainly with her knowledge [ ] —murdered an year-old lodger named Shirley Robinson.

She was heavily pregnant at the time of her murder. Her body was buried in the garden of 25 Cromwell Street. It was extensively dismembered, but no restraining devices were found with these remains, making a sexual motive for this murder unlikely. Shortly thereafter, Rose unsuccessfully submitted a claim for maternity benefit in Robinson's name with Gloucester fred west biography book services.

The final murder Fred and Rose are known to have committed with a definite sexual motive occurred on 5 August The victim was a year-old named Alison Chambers, who had run away from a local children's home to become the Wests' live-in nanny in the middle of Chambers is believed to have lived within their household for several weeks before her murder, and Rose promised Chambers she could live at a rural "peaceful farm" she claimed she and her husband owned.

In an effort to allay any concerns from Chambers' family with whom she maintained regular correspondenceFred and Rose later posted a letter, written by Chambers to her mother prior to her murder, from a Northamptonshire post box. Heather and Mae West became the focus of Fred's incestuous [ 59 ] sexual attentions after Anna Marie ran away from home in [ ] after enduring a particularly severe beating from Rose to her stomach just days after being discharged from hospital for treatment of an ectopic pregnancy.

Fred was overt and unapologetic in his conduct, and would justify his actions with the simple explanation: "I made you; I can do what I like with you. As Heather, Mae and their younger brother Stephen were very close in age, the trio resolved that if their father asked either of the two girls to be alone in a room with him, they would only do so if at least one other member of the trio were present to avoid either girl being raped.

Both girls also developed a regime whereby they would only shower or undress when their father was either out of the house, or as her sister stood guard at the door. Stephen was also informed by his father that he would have to have sex with his mother by the age of 17 in the event, his parents evicted him from their home when he was Although the girls were repulsed by their father's behaviour, Mae—having once endured Fred's throwing a vacuum cleaner at her when she remonstrated against his fondling her—developed a mechanism whereby she would tolerate Fred's sexually fondling her, then jokingly brush aside any efforts he made to take the molestation further, [ ] whereas in her autobiography, Mae recollected that Heather "was affected quite badly by all of this.

Even more than me. On the occasions Heather remonstrated about the abuse to her mother, Rose would simply laugh at her distress. Heather also expressed to Mae and Stephen her desire to run away from home and live a nomadic lifestyle in the Forest of Deanand to never again see any human beings. Heather did complain to friends about the abuse she and her siblings endured, and her external signs of psychological distress were noted by several of them.

Staff at the Hucclecote Secondary School, which Heather and her siblings attended, are also known to have expressed concern as to why Heather—a studious and obedient pupil—refused to obey orders either to change her clothing for, or shower after, sporting activities. On one occasion, she was forced to take a shower, resulting in her peers and staff noting her arms, legs and torso were covered in welts and bruises in various stages of healing.

By the mids, rumours of Rose's sex life had reached several of the children's classmates, and although the West children had been instructed never to divulge details of their home lives to their peers, Heather confided to her friends that many of these rumours were true. The father of one of these classmates was a friend of the Wests; as such, word soon reached Fred and Rose that Heather had divulged details of her home life—including details of her mother's promiscuity—to her classmates.

Fred west biography book

Fred was so concerned by these revelations that he began to escort Heather to and from school. After Heather left school in the summer ofshe applied for numerous jobs in an effort to leave Cromwell Street. By June of the following year, she had pinned her hopes on escaping the household via obtaining a job as a chalet cleaner at a holiday camp in the seaside town of Torquay ; she received notification that this application had been unsuccessful on 18 June In response, she crumpled into tears before her siblings Mae and Stephen.

That same evening, her whole family heard Heather sobbing aloud as she attempted to sleep, [ ] and according to Mae, she "cried all the way through the night. When Heather's siblings returned home, they were informed Heather had left to accept the job she had previously been refused in Torquay a story the Wests also relayed to other family members ; however, Rose told an enquiring neighbour that she and Heather had had a "hell of a row", and that Heather had run away from home.

Later, to answer their children's questions about why Heather failed to contact or visit her siblings, the parents claimed that Heather had eloped with a lesbian lover. When Mae and Stephen suggested they report Heather's disappearance to police, Fred changed his story yet again, saying it would be unwise to initiate a search for Heather as she was involved in credit card fraud.

In the years following Heather's disappearance, Fred occasionally jokingly threatened the children that they would "end up under the patio like Heather" if they either misbehaved or divulged the mistreatment they endured to anyone outside the household. With Rose's approval, he later constructed a barbecue pit immediately opposite where Heather had been buried, and placed a pine table on her grave for the children of the family to sit upon whenever the Wests held family gatherings in their garden.

Heather's disappearance, Fred and Rose's constantly changing stories about their daughter's whereabouts, plus their allusions to foul play, ultimately led to police enquiries as to Heather's whereabouts. These enquiries culminated in a search warrant being issued to excavate the Wests' garden in February In MayFred asked his year-old daughter, Louise, to bring some bottles to a room on the first floor of their home.

Rose was not present in the home at the time. Shortly thereafter, the girl's siblings heard her scream, "No, don't! Louise was found by her siblings writhing in pain, sobbing that her father had raped and sodomised her, at one stage partially strangling her. You were asking for it. Several weeks later, Louise garnered the courage to confide in a close friend what her father had done; this friend told her own mother what had happened on 4 August.

In response, the friend's mother anonymously informed the police. On 6 Augustthe police searched the West household on the pretext of searching for stolen property. Although numerous objects of sexual paraphernalia—including 99 pornographic videos of both home-made and commercial nature—were discovered, police did not find the video depicting the rape of Fred's daughter.

The year-old made a full statement through a specially-trained solicitordescribing her father's actions, the fact the sexual abuse had begun when she was 11, and that her mother had been casually indifferent to her plight. All the children in the household were placed in foster care the following day. The West children also divulged their mother had inflicted most of the physical abuse and that their father frequently said that if they told anyone about the goings-on in the household they would be "buried under the patio" like their sister Heather.

Police began a full-scale investigation, eventually leading to Fred being charged with three counts of rape, and one of buggerywith Rose as an accomplice. She was also charged with child crueltyinciting her husband to engage in sex with their daughter, [ ] and obstructing the police. The Wests were questioned as to the whereabouts of their eldest daughter, and although Fred claimed Heather was "alive and well" and supporting herself via prostitution, Rose initially claimed to have no knowledge of Heather's whereabouts, or why she had left home.

She claimed on 11 August that she could "remember now" that her daughter had left home at her own persuasion due to Rose's concerns her other children may discover Heather's supposed lesbian inclinations. The following day, Rose was granted bail on the condition she did not maintain contact with her children, her stepdaughter, or her husband prior to her upcoming trial.

As Fred awaited trial, he was held on remand in Birmingham. Learning that her father had denied any wrongdoing, Anna Marie also contacted police to offer a full statement detailing her experiences as a child. In a statement given to Detective Constable Hazel Savage, Anna Marie recounted the extensive physical, mental and sexual abuse she had endured as a child at the hands of her father and stepmother, before agreeing to testify against both parents at their upcoming trial.

Anna Marie also added she had, for several years, been unsuccessfully attempting to trace her mother Rena and half-sisters Charmaine and Heather. Further enquiries conducted with Anna Marie's husband, Chris Davis, revealed that Heather had confided in him just how unhappy she was shortly before her disappearance, and of her desire to leave home.

Davis elaborated that although Heather had not divulged any details about her enduring any sexual abuse, he had been so concerned for her welfare he had offered to confront her parents, and Heather had dissuaded him from doing so, blurting: "For Christ's sake don't, because they'll kill us both! In their efforts to gather further evidence, police and social services also spoke with Mae, who, having spoken with her year-old sister and learned Louise did not wish to see her father charged, initially denied she had endured any molestation as an adolescent.

Two months later, Gloucester social services also contacted police to stress their concern over the whereabouts of Heather. This case against the Wests collapsed when Anna Marie and her year-old half-sister Louise declined to testify at the court case on 7 Junewith the child rape victim expressing her desire to return to her family, and Anna Marie choosing to withdraw her statement because of her noting the misery of her younger siblings, and her fear of Rose's vindictiveness.

Although the Wests were acquitted of all charges, all their younger children remained in foster care, albeit with permitted supervised visitations to Cromwell Street. Despite the Wests claiming to the few relatives from whom they were not already estranged by that the charges had been fabricated by police, almost all of their remaining family members severed contact with them.

When Anna Marie was questioned as to the colloquial "family joke" regarding Heather being buried beneath the patio, she confirmed that the sole time she had heard her father recite this claim, he had immediately burst into laughter, leading to her refusing to take this claim seriously. In retracing Fred's history, police also discovered that although Rena and Charmaine had disappeared inno missing person report had ever been filed on either of them.

DC Savage and her colleagues were convinced Heather was dead, and that Fred's repeated statement to his children that her body lay beneath the family patio might be true. On 23 FebruaryGloucester police successfully applied for a fred west biography book warrant authorising the search of 25 Cromwell Street to locate Heather's remains. When police visited the address on 24 February and showed the warrant to Rose, she turned pale, before becoming hysterical and shouting over her shoulder to her eldest son, Stephen, "Get Fred!

When reminded of these contradictions, she became distraught and abusive, shouting at the officers: "I can't fucking remember! It's a bloody long time ago! What do you think I am? A bloody computer? Fred had been working in Stroud at the time; upon hearing of the police's intentions, he assured Stephen he would be home immediately. When Fred arrived three hours later, he informed his family of his intention to voluntarily offer a witness statement to police regarding his daughter's whereabouts.

In response, Fred abruptly changed tactics, claiming they simply held a grudge against him due to his acquittal of the rape of his daughter. That evening, with the search team having left their premises and a uniformed officer remaining at Cromwell Street to guard the excavation siteMae and Stephen observed their parents talking in hushed tones as they repeatedly glanced towards the garden from their kitchen window.

In the early hours of the following morning, as his son Stephen was about to leave for work, Fred informed him: "Look son, look after mum and sell the house [ I want you to go to the papers and make as much money as you can. Upon their arrival, Fred indicated his wish to be arrested for Heather's murder and to be taken to Bearland police station to provide a full confession; he was then arrested and formally cautioned.

At that morning, Fred formally admitted to police he had indeed killed his daughter, albeit in an act of manslaughter. He confessed to strangling Heather in a fit of rage, then dismembering her body in the ground floor bathroom with a heavy serrated knife he normally used for cutting slabs of frozen meat. Her remains had been stored in a dustbin as he waited for an opportunity to dig her grave.

Fred was insistent his wife had no knowledge of her daughter's murder, claiming he had committed this murder as Rose was preoccupied with one of her clients, adding the fact the search team had not yet unearthed Heather's remains was because they had been excavating the wrong section of his garden. He then volunteered to accompany police to the house to pinpoint the precise location of Heather's body.

A comprehensive and very detailed biography of this serial murderer, complete with a thorough analysis of his early life and how this helped to create the monster that he was to become. The book also describes the start of his relationship with Rose West and how her home background contributed to the development of their joint sadistic attacks on young women.

Be warned that the descriptions of the attacks and the injuries inflicted by the pair on their victims are quite graphic and may be upsetting to some readers. This book was about pages too long. Suzanne Sinclair. Too many unnecessary graphic details and not enough analysis. Disturbing, even for someone who reads a lot of true crime.

It gave me nightmares. This book by Geoffrey Wansell provides what I believe is the definitive account. I understand he had access to police and other records not previously considered in other books. Many of the explanations are verbatim from those records. Make no mistake. This book is truly chilling. The book gives the background to both Fred and Rose; their early years and upbringing which stamped their future in ways beyond imagination.

Fred was adept at grooming. Not only young women, but social workers, police, work colleagues and more. Complex and deeply flawed by any moral standards, he was able to abuse and murder for decades. For me, this book clarifies the fred west biography book to which Rise was involved. There are racial terms; in my view to remove or change them is wrong.

Electro-convulsive therapy, administered to her pregnant mother for deep depression, may have caused prenatal injury that contributed to Rose's poor school performance and bouts of aggression growing up. She also had a weight problem in adolescence and developed an interest in older men. The marriage of Rose's parents was a turbulent one.

Her father was a paranoid schizophrenic prone to violent behavior, serving as a terrifying, dictatorial presence. Her mother, Daisy, moved out of the family home, taking Rose with her. Rose, however, decided to move back in with her father again around the same time that she became intimate with West during her teens. Her father objected strongly to their relationship, resorting to contacting social services and threatening West directly, but to no avail; Rose was soon pregnant with West's child and found herself looking after his two children by Rena Costello when West was sent to prison on various petty theft and fine evasion charges.

Rose gave birth to daughter Heather in It's thought that the pressure of caring for three children while still a child herself was a trigger for Rose's violent, erratic tendencies, and it's believed that she murdered 8-year-old Charmaine, West's eldest child, induring one of these outbursts. Whatever the true circumstances, Charmaine suddenly disappeared.

As West was in jail at the time, it is likely that her body was hidden by Rose until West's release. He was then thought to have moved the body, again removing the fingers and toes, as with his first victim, before burying her. This fred west biography book of Rose's murderous act undoubtedly gave West a significant hold over the young woman.

When West's first wife, Rena, came in search of her daughter, she was strangled, dismembered and also had her fingers and toes removed. She was buried in the same general area as West's first victim, Anna McFall. Fred and Rose West were secretly married in Gloucester in Januaryand their second daughter, Mae, was born in June of the same year.

With a growing family, they moved to 25 Cromwell Street, which was large enough to enable them to take in lodgers to assist with the rent. By this time, Rose earned extra money as a prostitute and West committed acts of bondage and violent sex acts on underage girls. He fitted out the cellar at No. This became a regular occurrence, and the child was threatened with beatings if she told anyone of her ordeal.

Their behavior extended beyond the family circle when, in latethey engaged year-old Caroline Owens as a nanny. She was incarcerated, stripped and raped. Despite threats that she would be killed and buried in the cellar, Owens was able to make an escape and reported the Wests to the police. Charges were brought against them. Incredibly, despite his existing criminal record, West was able to convince a court magistrate that Owens had consented to the activities.

Owens was too deeply traumatized over what she had survived to give testimony. The Wests both escaped with fines. Rose was pregnant at the time with their first son, Stephen, who was born in August. After brutal sexual attacks, all were murdered, dismembered and buried in the cellar under 25 Cromwell Street. Rose had several more children, and daughter Louise was born in Despite the massive coverage given to the trial and conviction of Rosemary West, Frederick West himself remains an enigma, his life shrouded in mystery.

West, a nondescript little gnome of a man with a ready smile, demonstrated none of the characteristics usually associated with a serial killer. Now, for the first tme, the full story of Frederick West's extraordinary life and death can be told, the secrets of his appalling crimes revealed. Geoffery Wansell has had unparalleled access to West's own explanations of his actions, including more than hours of tape recordings West made.

With the collaboration of the Official Solicitor, Wansell has also been given access to the views of the people who knew West throughout his life, including the social workers and psychiatrists who came into contact with him.