The Evil Within - A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals The Chilling True Stories of The World's Most Notorious Killers (51 page)

Judge Jones said that while it could not be said that Humble’s actions of sending the letters and tape caused or directly led to the murders of three women and the attacks on two other women who survived, it had moved the focus of the police investigation to Sunderland. In addition, it could not be said that the murderer might have been caught any earlier, but that when Peter Sutcliffe was arrested he told police the hoax letters and tape had given him ‘confidence’. ‘What can be said is there would have been a better chance of those women not being attacked had the letter and tapes not been sent and Sutcliffe himself might have been given a higher priority … You are a man with a dislike of the police and it gave you pleasure to make fools of them. What is unforgivable is that you failed to put the record straight when you realised the damage you were doing. Had that tape not been sent, the deployment to Sunderland, whether wise or not, would simply not have occurred.’ Following his address he sentenced John Humble to six years’ imprisonment for each of the three letters he sent and eight years for the infamous hoax tape, all sentences to run concurrently.

On 13 July 2006, John Humble was granted the right to appeal the length of his eight-year sentence for the Wearside Jack hoax. On 24 October 2006, Humble lost his appeal. Humble was not present for the ruling by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, who was sitting with two other judges. Delivering the ruling of the court, Mr Justice Calvert-Smith said that the case was ‘uniquely serious and had possibly fatal consequences’, and that ‘the offence called for a very severe sentence … Although the sentence was indeed severe, it cannot be said it was wrong in principle or excessive.’ It was also stated that ‘issues of personal mitigation and passage of time lose much of their influence’.

Parallels have been drawn between the Yorkshire Ripper and Jack the Ripper, despite the murders being more than 100 years apart. In the case of Sutcliffe, he targeted mainly prostitutes,
rendering the majority of them unconscious before setting about killing and mutilating the bodies of some of the victims. Jack the Ripper did the same. Attempts by this author to contact Sutcliffe to pursue this theory and request an interview were unsuccessful. On two separate occasions I wrote to him at Broadmoor Hospital, the high-security psychiatric facility where he has been held since March 1984, enclosing a copy of my book,
Jack the
Ripper: The 21st Century Investigation.
Twice I received a reply from a forensic psychologist declining my request and returning the book.

On 16 July 2010 Sutcliffe made an appeal to the High Court for a specific minimum life sentence to be set in order for him to be given a chance of parole. The appeal was considered by Mr Justice Mitting.

The judge considered the key issue of ‘diminished responsibility’. The jury at the original trial in 1981 rejected the proposition that Sutcliffe’s paranoid schizophrenia diminished his responsibility for the killings.

Having considered the appeal, the judge stated that he could not override the jury’s decision, and so was not able to take that issue into account in setting Sutcliffe’s minimum term. He stated: ‘This was a campaign of murder which terrorised the population of a large part of Yorkshire for several years. The only explanation for it, on the jury’s verdict, was anger, hatred and obsession. Apart from a terrorist outrage, it is difficult to conceive of circumstances in which one man could account for so many victims.’

The High Court decided that Peter Sutcliffe would never be released from prison. Various psychological reports describing Sutcliffe’s mental state were taken into consideration, as well as the severity of his crimes. Not content to accept the court ruling, Sutcliffe’s defence team launched a further appeal, this time to the Court of Appeal. The hearing for this appeal began on 30 November 2010 and was rejected on 14 January 2011. Sutcliffe’s defence team launched a further appeal to the
Supreme Court. However, the Court of Appeal rejected Sutcliffe’s application.

As things stand, Sutcliffe will spend the rest of his life in Broadmoor Hospital without hope of release. His lawyers have one final option – to appeal to the Criminal Cases Review Commission arguing that the original trial amounted to a miscarriage of justice. The issue of diminished responsibility would again be central.

Frederick West was born into a poor family of farm workers in 1941. He left school at the age of 15 and began work as a casual labourer. He was a prolific petty criminal as a teenager. He moved from his parents’ rural home to live with an aunt until he moved with his family to Gloucester, where he took a job in an abattoir. In April 1961, he was fined for the theft of watches and in October the same year he was also fined for stealing tools from a building site; these were his first convictions. A few months later, he was accused of impregnating a 13-year-old girl who was a friend of the West family. Fred West was surprisingly uncooperative and didn’t see that there was anything wrong with molesting girls. ‘Well, doesn’t everyone do it?’ he was heard to say.

This attitude and the ensuing scandal caused a serious rift with his family. West was ordered to find somewhere else to live. Distanced now from his family, he went to work on construction projects. It wasn’t long before he was caught having sex with young girls. At his trial for having sex with the 13-year-old girl, his doctor claimed that he was suffering from epileptic fits. Consequently, he got off without a jail sentence. At the age of 20, Fred West was already a convicted child molester and petty thief and a disgrace to his family.

In November 1962, he married Catherine (Rena) Costello, a prostitute, and they moved to Glasgow. She gave birth to a girl, Charmaine, in March 1963. Charmaine’s father, however, was a
Pakistani bus driver. A second child, Anne-Marie, was born to the couple on 6 July 1964. She was West’s child. Soon after this, they separated.

When his wife returned to the area in 1966, Fred was living with another woman, Ann McFall. In early 1967, Ann McFall became pregnant with West’s child. She was trying unsuccessfully to get West to divorce Costello and marry her. West responded to the stress of her demands by killing her and burying her near a caravan park sometime in July. Not only did he kill his mistress and their unborn child, he slowly and methodically dismembered her body and buried her along with the foetus. He cut off her fingers and toes, which were missing from the gravesite. This was to be his ritualistic signature in future crimes. West’s wife Catherine returned to live with him and their children for a short time before leaving again for an unknown destination.

In late 1968, West met 16-year-old Rosemary Letts (b. 1953). She became pregnant by him, something she concealed from her parents until West was serving a short prison sentence for unpaid fines. She left her family home and moved in with West in Midland Road, Gloucester. She gave birth to a girl, Heather, on 17 October 1970 and, as a result, often neglected the older children. West’s daughter Charmaine died in mid-1971 while West was still in prison, apparently murdered by Rose. Since West was in jail when Charmaine was murdered, when he came out he had to bury her body under the kitchen floor of their home in Midland Road where it would remain undiscovered for the next 20 years. Before he buried Charmaine, he cut off her fingers, toes and kneecaps. Fred would hold this murder over Rose for the rest of her life.

Rose used to invite many West Indian men over to their house on Midland Road to have sex with her, either for cash or fun. Fred, a voyeur, encouraged this behaviour and watched through a peephole. As over-sexed as he was, Fred was not at all interested in ordinary sex. It had to involve bondage, vibrators and acts of sadism or lesbianism to get him going.
Fred took erotic photos of Rose and ran them as ads in magazines for swingers.

When Rose murdered Charmaine, she created both a problem and an opportunity for Fred regarding his first wife, Rena. It was just a matter of time before Rena would come round looking for Charmaine. In fact, in August 1971, Fred saw that he had no choice but to kill Rena. He got her drunk and then strangled her at the house in Midland Road. He then dismembered her body and mutilated it in the same way that he had Ann McFall’s body: he cut off her fingers and toes. Then he put her remains into bags and buried her in the same location where he had buried Ann McFall.

He later married Rose on 29 January 1972. She gave birth to a girl, Mae, in June 1972 and they moved to a new home at 25 Cromwell Street. Fred had plans for the cellar and said that he was either going to make it into a place for Rose to entertain her clients or he would soundproof it and use it as his ‘torture chamber’.

The first occupant was to be his eight-year-old daughter, Anne-Marie. He and Rose undressed her and told her that she was lucky that she had such caring parents who were making sure that when she got married she would be able to satisfy her husband. Anne-Marie’s hands were tied behind her and a gag put in her mouth. Then, while Rose held the girl down, her father raped her. The pain was so severe that the girl could not go to school for several days. She was warned that she would be beaten if she ever told anyone about the rape. On another occasion, Anne-Marie was strapped down while her father raped her in what he called a ‘quickie’ during his lunch hour.

In late 1972, Fred and Rose picked up a 17-year-old girl named Caroline Owens and hired her as a nanny. They promised Caroline’s family that they would watch out for her while she lived with them. Caroline was very attractive, so much so that Rose and Fred competed with each other to seduce her. However, Caroline found the Wests repugnant and told them she was leaving. The couple abducted, stripped and raped her. Fred told
her that if she didn’t do what he wanted, ‘I’ll keep you in the cellar and let my black friends have you and when they are finished, we’ll kill you and bury you under the paving stones of Gloucester.’ Terrified, she believed him. When her mother saw her bruises, she got the truth from her and called the police.

Charges were brought against the Wests and the hearing took place in January 1973. Fred was 31 and Rose a mere 19 and pregnant once again. Fred was able to convince the magistrate to believe that Caroline had been a willing partner. Despite Fred’s criminal record, the magistrate did not believe the Wests were capable of violence and let them both off with a fine.

For some time, the Wests had been carrying on a friendship with a seamstress, Lynda Gough. Eventually, Lynda moved into 25 Cromwell Street to take care of the children. Something went amiss in the relationship, though, and Lynda was murdered. Fred dismembered her and buried her in a pit in the garage. As before, he then removed her fingers, toes and kneecaps. When Lynda’s family came looking for her, they were told that she had stayed there but had since left. A hideous pattern was emerging. Young women would come to stay at 25 Cromwell either as lodgers or friends or nannies, but so few ever made it out with their lives. The house was slowly becoming a monument to the depravity of its inhabitants.

In August 1973, Rose gave birth to their son Stephen, but this did not stop their desires to kill. They abducted 15-year-old Carol Ann Cooper in November and kept her a prisoner, subjecting her to sexual abuse. When they tired of her, she was strangled, dismembered and buried with the other bodies at 25 Cromwell Street in the cellar, which Fred had by now made larger.

Almost one month later, university student Lucy Partington had gone home to her mother’s house to spend the Christmas holiday. On 27 December, she went to visit her friend and left to catch a bus shortly after 10pm. She had the misfortune to meet up with the Wests, who abducted her. Like Carol Ann Cooper,
she was tortured and sexually abused for approximately a week and then murdered, dismembered and buried in the cellar. Also like Carol Ann Cooper, she was reported missing, but there was nothing to tie the two girls to the Wests.

Over the next 12 months, three more girls would meet the same fate at the hands of Rose and Fred West. Their next victim was Shirley Hubbard, aged 15, followed by Juanita Mott, aged 18. Bondage was becoming a major thrill for Fred and Rose. Shirley’s head had been wrapped entirely with tape and a plastic tube was inserted in her nose so that she could breathe. Juanita was subjected to even more extreme bondage; she was gagged with a ligature made from two long, white nylon socks, a brassiere and two pairs of tights, one within the other. She was then trussed up with lengths of plastic-covered rope of the type used for washing line. The rope was used in a complicated way, with loops tied around her arms and thighs, both wrists, both ankles and her skull, horizontally and vertically, backwards and forwards across her body until she could only wriggle like a trapped animal. The West’s produced a 2yd length of rope with a slip-knot end forming a noose. This was used to suspend Juanita’s body from the beams in the cellar.

In 1976, the Wests enticed a young woman to the house. Her real name was never made public and she would later appear in court as a prosecution witness against the Wests. She came from a home for wayward girls. At Cromwell Street, she was led into a room with two naked girls who were prisoners there. She witnessed the torture of the two girls and was raped by Fred and sexually assaulted by Rose. One of the girls that she saw was probably Anne-Marie, Fred’s daughter, who was a constant target for the couple’s sexual sadism. As if Fred’s rape and torture of his daughter were not enough, he brought home his friends to have sex with her.

In 1977, the upstairs of the house had been renovated to accommodate lodgers. One of them was Shirley Robinson, 18, a former prostitute with bisexual inclinations. She developed
relationships with both Fred and Rose. Shirley became pregnant with Fred’s child after Rose became pregnant by one of her black clients. While Fred was pleased that Rose was carrying a
mixed-race
child, Rose was not comfortable with Shirley carrying Fred’s child. Shirley foolishly thought that she could displace Rose in Fred’s life and, in the process, jeopardised her own existence. Rose made it clear that Shirley had to go.