The Evil Within - A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals The Chilling True Stories of The World's Most Notorious Killers (52 page)

In December 1977, after Rose gave birth to Tara, Shirley met her fate and was murdered in Cromwell Street. By now, the cellar was full of bodies. Shirley was buried in the back garden along with her unborn child. This time, Fred dismembered Shirley and their unborn baby.

In November 1978, Rose and Fred had yet another daughter whom they named Louise, making a total of six children in this bizarre and unwholesome household. Fred also impregnated his daughter Anne-Marie, but the pregnancy was ectopic and had to be terminated.

Several months later, the Wests continued their murdering. Their victim this time was a troubled teenager named Alison Chambers; she was murdered after they had raped and tortured her. Like Shirley, Alison was buried in the ‘overflow’ cemetery in the back garden.

As the Wests’ children became older, they were aware of some of the goings-on in the home. They knew that Rose was a prostitute and that Anne-Marie was being raped by her father. When Anne-Marie moved out to live with her boyfriend, Fred instead focused his sexual advances on Heather and Mae. Heather resisted her father and was beaten for it. In June 1980, Rose gave birth to Barry, Fred’s second son. Then in April 1982, Rose gave birth to Rosemarie Junior, who was not Fred’s child. In July 1983, Rose gave birth to another daughter, whom they named Lucyanna. She was half-black, like Tara and Rosemarie Junior. Rose became increasingly irrational and beat the children without provocation. The stress of so many children in the household took its toll on Rose’s already bad temper.

In 1986, the wall of family silence that had protected the Wests was broken. Heather told her girlfriend about her father’s advances, her mother’s affairs and the beatings she had received. The girlfriend told her parents, who were friends of the Wests, and Heather’s parents soon murdered her. They told the rest of the children that she had left home. Fred asked his son Stephen to help him dig a hole in the back garden, where Fred later buried Heather’s dismembered body.

Rose built up her prostitution business by advertising in special magazines. She and Fred were on the lookout for women who they could get to participate in their various perversions as well as prostitute themselves under Rose’s direction. One such woman, Katherine Halliday, became a fixture in the West household and saw first-hand the black bondage suits and masks that they had collected, plus the whips and chains. With good reason, Katherine became alarmed and quickly broke off her relationship with them.

As time went on, Fred and Rosemary became increasingly concerned about creating a minimum façade of respectability, not because they cared what people thought of them, but because they were concerned that knowledge of what had gone on in their house would jeopardise their freedom.

The Wests’ long run of luck was coming to an end, though. One of the very young girls who Fred had raped with Rose’s assistance told her girlfriend what happened. The girlfriend went to the police and the case was assigned to a very talented and persistent detective constable named Hazel Savage. Hazel knew Fred from his days with his first wife and remembered the stories that she had told her about Fred’s sexual perversions.

Following up the complaint on 6 August 1992, police arrived at 25 Cromwell Street with a search warrant to look for pornography and evidence of child abuse. They found mountains of pornography and arrested Rose for assisting in the rape of a minor. Fred was arrested for rape and buggery.

Due to the nature of the charges they both now faced, their
younger children were taken into care. Fred was remanded in custody and Rose took an overdose of pills but was saved by her son Stephen. Luck was again on their side when the trial collapsed due to the witnesses choosing not to give evidence. Still, the police had their doubts about the missing Heather and the rumour that she was buried under the patio. As a result, on 25 February 1994, police obtained a warrant to search the Cromwell Street house and garden. The nature of the search and the logistics of all the digging needed would be very expensive and was certain to attract attention from the media. The search would continue right up until March 1994.

Following the extensive search, bones were found buried in the garden but at that time the police could not identify who they belonged to. Fred and Rose West were questioned and confronted with the findings. Fred soon confessed to killing his daughter. When Rose was informed of Fred’s confession, she claimed that Fred had sent her out of the house the day Heather disappeared and had no knowledge of Heather’s death. The police set about the grim task of digging up the whole garden. Fred had been released on bail without charge and, back home, he watched the police dig up the garden. He knew it was a matter of time before they found Heather and the others he had buried in the garden.

Finally, the police found the remains of a young woman, dismembered and decapitated. Then another victim was found. Fred West was again taken back into custody and questioned. To protect Rose, he claimed responsibility for the murders himself. He was charged with the murders of Heather, Shirley Robinson and the as-yet-unidentified third woman. Furthermore, an investigation was opened into the disappearance of Rena and Charmaine. Fred decided to confess to the police about the bodies of the girls buried in his cellar. He admitted to murdering them, but would not admit to raping them first. He maintained they all consented to sex with him.

As West talked to the police about his murders, they were still
unsure of the number of actual victims as identification was proving difficult. The police had unearthed nine different sets of bones and did not know whose they were. West was not much help, since he could not remember the names and details of some of the women he had picked up. Considering the many women who go missing every year, extensive work had to be undertaken to match up the missing persons reports with the remains.

As the investigation continued, Rose was arrested in April 1994. She abandoned Fred to save herself. She tried to position herself as the victim of a murderous man, but she was not convincing and the police worked tirelessly to link her to the murders. The bodies of Rena, Ann McFall and Charmaine were found as Fred West continued to cooperate with the police. With regard to the disappearance of Mary Bastholm, West for some reason decided not to cooperate and her body was not found.

On 13 December 1994, Fred and Rose West were jointly charged with the murders of 12 girls. At their first court appearance, Fred attempted to console Rose, but she avoided his touch. She had told the police he made her sick. Their partnership in crime was definitely over, but was this an act to place all the blame on Fred? They were both remanded in custody for a date to be set for their trial at a higher court. However, Fred would escape justice and never paid for his crimes. He was sent on remand to await trial to HMP Winson Green, Birmingham, where on 1 January 1995 he committed suicide by hanging himself, using strips of cloth from a bed sheet.

Despite the lack of direct evidence linking her to the murders, Rose West went to trial on 3 October 1995, charged with the murders of 10 girls. A number of witnesses, including Caroline Owens, the woman previously referred to as Miss A, and Anne-Marie testified about Rose West’s sadistic sexual assaults on young women.

Her defence team tried to suggest that evidence of sexual assault was not the same as evidence of murder and that, furthermore, she did not know what Fred was doing when he
murdered the girls and buried them. However, they made a grave error in allowing Rose to give evidence. Her defiance came through very clearly to the jury. Furthermore, the prosecution learnt to extract damaging testimony from her by making her angry. She left the jury with entrenched beliefs that she had treated the children badly and that she was completely dishonest. Finally, the defence played the recordings of Fred West describing how he had murdered the victims when she was out of the house. Unfortunately for Rose, Fred was shown to be lying on key issues, which cast a doubt over his entire statement.

The most dramatic evidence was given by Janet Leach, who was called as the ‘appropriate adult’ (witness) to Fred West’s police interviews. Confidentially, Fred had told her that Rose was involved in the murders and that Rose had murdered Charmaine and Shirley Robinson without him but that he made a deal with his wife to take all the blame on himself. Janet was so stressed by this confidential confession that she suffered a stroke. It was only after Fred’s death that she felt that she could tell the police what he had said to her. After her testimony, she collapsed and had to be taken to the hospital. Her evidence was to be the final nail in the coffin as far as Rose West was concerned. The jury found Rose West guilty of all the murders. The judge sentenced her to life imprisonment on each of 10 counts of murder.

Following several failed appeals, Rose West has indicated her intention to spend the rest of her life in prison and plans no further appeals, despite being eligible for parole in 2019, when she will be 66 years of age.

Myra Hindley was born in Manchester in 1942 and raised by her grandmother; she was regularly beaten by her alcoholic father, despite having an IQ of 107, being able write creatively and considered a responsible and sporty girl. She left school in 1957 and, after working in different jobs, on 16 January 1961
she started work as a typist for a chemical firm called Millward’s. It was there that she met Ian Brady, a man four years her senior with a history of violence and a string of burglary convictions. Brady was the stock clerk, having worked there since February 1959.

Ian Stewart (he later took his stepfather’s surname) was born in 1938 and grew up in an economically deprived area of Glasgow. His mother gave him up for adoption at birth. Early on, Brady showed troubling signs of dysfunctional behaviour and moodiness. When he could not have his way, he would throw violent tantrums that made him unpopular with local children. At school he was lazy and struggled to apply himself, and misbehaved. He started smoking and virtually gave up schoolwork.

Ian developed a fascination with Nazi pageantry and Nazi symbolism. He often asked other boys for souvenirs that their fathers brought back from the war and, when playing roughhouse war games, he would insist on being ‘the German’. It was at this time that Ian also became known for perverse and sadistic tendencies, including bullying smaller children and torturing animals in a variety of grotesque ways.

As a teenager Ian was arrested for burglary and housebreaking. On the first two occasions he was given probation, but on the third he was deemed incorrigible and the court ordered him to leave Glasgow and live with his adopted mother. She had since moved to Manchester and had married an Irish labourer named Patrick Brady. In November 1954, two months before his 17th birthday, Ian travelled down to join his mother and her new husband. Although he did not get along with Mr Brady, Ian took his stepfather’s name and used it as his own.

Brady started to collect books about torture and sadomasochism, domination and servitude. He also began drinking heavily and gambling, so often found himself in need of extra spending money to support these new habits. He soon
resorted again to thieving and, after being convicted several more times, he was sentenced to two years training at a borstal school as well as a term of imprisonment in Strangeways prison.

While incarcerated, Brady learnt other criminal methods for acquiring money from other prisoners, and dreamt of becoming a big-time criminal, pulling off lucrative bank robberies. He also studied bookkeeping. Following his release, he moved from job to job and in 1961, while employed at Millward’s, he met Myra Hindley, although it would be almost 12 months before they would actually form a long-lasting relationship. It would ultimately lead to them becoming the most publically reviled criminals of their era.

It was at the firm’s Christmas party that Brady asked Hindley for their first date. This was to be her initiation into his secret world. That first night, he took her to see the hour-long film
The Nuremberg Trials.
As the weeks went by, he played her records of Hitler’s marching songs and encouraged her to read some of his favourite books –
Mein Kampf, Crime and
Punishment
and De Sade’s works. Hindley happily complied – after her tough upbringing, she had waited so long for something different. Her inexperience and hunger left her incapable of distinguishing the new experiences that were healthy from those that were dangerous.

Brady became Hindley’s first lover and she was soon totally besotted with him, soaking up all of his distorted philosophical theories. Her greatest desire was to please him. She even changed the way she dressed for him – Germanic-style with long boots, miniskirts and bleached hair. She allowed him to take pornographic photographs of her and of the two of them having sex. With such a devoted audience, Brady’s ideas became increasingly paranoid and outrageous, but Hindley lacked the necessary skills and experience to discern good from bad – and bad from evil. When he told her there was no God, she stopped going to church, and when he told her that rape and murder were not wrong, that in fact murder was the ‘supreme pleasure’, she
did not question it. Her personality had become totally fused with his.

Early in 1963, Brady put Hindley’s blind acceptance of his ideas to the test. He began planning a bank robbery and needed her to be his getaway driver. Immediately, Hindley started taking driving lessons. He made her join the Cheadle Rifle Club and purchased two guns. The robbery was never carried out, but Brady’s purpose had been fulfilled. Myra had shown herself willing. Brady knew she was ready to cement their relationship.

On the night of 12 July 1963, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley claimed their first joint victim, 16-year-old Pauline Reade. She was on her way to a dance at the Railway Workers’ Social Club when she disappeared. Originally, she had planned to go with three girlfriends, but at the last minute they did not go, so Pauline decided to go alone. At 8pm Pauline, dressed in her prettiest pink party dress, left home. What Pauline didn’t know was that her girlfriend Pat and another friend, Dorothy, had seen her leave. Curious to see whether she would really have the nerve to go to the dance alone, Pat and Dorothy followed her. When they were almost at the club, the two girls decided to take a short cut so they could arrive at the club before Pauline. They waited for her but she never arrived. She had been enticed by Hindley into her minivan. Hindley drove off, with Brady following behind on his motorcycle. They drove up to Saddleworth Moor, where Hindley asked Pauline to help her look for a lost glove. They were busy searching the moors when Brady pounced on Pauline and raped her. He then smashed her skull in with a shovel and slashed her throat so violently that she was almost decapitated. Brady then buried Pauline’s body on the moor, where it would remain for the next 20 years.