Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers (19 page)

Three months after Caroline’s abduction, in the spring of 1973, Linda Gough came to the Wests for support having had an argument with her parents. The
nineteen
-year-old seamstress had visited the house often in the past as she had had relationships with two of their lodgers. She had also babysat for the Wests.

Now someone took Rose’s former babysitter to the cellar and bound her face with surgical and brown tape. What happened next will probably never fully be known, but it’s believed that all of the cases involved sexual torture. The Wests vaginally penetrated and sodomised many of their consensual sexual partners with large vibrators, so it’s likely they did the same thing to the young woman they eventually killed. Fred had also told one of his earlier potential sexual partners that she could burn or flog him or let him do the same to her…

It’s likely that Linda was suspended from the ceiling whilst these abuses were taking place, as Fred had fashioned holes in the beams. When finally imprisoned, he told one of his sons that he hung his victims there.

After Linda died, Fred completely dismembered her body and buried it below the house. It would remain there for the next twenty-one years and when it was finally unearthed by the authorities, some small bones would be missing. The tape that had been used to silence her was found still wrapped around the skull.

Meanwhile, Linda’s parents began to search for her. Her mother went to Cromwell Street and Rose answered but said that she didn’t know a Linda Gough. But Mrs Gough pointed out that Rose was wearing Linda’s slippers - and that some of her daughter’s clothes were drying on Rose’s washing line. At this stage Rose admitted she’d remembered who Linda was, but said that she’d gone. Linda’s recent relationship with her parents had been awkward, so though they searched for her they didn’t assume the worst when she didn’t get in touch.

The Wests had gotten away with murder again - and for a few months their memories of abusing Linda presumably sustained them. Rose may also have been
tired throughout the summer as she was increasingly pregnant with the son she’d ultimately name Stephen. He was born in August 1973, and by November the couple were ready to kill again.

In November a fifteen-year-old girl called Carol Anne Cooper was seen waiting for a bus that would take her to her grandmother’s house. Thereafter she vanished. She had been in care so was desperate for affection and probably accepted a lift from the smiling Wests.

She, too, was bound and gagged and suspended from the cellar’s rafters. When her body was eventually found it had a deep mark in the skull, suggesting that she’d been stabbed through the head. This particular injury may have been post mortem as Fred liked to decapitate the dead women. He also enjoyed sawing off the thighs and would later hint to his son that he had sex with the corpses, the ultimate controlling sexual act.

It seems that Fred liked to take care of the bodies after death - though he also enjoyed brutalising them whilst they were bound and gagged in the cellar. It’s not clear whether Rose took part in the dismemberments, but the way she acted after abducting Caroline Owens, and with even younger girls whom she lured to the house for juice and biscuits, makes it clear that she enjoyed forcing large objects into her victims to make them cry out. She also liked to scare her consensual female sexual partners, tying them tighter than they
liked and partially restricting their breathing then gloating about her intensifying power.

Carol’s murder didn’t seem to satisfy them for long. Leastways only a month elapsed before they abducted their next victim, Lucy Partington. She was a religious university student, the twenty-one-year old niece of the late writer Kingsley Amis. Lucy had visited a disabled friend on 27th December and was waiting at a dark bus stop to catch the bus home when Fred and Rose presumably drove past.

It’s likely that they forced her into the car - she was an intelligent, cautious girl who wouldn’t have accepted a lift from strangers. Fred would later lie that she and he had earlier been lovers, but in truth she would have had nothing in common with this semi-literate man who was rarely clean.

Lucy was taken to the Cromwell Street cellar, bound, and treated as badly as her predecessors. She may have been kept alive for up to a week as Fred attended casualty seven days later with a bad hand wound, probably received whilst cutting her body up. He also decapitated her corpse and buried it in the basement. Another young life had been cruelly stolen in exchange for a few days of depraved lust.

But not every hunting trip was a success - so Rose and Fred decided that they would now only advertise for single female lodgers. If a girl was beholden to them for the roof over her head then it was harder for her to resist their requests for sex.

The couple also took to loitering about outside orphanages, where Rose would engage the most needy girls in a motherly chat. Later she’d invite them round to play with the babies. Word soon got around that Cromwell Street was a good place to go for a nice afternoon out.

But after a while Rose would start stroking the young girl’s hair and telling her that it was alright to touch. Many of these girls just froze, but some felt too scared to protest and allowed the paedophiliac acts to continue. On other occasions she’d answer the door wearing very little then make it clear that she had no panties on under her skirt.

On one occasion Rose tied up two girls and buggered them both with a candle or a vibrator then Fred had intercourse with them. One of the girls might have been Fred’s daughter Anne Marie as both parents had been abusing her for several years. Rose regularly beat Anne Marie and locked her in the cellar. Rose also took pornographic photos of the child and let her be sexually abused by Rose’s own father, Bill Letts.

Rose even made Anne Marie dress up and go out to pubs with her in the hope of attracting men to make up
a foursome. By the time Anne Marie was thirteen she would be forced to have sex with several of Rose’s clients.

After these abuses, the girls from the orphanage were in great pain and they often bled. (Anne Marie would have an ectopic pregnancy by her father when she was fifteen.) But they would also feel confused. After all, Rose had been so nice to them up till now. Had they sent her the wrong signals? These girls had been abandoned by their families and had sometimes been criticised or punished within the care system. They had little sense of self worth and tended to blame themselves for everything.

Thankfully, some of the girls would find the courage to tell of their abuse at Rose’s hands when Rose finally ended up in court, though the fact that they had taken money from the tabloid press somewhat tarnished their testimony. For now, though, Fred and Rose weren’t finding these assaults on orphaned teenagers exciting enough, so another young female stranger had to die…

In April 1974 Rose and/or Fred picked up a twenty one year old Swiss girl, Therese Siegenthaler. It’s possible that Fred had someone other than his wife already in the car with him as the police suspected at least one
other man was involved in the murders. Theresa was studying in London, but they gave her a lift when she was hitchhiking between London and Wales. She had taken self defence classes in the past but was clearly no match for whoever overpowered her. Theresa was driven to Cromwell Street where someone wrapped a brown scarf tightly around her mouth and bound her limbs with rope. The inevitable abuses followed until finally Fred dismembered and decapitated her corpse and buried it in the cellar.

Four months later Rose presented herself at the hospital with a very badly cut finger that required a hospital stay. She made up various stories about what had happened, which later made the authorities wonder if she was trying to conceal another murder. Then again, she’d lied often since childhood and may even have been covering up the fact that she’d attacked one of her children with a blade. Later the children would testify that she’d sometimes lunged at them with kitchen knives during a rage.

It’s also possible that Fred cut her during an argument. The children would say that the atmosphere worsened when Fred came home at night, and then he would get angry if Rose didn’t want to prostitute
herself for him. But apparently Rose also lunged at Fred with a knife on one occasion, and when he slammed the door the blade went into her hand.

Three months after this hospital stay, in November 1974, they encountered fifteen-year-old Shirley Hubbard. A witness had seen her getting on a bus, so presumably the Wests offered her a lift when she got off at her journey’s end.

This teenager was more heavily bondaged than the other victims buried under the floorboards. It’s been said that the female serial killer often tries to kill an earlier representation of herself, as if trying to snuff out a painful memory. At fifteen, Rose had been rejected by both parents and soon made pregnant by Fred - so she possibly hated everything about this girl aged fifteen. And Shirley - who had been in care since her childhood - was beautiful and interested in clothes and makeup, whereas twenty-one-year old Rose wore old clothes and schoolgirl-like white socks and had heavy unstyled hair.

The killer or killers bound the teenager’s face very heavily, leaving only a slender tube protruding from one nostril to allow her to breathe. They left her eyes uncovered so that she could see what was about to happen - and so that they could see her terror. They stripped her
and assaulted her, then Fred dismembered her corpse. When her makeshift grave was finally discovered, many of the bones and part of the torso had gone.

Five months later, in April 1975, one or both of the Wests picked up eighteen year old Juanita Mott as she hitchhiked to a friend’s house. Earlier Juanita had rented a bedsit from them and had babysat for their children so she had no reason to assume that they meant her harm.

Her abductors now gagged her with a pair of long white socks and tights then bound her using several feet of plastic rope. When the body was eventually found it would be clear that the eighteen-year-old had been trussed up like a mummy. She too was suspended before the sexual torment took place. Juanita may have ultimately been killed by a hammer as her skull was indented when it was unearthed in the basement of Cromwell Street.

After this April 1975 death, life seemed to return to normal - or as near to normal as was possible for the Wests
- for a couple of years. Fred decided to make extensive renovations to the house and this included turning the torture chamber into bedrooms for the children. Rose still entertained clients in the master bedroom upstairs. He also built an extension into the garden and made the lodger’s flats in the upper part of the house completely self contained.

Rose continued to go out to pick up men, and during one of her trips she met and began talking to an eighteen-year-old girl called Shirley Robinson. Other accounts say that it was Fred who met Shirley first, chatting her up in a cafeteria. Shirley had had a very hard life and was working as a prostitute. Either Rose or Fred invited Shirley to come and stay with them and their children. She would ultimately become the second victim called Shirley that they would kill.

Shirley moved into Cromwell Street in the late spring of 1977. At first they all got on well. Rose was newly pregnant, this time with one of her coloured lover’s babies, so appreciated the help that Shirley could give around the house. Shirley had had other lesbian relationships so it’s likely that at the start they made a sexual threesome, but over time Shirley started to have feelings for Fred. She assumed that Rose wouldn’t mind - after all, she was still having sex with Jamaican men.

By the early autumn of that year, Shirley was expecting Fred West’s child. She was happy about the
pregnancy - but Rose became jealous of the closeness between them. Her jealousy was compounded by the fact that Fred kept joking that Shirley would be his next wife.

Eighteen-year-old Shirley had by now seen Rose lose her temper with the kids - and realised that she would make a fearsome enemy. She tried to keep out of Rose’s way yet still attempted to stay close to Fred. As 1978 progressed, she started to sleep on the floor of one of the other lodger’s rooms, not wanting to be left by herself when Rose was at home.

Fred told various people that Rose was really enraged at the situation. He added that Shirley would have to go. Everyone thought he meant that she’d have to leave the West household - but he and Rose had really decided that Shirley would have to die.

In May 1978 one of the other lodgers came home to find Rose in Shirley’s room, packing away her stuff. Rose said that Shirley had left to visit relatives abroad and that she wouldn’t be coming back.

In truth they had killed her, most likely by strangulation. Either Rose or Fred also cut the eight month baby from her womb and buried it near to her. One of them scalped the body then Fred dismembered it as he always did.

By now Rose was in charge of all the money - from rent, her prostitution and husband’s wages. This suggests that she played an increasingly dominant role in the relationship. But Fred was equally capable of dominating, insisting that she still sleep with his coloured friends. Sometimes when they argued he hit her - at times she looked frightened of him and one client remembers seeing her with a badly blackened eye. In late 1978 she gave birth to her first mixed race daughter and the following year she gave birth to a second mixed race girl.

After the 1978 birth, the Wests started enjoying their sex life again, this time with Alison Chambers, a seventeen-year-old girl who was clearly vulnerable. Alison had been in care until the Wests invited her to stay. She had few friends and was a dreamer who was desperate to be liked.

Fred and Rose always had to have their own way, and it’s likely that at some stage Alison protested that the sex was becoming too violent. Thereafter (in September 1979) they apparently stripped her and gagged her with a belt, fastening it around her skull and under her jaw. They also tied her up and abused her then killed her and buried her in the garden. They
had promised her that they’d take her to live on their fictitious farm in the country, but instead put her in a premature grave.

In the same year Rose’s sadistic father Bill Letts died - and the murder of girls being buried under the Cromwell Street house stopped abruptly. The only body to be buried after this date would be that of Heather, their daughter, eight years later. Fred and Bill had become friends and had at one stage run a cafe together. Some crime writers have wondered if they also went out driving together looking for girls.