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-"Rosemary Pauline West,
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on each of the ten counts of murder,
the sentence is one of life imprisonment."
-Throughout her trial, Rose West maintained she was innocent.
♪♪
It turned out that she was just 17
when she began the most sadistic killing spree
Britain has ever witnessed.
-She wanted to hurt women as much as she could.
-The more macabre nature of this torture
got progressively worse,
with one killing following another.
-But how did this local housewife become one
of the most depraved killers in history?
Could Rose's childhood have transformed her into a killer?
-Rose was definitely in charge in the West household.
There was no denying that.
-We'll speak to the people who knew her best...
-You could hear the screams and the shouts
and it was awful to hear.
-...and discover a history of mental illness...
-She went into a little bubble of her own.
-...brutal therapies...
-The seizures would be violent.
She would've not found solace in the outside world.
-...and uncover generations of abuse.
-He'd actually been grooming her from quite a young age.
-There's no doubt that he altered his daughter Rose.
♪♪
-Was Rose West raised to become a killer
or was she born evil?
♪♪
1970 marks a new bohemian era for Great Britain.
As glam rock topped the charts, the Brits adopted
this new, free-spirited, permissive lifestyle.
♪♪
And, for 16-year-old Rosemary Letts,
life couldn't be better.
She's moved in with her new lover,
29-year-old Fred;
his stepdaughter, Charmaine;
and daughter, Anne Marie.
And, nine months later, the couple introduce
baby Heather to the world.
♪♪
-Rose is living in a kind of fairy-tale dream, at this point.
She's got this little family
and she has this older chap who's going to take care of her.
So things were looking quite bright, at this point.
And then, Fred goes to prison
and her world comes crashing down.
-Rose learnt the hard way
that the man of her dreams was a petty thief.
-Fred was a kleptomaniac.
If anything wasn't actually nailed down, he would take it
and so he was often in and out of prison.
-Fred was sentenced to ten months in jail,
leaving Rose all alone
to raise baby Heather, Anne Marie, and Charmaine.
-She was actually living in squalor
with three small children, unable to cope.
This wasn't the life that Rose had dreamed of.
This wasn't what she'd bargained for.
This fairy tale wasn't working out.
-Just as Rose was learning a lot about Fred's past,
he would learn about hers.
[Static crackles]
-Years after the young girl
went missing, her remains were uncovered,
buried under a kitchen floor.
-In the summer of 1971,
17-year-old Rose murders her first victim --
eight-year-old Charmaine.
-In Gloucester's Midland Road,
she did not get on with her stepmother.
-She told Rose, "You're not my mother.
You can't do this.
You can't say that to me,"
and Rose would lash out.
She just picked up anything that was to hand
and would hit, jab, do whatever.
And then, she would tie her to the bed and whip her.
-After one brutal outburst, Rose kills Charmaine.
[Static crackles] -Rosemary West has spent
her first night behind prison bars.
Rosemary West has been charged with ten counts of murder.
She remains in custody,
where she denies all involvement.
-Today, Rosemary West's solicitor told
how she's in severe shock.
-In her cell at Pucklechurch Remand Centre,
Rosemary West's reaction was simple --
"I'm innocent," she told her lawyer.
-Okay.
♪♪
I think that Rose
was constructed of her life experiences.
She had a reality that she hadn't been able to confront
since her childhood,
the childhood that was stolen from her.
-To understand how Rose crossed the line
from motherhood to murder,
we must go back to a time before she was even born.
[Static crackles]
Rosemary Pauline Letts grew up in beautiful North Devon.
Her father, Bill Letts, was in the Navy
and was often away for months on end,
leaving her mother, Daisy, at home to raise the children.
♪♪
-My name is Gill and I grew up, as a child,
next door to the Letts family.
They lived in a semi-detached
and we were right next to them, really, you know?
It was fantastic growing up in Northam.
All the men, they all had jobs,
and the women were just housewives,
bringing up the children, all very house-proud.
Lovely, brand-new houses, nice gardens.
A wonderful place to grow up in.
It seemed like summer was forever.
Maybe you remember the good times.
-During the early 1950s, Britain was kind of optimistic.
It was coming out of a war.
It had managed to get a National Health Service
and various other things, however,
there was a great deal of poverty
and you had an awful lot of ex-servicemen
coming into the community,
ill-fitted to settle into normal life.
-Whilst pregnant with Rose,
Daisy was suffering from severe prenatal depression,
so Bill had to leave the Navy
and struggled with the domestic duties
when settling into civilian life.
-Bill Letts could best be described
as brutal, violent, impossible to like.
He bullied, intimidated, and, indeed, in the end,
terrified his wife, Daisy.
-You could hear the screams and the shouts and banging
and it was awful to hear.
Everybody talked about it on the estate.
Daisy's teeth would chatter, she would be so frightened,
and the neighbors would say that she
would come round crying and ask for help.
I think, on one occasion,
my mother did bring social services,
but nothing was ever done about it.
-As the pregnancy progressed,
Daisy sank into a deeper depression
and sought professional help.
-The depression is so severe that it's recommended
that she consider ECT, convulsive therapy.
♪♪
Very dramatic therapy, indeed,
involving electrodes attached to the skull,
you know, so-called shock therapy.
-Electroconvulsive therapy was something
that was kind of first used in the '40s and in the '50s,
but it was very crude.
The point about ECT is it has to produce a seizure.
Basically, the level of seizure, in Daisy's day,
was that where they'd break teeth,
they would bite through their tongues,
they would break bones.
There was so much amnesia following it,
they wouldn't know which side of the bus stop to stand at.
It was kind of like a crude weapon
that should only ever be used in very severe depression.
So Rose would've felt some of the effects of the ECT
and the seizures that were caused
and they would be violent.
♪♪
-And it was only, I think, the day before Rose was born
that she had her last lot of ECT.
I recall the day she came home with her shaven head,
carrying baby Rose,
and I remember going to my mum, saying,
"God, what's happened to Mrs. Letts?
She's got no hair!"
-In my view, it could very well be argued that
Rose's neurological development
will have been retarded, to some degree,
by the ECT procedures that her mother underwent.
To have ECT late in the gestation period,
this often is the more sophisticated parts
of the brain development, the inhibitory parts,
the parts that give us a conscience,
that give us empathy,
that stop us, basically, from doing heinous acts.
♪♪
-Rosemary Pauline Letts was born on the 29th of November 1953.
-Rose was a very pretty baby,
lovely hair and lovely olive skin.
-But baby Rose was remembered
for more than her striking features.
-I remember seeing little Rose sitting
in her pram in the garden.
You never heard much from her and she used to do
all this rocking back and forwards
and, you know, she'd be sat there and, you know...
I don't know what that was all about.
It was a strange thing for a kid to do, really,
wasn't it?
-Rose engaged in stereotypies,
basically moving her head, rocking her head.
These things will generate endorphins in the body.
They will soothe the person.
♪♪
The rocking that you see in Rose
would often be seen in children that have been abused,
where they're getting comfort from this repeated movement.
She would've not found solace in the outside world
and she would turn in on this kind of behavior
to change her biochemistry, to make her feel okay.
-Despite the hostile household,
Daisy and Bill continued to have more children.
But as the family grew, so did Bill's resentment towards them.
-It's impossible to convey just how dysfunctional
the Letts family was.
-Well, the Letts family didn't fit
into the community there at all.
The children never played out.
-You have a father, in Bill Letts,
who is telling you to behave properly at all times.
Swear words are not used.
He doesn't use foul language,
but he's insisting that everything's clean.
If you sit at the table, no one says anything.
I mean, proper.
Everything has to be done correctly.
This is a man who finally found himself in the navy,
as, "Oh, I fit in now.
I haven't fitted in before, but I now fit in.
I know where I am."
-Having been forced to leave the navy,
Bill had lost his status and sense of self-worth,
something he would try and regain at home
by using violence.
-Letts was fierce and intimidating.
You have children who were made to clean the carpet
with toothbrushes, you know.
It's an extraordinary household.
It's unlike anything you could possibly imagine.
You have this tyrant of a father telling them what to do.
You have a mother who's intimidated
to clean everything all the time.
-The Letts household was basically some kind
of bizarre, punitive military camp.
It was never really a childlike atmosphere.
It was always an atmosphere of fear.
-Every day, there was shouting, bawling, and smacking and --
He always walked around with a beret,
in like a military sort of walk
with his long mac thing, you know?
And the kids used to walk a bit like that.
He was a bit regimented with them.
-Letts was -- and there's no other word for it --
a monster.
♪♪
From a very early age,
Rose would've seen the elder children's fears.
She had a childhood which, really,
she retracted from the world.
She went into a little bubble of her own,
creating her own life, hiding in the corner,
sitting at the back of the class in primary school,
playing with her own dolls, removed from the world.
-To avoid any beatings at the hand of her father,
Rose would become reclusive and disengaged.
-She had these very winsome ways.
So, while he'd come home and shout
and hit most of the other children,
if they hadn't done their chores,
he would let Rosie off.
-Bill would exploit Rose's passive demeanor.
-Bill had a hidden agenda.
He was someone who had pedophilic tendencies.
He was thinking that that vulnerability that Rose had
would make her someone who could be coerced
into sexual activity.
-He'd actually been grooming her from quite a young age.
Rosie was the one that was vulnerable.
She wasthe one that wasn't really going to say anything.
-When Bill inflicted sexual abuse on Rose,
he was limiting her development.
She was learning the wrong skills
and the wrong motivations for life.
She was on a path that, almost certainly, would lead
to her being part of abusive relations in the future,
and even an instigator of abusive relations.
[Static crackles]
♪♪
-Aged 15,
years of incest abuse
had normalized sex for Rose.
She had earnt a reputation as a nymphomaniac
amongst the local older men.
-Rose's engagement with Bill Letts
at an early stage
meant that she had a model in her head of the older man,
which she found normal,
which she could relate to.
-One man who had heard
about this highly sexualized teenager
was 29-year-old Fred West.
-Fred lived near Rose
and he had probably heard her name mentioned
because I think she was getting quite infamous
at this time locally.
-I'm pretty sure that Fred targeted Rose quite early on.
[Chuckling] She was voluptuous.
She was obviously out there, in every sense.
I think Fred knew that.
Fred was a wily man, knew how to exploit.
-She was at the bus station in Cheltenham
when this chap in this mac shuffled over.
He'd got like, she said, "Ganky green teeth."
He was quite scruffy, but he had a good line in chat
and she said he could charm the birds off the trees,
so, when they were going home on the bus, he sat next to her
and then, they discovered they had lots in common,
like they both had mothers called Daisy,
they both lived close by,
that they [Laughing] both had committed incest.
When Fred started to talk about things of a sexual nature,
to do with like bondage, S&M, all the stuff that he was into,
then, any other girl would've run off,
but Rose didn't.
She stayed
because that was kind of quite a normal thing that she knew of.
♪♪
-I think Fred sensed, almost in an animalistic way,
that, "Here's someone who could help me do what I want to do."
-Having left his estranged wife, Rena Costello,
Fred invited Rose to move into 25 Midland Road,
along with his daughter, Anne Marie;
and stepdaughter, Charmaine.
-Rose made a leap into what was very much
the deep end of relationships.
So she actually did move out of the father's household,
stepping into Fred West's life,
looking after his two current children.
-Just weeks after they welcomed their first child together,
Fred was jailed for theft
and Rose was left alone to raise the three children --
baby Heather, Anne Marie, and Charmaine.
-Charmaine had always been defiant and stood up to Rose.
-Rose felt very challenged by her
and she couldn't cope and she would lash out.
It was almost like, at times,
losing touch with reality, she was so enraged, like Bill.
And then, she would
tie her to the bed, her legs and arms outstretched,
and whip her, just lash her.
It's just a nightmare.
Charmaine absolutely refused to break down.
She refused to cry and that irked Rose,
that she couldn't get the better of her.
-The fact that Fred had baggage from previous relationships
was highly resented by Rose,
who had a very simple view of things.
Her vision of her and Fred
having a wonderful life together
did not include previous relationship children.
-And, when Charmaine would not abide by the rules,
Rose killed her.
-I think Rose,
with the stress and luggage that she was carrying
and the anger that she had within her,
she was capable of killing Charmaine.
She applied the same kind of draconian regime
that she'd witnessed with Bill Letts
in her own house.
I'm not saying that she would've planned to murder her,
but she might have just beaten the living daylights out of her.
-It is believed that Rose
hid Charmaine's body in the coal cellar
and that Fred buried the body beneath the kitchen floor
when he was released from jail.
-Charmaine's mother, Rena,
came around, seeking out where Charmaine had gone.
Rena was becoming a problem
and, in Fred's mind, she had to go.
-After strangling Rena, Fred buried her dismembered body
in a field near his childhood home.
But this was not the first time Fred had committed murder.
-He has then told Rose about Anna McFall
and the child that Anna was having
and where they're buried.
-Three years before meeting Rose,
Fred murdered his 18-year-old mistress
and their unborn child to avoid his wife Rena finding out.
-So, now, they have this bond between them.
They've got a hold over each other
and that won't break until many, many years and murders later.
♪♪
[Static crackles]
♪♪
Fred West had a dysfunctional upbringing
by his parents, Walter and Daisy,
in a remote part of the countryside,
15 miles outside of Gloucester.
I was the authorized biographer of Frederick West,
given his papers by the officials listed
at the supreme court.
The first time I ever heard Frederick West's voice
was when I listened to the first tape,
describing, in a little singsong Herefordshire accent,
what had been happening.
♪♪
Important point to remember about Fred's childhood
was that he came from an extraordinarily
incestuous household.
Fred himself talked about it in his police interviews.
Daisy took Fred to bed and initiated him into sex
at a very early age.
Fred told the authorities his father had had sex with animals
and there's no question his father
persuaded Fred to have sex with animals,
particularly, sheep.
It wasn't even surprising.
[Baa]
Fred also witnessed his father
having sex with young girls,
but he was also well aware that his father wouldn't hesitate
to hurt a young girl that didn't do what he wanted.
They lived in a world which was remote from convention.
They did what they wanted
and this was Walter West's universe.
He commanded it.
What Daisy did -- "If you want to kill a pig,
we'll hang it up in the kitchen.
It'll bleed onto the floor."
This was not anything like a suburban upbringing.
It was completely opposite of that.
Fred then took those habits and translated them
into an urban environment, Gloucester itself.
He was still, really, a farm laborer at heart.
Everybody I ever talked to about Fred West
said the same thing -- "You'd never have believed it."
He was just -- well, he was just commonplace.
He was a little commonplace little man.
But one person who always knew exactly what Fred was like
was Rose.
Rose knew from the very beginning
and she also knew how to press his buttons.
♪♪
-As soon as Rose turned 18, they got married.
After the birth of their second child,
they bought their first home and moved
into 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester,
along with daughters Heather and Anne Marie.
-Owning their own home,
particularly Rose, at such a young age,
was a huge thing for her
and, of course, she was really pleased
to be moving into 25 Cromwell Street.
-I mean, Rose, finally, at 25 Cromwell Street,
gets her own domain and she treats it as her domain
and she rules it with a rod of iron.
She rules her own children even more fiercely
than Bill intimidated her as a child.
♪♪
-To help pay the way with the mortgage,
the upstairs were turned into bedsits
and they would let them to young sort of transient people.
♪♪
-I was actually a resident at 25 Cromwell Street,
with Rosemary and Fred being my landlord and landlady.
I wasn't working while I was living there, or studying.
I'd just walked out of home when I was 16.
I was just a runaway. [Laughs]
I attended St James Junior School
with Anne Marie in the year below,
so I knew them quite well.
I'd seen Rose previously picking Anne Marie up.
I never really kind of put two and two together
as Rose West being her stepmother
because she didn't really look much different
in the way that she dressed.
Schoolgirl-type sort of clothes with skirts and trainers.
Not what you would expect for somebody that's a mother,
more somebody that was just going on to high school.
♪♪
I bumped into Anne Marie in town
and Anne Marie was talking to me about her parents had a room.
So I went to the café to meet them
and there was Fred and Rose.
Rose was a very forward person.
She said it as it was and she seemed
to be the dominant person in the relationship.
Fred wasn't passive, but Fred was quiet, compared to Rose.
He was just sort of like saying, you know,
"It's your choice, if you want to come and have a look,"
whereas Rose was, "This is the rules and regulations,"
so there was a lot of difference between the two of them.
From what I can remember, I moved in about a week later.
I'd never lived away from home before, so, to me,
it was a room that I could rent and be my own person.
It was a very clean house.
It always smelt fresh.
It smelt of bleach most of the time
and everywhere I went, it was very clean.
♪♪
-Jayne soon began to realize
that Fred and Rose were no ordinary couple.
♪♪
The doorbell went, but,
it lit up a red light above the living room door.
And I [Laughs] jokingly said,
"Oh, is this the red light district?"
And then Fred come walking in from the other side
and went through.
That's how I found out that she was having other men in.
♪♪
-Rose used her insatiable appetite for sex to make money,
working as a prostitute out of the family home,
something which Fred encouraged.
-This was somewhere where they had space,
where they could invest, if you like,
in their bizarre activities, for sex to become
something that Rose could indulge in endlessly.
-I --
I kind of was a bit confused over it.
Again, I was only 16 and naive,
so why does a woman want other men in?
Maybe if that's how they fulfill their relationship,
that's their choice.
♪♪
-It gave them the chance, as it were,
to partition their lives, to be able to control elements,
for Fred to engage in voyeuristic activity
with Rose's sex activity.
-Yes, she was charging money, but this was more
about Fred watching and peering through spy holes
that he made in all the doors and walls.
He had an intercom system built, as well,
so, wherever he was, he could listen.
-He loved watching Rose,
particularly, performing sexually.
He would record it as well.
He was an archetypal voyeur.
He took great pleasure in having sex with Rose
after she'd had sex with somebody else.
That was one of the things that really turned Fred on.
♪♪
-Sometimes he would coat himself
in the sperm of her clients,
that he'd take from condoms,
so he felt he was breeding something like a master race.
It was just crazy stuff
and Rose went along with those delusions,
so they really were caught up in a folie à deux.
-I'm one of the few people who actually saw the videotapes
that Fred made of Rose
doing various extraordinary sexual things.
Absolutely revolting.
She was actually performing for Fred,
inserting things into herself,
showing the knickers that she'd brought back and used
and kept in jars on the mantelpiece in her room.
She was showing how enthusiastic she was.
And Fred very seldom appeared himself.
He occasionally would pop his head round,
but he was always behind the camera
and Rose was always in front of it.
And that played out
throughout their entire marriage.
I've used the phrase before
and I mean it, still, to this day --
she was, in every sense, the sorcerer's apprentice.
♪♪
-The Wests were pushing boundaries,
experimenting with fetishes.
She liked -- It's no secret.
Fred himself talked about it in his police interviews,
that Rose liked rough sex.
She liked hard.
She didn't like any chatting up.
She liked fierceness.
♪♪
-But Rose wanted more, and would turn
to the increasingly popular classified adverts
to appease her sexual desires.
♪♪
-Here you have the development of strong paraphilias --
Rose becoming exhibitionist and Fred becoming a voyeur
and getting visions of pornographic films
and other kind of things.
He was full of ideas, that were often macabre.
♪♪
-So, what you'd got was this extraordinary conjunction
Of a highly sexualized young woman
and a very manipulative man.
♪♪
Okay, so does she marry her father?
Is West really Bill Letts?
It's possible. There's an element of it.
Not complete, of course.
It's too glib.
But there is an element there.
There's an element of Fred targeting Rose
and then, Rose targeting Fred.
♪♪
-Outside of Cromwell Street,
Rose was keen to portray a normal life,
although her obsession with sex was known amongst the locals.
-Rose West was known as, you know, basically, a slut,
but she liked her men.
She was known for, you know, flashing
or trying to show herself off and things like that, yeah.
She'd always like to touch you or she could be quite, you know.
She liked to let you know she liked you.
I didn't feel comfortable around her.
I couldn't wait to get away from her.
You just knew there was something a bit
seedy about her, you know?
My mum and dad used to run the St Peters Social Club
and, of course, Fred and Rose West
used to go there.
Rose used to turn up to the events
like, you know, with the cowboy hat, the guns,
and everything was so hypo, you know, around her table.
She had a temper on her.
Even in the club,
she'd shout at the kids and tell them to sit down.
She was, you know, like a sergeant major with them, you know?
Sometimes it could be uncomfortable
seeing her snap and shout at the kids,
but, you know, they knew their place.
When she said something, they knew and they sat there,
you know, and they toed the line.
♪♪
When Rose hit the dance floor, you know,
she was like flirty-dancing, you know, sexy-dancing.
Fred was always shy.
He'd smile.
Rose would always keep an eye on Fred --
where he was going, who he was talking to --
and she always watched him and she was the boss.
She was probably trying to be someone she wasn't
when she was on the dance floor.
You know, that was her de-stressor kind of thing,
trying to convince herself
she was a normal person, I suppose, you know?
-But this new confidence,
both inside and outside of Cromwell Street,
was a far cry from Rose as a child
[Static crackles] ...who struggled,
socially and academically.
-When Rose started school, her sort of inabilities
with language, understanding;
thumb-sucking -- a lot of the stereotypies --
became more obvious,
contrasted with all the other children.
-There's no doubt that Rose was not a particularly bright child.
She was slow to pick up the obvious things --
reading, writing, and arithmetic.
-In these very early days, the way of treating children
who were not showing signs of good development was
to place them in the corner,
place a dunce's cap on their head,
make them face the wall, basically, to single them out
and say, "Don't do that.
Improve. Look,
you're going to be outside of society,
if you don't."
The fact that the British education system
actually adopted a dunce's cap --
this pointed cone that you placed on the head
as the child was isolated and faced the wall --
was a bizarre, primitive practice.
This was kind of hand-me-down from bizarre religious beliefs
that, somehow or other, the dunce's cap
was a conduit for God's intelligence.
Complete nonsense and the effect on children
was like secondary labeling.
You know, you were being labeled as being stupid,
but then, you could take on that label
and just start acting stupid with full license
because that's the role they've given you.
♪♪
-At school, Rose reverted back to what she knew --
being a self-absorbed recluse.
-That was her way of surviving
an environment that she didn't understand.
She was never allowed to play, in the conventional sense,
with other children,
except in a school form environment.
The only socialization she got was within the house.
♪♪
-Rose struggled academically and was held back a year,
where she gained confidence being the eldest child in class.
Both her parents now had jobs, meaning Rose was often left
in charge of her younger brothers.
-She had always taken a great interest in dolls
and then, treats her two younger brothers
as the equivalent of dolls.
She would bathe them.
She would put them to bed.
She would dress them.
Those two younger brothers were Rose's...playthings.
♪♪
-As Rose matured,
she learnt to use violence to protect her brothers.
-Rose began to identify with Bill
and think of herself being someone
who was strong and could create fear in others
and this actually led
to Rose going out and bullying other children.
-Rose reached puberty before other kids in her class
and, from being a meek, timid girl who was bullied,
she became this big, strong girl who could
knock people about, and she did,
because she would protect her younger brothers,
who were, you know, skinny little chaps.
-When her brothers were attacked,
Rose would go after them.
Suddenly, the bullied turns round and bullies back.
She was not going to have her brothers hurt
and she would lump them, as they called it.
-So you've got this interesting dichotomy
between sexuality at one point;
and violence, bullying, at another.
-Rose would've felt powerful from that.
She would've felt in control herself,
where she'd always felt out of control.
So, now, she has power.
Now, she's enjoying that.
Now, she's going to go out and do this.
So this makes quite a dangerous stage
for the next part of the journey,
where she meets Fred West.
♪♪
-Rose gained confidence through sex and violence,
passions amplified by her relationship with Fred,
so they wanted somewhere
to combine both of these desires.
-This is where Fred goes on to extend the house
and to develop the basement.
-Fred was very proud of his cellar.
I can remember, one day, going through to peg the washing out
and Fred was out in the back garden,
fiddling about, doing something.
I can't recall what it was.
He said, "Oh, I've repainted the cellar downstairs.
Do you want to have a look?"
I said, "What's a cellar?"
He said, "It's where the children go to play."
I said, "Okay."
And I'm claustrophobic,
but I thought, "Well, don't be rude." [Laughs]
And he took me down into the cellar,
which was a horrible, dark, dank place.
[Static crackles] ♪♪
-In the lower basement area,
he decided he was going to have a torture chamber.
[Static crackling] ♪♪
They both shared this sadistic view
of subjecting human beings to horrific circumstances.
[Static crackles] ♪♪
Fred was becoming a creative psychopath.
His obsession on all things gynecological
was drawing him into some very, very sadistic and bizarre ideas.
♪♪
[Dog barks in distance]
-Despite Rose being married and owning her own home,
her father Bill was still firmly rooted in her life.
-There was still a sexual relationship
between Rose and her father, Bill.
At one point, he was living in a caravan
at the bottom of Cromwell Street.
♪♪
-I found Bill a bit
scary, I think, is the easiest way of describing him.
He kind of like was looking through me and --
How do you explain it?
Like sizing me up and --
All I know is he sat with his hand under the table,
which kind of made me feel a bit at unease.
He was very sort of concentrating on me.
He did have a look in his eyes that wasn't very nice.
[Laughs]
I wouldn't like to guess, to be fair,
what Bill was doing under that table.
♪♪
-I think Rose was always fascinated by her father.
They couldn't stay apart.
They were, in a sense, inextricably linked
and you couldn't break that.
-I mean, I've always found it quite extraordinary,
how Rose continued to have sex with her father into adulthood.
Whether she got any sexual satisfaction from it,
I don't know.
And you just get into this revolting quagmire
of abuse through the generations, you know.
That sense, of a father's right
to have sex with his own children
is a thread that runs through the story
of Rosemary Letts, as she was; and Frederick West.
♪♪
-Bill remained ever present in Rose's life
and, with Fred's blessing, he continued
his sexual relationship with his daughter.
But what was it about Bill's upbringing
that made him become a violent and incestuous father?
-Young Bill Letts was an only child.
His mother was a local district nurse.
She was very revered in the community.
His father came back
from fighting in the First World War.
When Bill came along,
his father was not particularly happy about it.
His father didn't want him
and told him that he wasn't wanted,
that he was a mistake,
which was an awful thing to say to a young boy.
-Bill Letts' mother, Bertha,
overcompensated for the neglect by his father, William,
so Bill was mollycoddled to the extreme.
-My mum went to school with Bill Letts.
His mother used to bring him to school,
be there to meet him, take him home.
-His mother would always accompany him to school
and brush his hair as soon as she took his cap off.
-I mean, he must've been about 11,
not, like, a little three-, four-year-old, you know?
-Because of Bertha's mollycoddling of her son,
he really had very few, if any, friends at all,
so he was very isolated.
We see aspects of that again in Rose's childhood.
-He was another one that he wasn't allowed out, either.
And he was very quiet at school, as well,
much like his own children were.
-I think it's a perfectly fair assumption to say
that Bill Letts, as a child, was intimidated a good deal
and I think he responded to that intimidation --
bullying, if you like --
by responding with equal violence himself,
as soon as he became an adult.
-There were strong rumors in the community.
Parents told their children to keep away
from old William Letts
because he couldn't be trusted near children.
So, whether Bill was abused or not, we don't know,
but, of course, there is a chance, you know.
-Bill's father, William,
was known to have an extremely high sex drive,
something that would span generations,
as both Bill and Rose inherited an insatiable appetite for sex.
-Well, he certainly was a strange man.
I never liked the look of him, anyway.
I think my mum called him a gigolo.
Whatever that might mean, I don't know.
-Rather than having a job,
he seemed to flit round from woman to woman,
like as a butler-cum-gigolo.
-It was not only a high sex drive
that Bill and Rose inherited from William.
They would also inherit an obsession for cleaning.
-William Letts was absolutely obsessed with cleanliness,
bleaching the house top to bottom,
nothing could be out of place, and Bill had to follow suit.
And then, unfortunately,
Bill did follow suit, to the Nth degree,
and that would carry on into his marriage.
-In 1942, Bill married Daisy.
A year later, they moved into their new council home,
on Morwenna Park Road in Northam, Devon.
Bill and Daisy would go on to have seven children,
Rose being the fifth to arrive.
But Bill was hiding a secret diagnosis
that would cause his paranoia to intensify.
-Bill was said to have severe psychotic episodes.
He had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic
when he was a teenager
and that had never been disclosed to the family
and he remained untreated.
He would think people were talking about him
and have a go at his wife all the time.
If she was even talking to the neighbors,
he would hit her and pull her in.
The police were called. Nothing happened.
He seemed to be very OCD, as well --
always on at his wife, always on at the children,
"Keep the place clean," you know?
And he would come home and shout and thrash them.
-In fear of violence from Bill,
Daisy would also develop an obsession
for keeping everything clean.
-Cleanliness, that was the main thing with her.
She used to scrub, scrub, scrub.
The backyard, you know, she'd be out there
scrubbing that with a hosepipe and bleach.
-Daisy's obsession became so intense
that the children were not allowed out,
in case they came home dirty.
But, on one occasion,
Rose's older sister decided to go out to play.
-Rose's oldest sister was a little bit rebellious
and I recall one time when we took her out
for the afternoon,
go swimming and ride the horses out there
and, I mean, we used to get filthy out there,
really, rolling around.
She really got so excited, she was almost manic.
She'd laugh and giggle and prance around.
-But this rare, fun-filled day would come at a price.
-When she got home, stinking of horses,
that's when she got this hell of a beating.
Daisy was hosing her down in the garden.
She was screaming and screaming,
stripped naked, being hosed down
with cold water, obviously.
Oh, it was awful to hear.
And that's when my mother intervened
and then she took her in.
My mum, she really went onto me.
She said, "Don't ever take her out again
because you've caused that girl to have a hiding.
She gets enough of that, anyway."
-Yes, Daisy did shout and hit the children, as well,
but I think she was trying very hard to keep everything tidy,
just so, and bleaching everything
so that he wouldn't come home
and have one of these terrible rages where he would hit them.
He would do things like spoil the food
and tip the dustbin out all across the kitchen.
So the woman had a very, very hard time with him.
-He bullied, intimidated, and, indeed, in the end,
terrified his wife, Daisy.
That awful, worst kind of bully --
a coward, at one moment;
and then, vicious to those who couldn't fight back.
♪♪
-Bill would put on this very pleasant face
to most of the neighbors.
He was very charming.
So, of course, people won't believe that.
So he has this kind of friendly street angel;
and then, he's this house devil face.
[Static crackles] ♪♪
-And, just like her father,
Rose developed an appetite for coercive control
when she ventured into adulthood.
♪♪
Fred and Rose would drive around Gloucestershire,
searching for girls to lure back to 25 Cromwell Street.
They would get a babysitter in and they would go out.
They pick up Caroline Owens, who's hitchhiking home
and lives in the Forest of Dean.
Rose is sitting there.
She has a baby, she's pregnant,
and she's grooming this girlie,
like enticing her to get into the car,
speaking in this lovely voice.
And also sitting there with a baby,
which they both know is going to make any young girl
feel quite sort of safe with them.
I think both of them, they're psychopaths
and they know how to charm,
so they can present so well to people.
So, of course, Caroline gets in.
-The couple charm and coerce Caroline
into coming to live with them as their in-house nanny.
But it's soon clear Rose has an alternative agenda.
-And they start their sadistical games with her.
-They started to get heavy with her.
I think they would barge into the bathroom
when she was in the bathroom.
She felt uncomfortable with them.
They're both trying to invite her in to have sex with them.
-Rose didn't stop.
She wanted to kiss her,
Fred was egging them on,
so she got her stuff and went.
-Caroline managed to escape.
But it was short-lived.
-And then, they again coaxed her
when she was hitchhiking on a later occasion.
They got her in the car, beat her.
Fred had punched her and quietened her,
so that Rose could do what she wanted with her.
-Rose scratched and brutalized her in the back of the car.
When she got back to Cromwell Street,
this time, it was a brutal and tortuous regime.
She was being held there and beaten
and she feared for her life.
-Fred was actually restraining her,
keeping her there for Rose.
He said he kidnapped her for Rose.
-Fred's behavior was sadism
and advising her that he was going to beat her
and then, he meekly asserted that he would have sex with her,
but she mustn't tell Rose.
Eventually, Caroline Owens was able to escape
and, as a result of that,
her parents reported the matter to the police.
♪♪
-They were taken to court and Fred put his suit on,
presented well, they thought he looked a reasonable chap.
And Rose was like heavily pregnant
and telling them that she was going to
have some kind of therapy for her, you know, ways.
And the charges were reduced
because Caroline couldn't face them in court.
-A charge of rape was proffered,
but it was plea-bargained down to a sexual assault
in a magistrates court.
They were both fined £25 and had a rap on the knuckles.
I think their solicitor said,
"Well, you know, they're a young couple.
They won't do it again,"
and, extraordinarily, the magistrates bought that.
-And the interesting thing is that neither of them
were embarrassed about that, either, particularly Rose,
because she was a complete narcissist.
It meant nothing to her.
-It was a kind of abandonment, you know.
Somehow, they were getting away with it.
-They were given carte blanche,
so, the next time, they were going to kill.
Nobody is going to escape them, the next time,
to live to tell the tale.
♪♪
-With zero respect for the law, Fred and Rose continued
using the same method of driving around,
pursuing young, vulnerable women,
often calling on their lodger Jayne to babysit for them.
-Looking after the younger ones,
I formed quite a friendship with them.
They were dear little things.
It upsets me to think that I was looking after their children
for them to be evil people.
-Using the same ruse of needing a nanny,
they lured 19-year-old Lynda Gough back
to their cellar in Cromwell Street.
-They trussed her up and killed her.
It was a horrendous murder.
And she was buried outside by the bathroom area.
♪♪
Rose immediately went through her clothes
and put her clothes on.
She could just go and kill this girl with Fred
and go and put the girl's clothes on.
-When Lynda's mother came looking for her,
she witnessed Rose's narcissism firsthand.
-Lynda Gough's mother came to find her daughter
and saw some of her clothes blowing in the wind on the line
and Rose in her slippers and cardigan.
And she was just, "Oh, I never heard of her."
Well, of course she had, you know.
The mother knew she was lying.
-It was, in fact, her lack of empathy
and her association with Fred West
that led her to be a killer.
♪♪
-Within months of killing Lynda Gough,
Fred and Rose struck again.
♪♪
This time, they abducted 15-year-old Carol Ann Cooper.
♪♪
-She'd been having a night out with her boyfriend
and they followed her in the car,
picked her up when she got off the bus,
took her back, and it was a horrendous murder.
♪♪
-Over a frenzied period spanning less than two years,
six young females had been lured to 25 Cromwell Street,
where they were tortured, murdered,
and buried beneath the family home.
-I think they were totally out of control.
They became more and more so as they got away with it.
-This is fairly normal for serial killers
who get a lot of pleasure
from protracted torture and killing of others,
in that the next one has to be more.
-She was bound up with duct tape and left her eyes,
so that she could see what they were going to do to her.
[Static crackles] ♪♪
-The more macabre nature
of this torture got progressively worse,
with one killing following another.
[Static crackles] ♪♪
-Mummified and a straw was poked through, up her nose,
so that they could keep this young girl alive
while they tortured her.
-Extreme bondage, metal tubes, binding,
hanging people from the ceiling, like pieces of meat.
More sadism, more paraphernalia, more suffering.
-Rose was known to use very large vibrators on them,
you know, so huge that they did massive damage.
-It got worse and worse and worse.
-Anyone who saw any of the pictures
of what happened to those girls --
you know, the missing bones, the kneecaps removed,
the hanging in the cellar, the awful bindings with --
it just sends a shudder down my spine, to this day.
-Rose was very, very cruel.
She wanted to hurt women as much as she could.
It was something in her.
It's almost like killing a version of herself.
♪♪
-This may have been her way of eradicating her past,
getting rid of all those thoughts and vulnerabilities
that she had felt from her early childhood.
-She had no power.
She was oppressed, as she said.
It was her way of taking out her revenge on these young girls.
And she was so cruel.
[Static crackles] ♪♪
-And Rose would not have to search far
for the next victim --
Shirley Robinson,
one of the Wests' lodgers at 25 Cromwell Street.
-I made a very good friend out of Shirley.
We'd cook a Pot Noodle together and sit and talk for ages.
Her and Rose very much looked like each other, so, sometimes,
I'd go into the kitchen, take a quick look,
because Shirley would very often be down in the kitchen.
I'd say, "Hi, Rose.
Oh, sorry, Shirley. It's you."
-It was not only looks that Shirley and Rose had in common.
I didn't realize that Shirley
was having a relationship with Fred.
I found out at the end that she'd got pregnant by Fred,
so I thought it was just one of those things that happened.
As her and Rose were so friendly, I didn't like
put the two and two together because, obviously,
if Rose was having men in,
what's Fred doing to other women? [Laughs]
[Static crackles] -Today, Royale Robinson,
whose daughter Shirley Ann was found in the garden,
along with her unborn child.
She was killed by Frederick and Rosemary West.
-I just thought, "Maybe she's not able
to live in one room with the baby,
so she's moved on and found somewhere else."
-Shirley's remains were buried in the garden,
alongside her and Fred's unborn baby.
-To be told that Shirley had left, Shirley had gone,
none of it, none of this, made any sense, whatsoever.
-Jayne had no idea she was living in the same house
with two sadistic serial killers.
-Fred was just --
He was a gentleman.
He was very pleasant, very polite.
He was constantly working in the house.
Slap of paint here, a bit of work there,
a bit of digging in the garden.
He was always there, very early in the morning,
before everybody else.
Rose was generally not a morning person.
She used to walk around with her cardigan
and her trainer socks and skirt on,
barking at the children -- not speaking to them,
barking orders at them.
Anne Marie was scorned upon --
"You're not getting breakfast fast enough.
You can't give them toast without giving them a drink,
you stupid --" so, very demeaning to the children.
Rose was definitely in charge in the West household.
There was no denying that. [Laughs]
-Of all the West children,
it was Rose's eldest daughter, Heather,
who left a lasting impression.
-Heather, quite a switched-on little girl.
We'd sit and talk about silly little things,
you know, hair and, "Will you wear makeup later on
and what do you want to do as a job?"
So she was just an inquisitive little body.
♪♪
-But, one evening, Jayne was woken up
by something that would change her life forever.
-Something disturbed me.
And, initially, I couldn't quite make out what it was
and then, I realized it was in the cellar.
I could hear Heather screaming, "Stop it, Daddy!
Stop it, Daddy!"
And then, it seemed to stop
and then, it would happen again.
And this happened for a few nights in a row.
[Static crackles] [Rotors whirring]
-A specialist search team arrived at Cromwell Street
with a warrant to search for Heather West.
-I put the news on and the first thing I saw was Heather.
I thought, "Oh, my gosh!
Heather's been killed."
[Static crackles] In 1992,
15 years after Jayne left,
one of the children reported to police
they'd been raped by Fred.
Five of the West children were taken into care
whilst police investigated.
The following year,
social workers reported
that the West children had claimed that Fred often joked
that Heather was buried beneath the patio.
In 1994,
whilst investigating Heather's whereabouts,
police obtained a search warrant for 25 Cromwell Street
and, as Fred was led away,
he confessed to Heather's murder.
-The back garden of 25 Cromwell Street.
He'd never told his wife what he'd done.
-When I saw Rose at Cheltenham Police Station,
she was really very, very upset
and it was almost a mantra that,
"It was that flipping Fred West, you know.
What had he effing been doing?"
-The first time I ever heard Frederick West describing
how he dismembered his daughter, Heather,
and stuck her in a sack, bin bags --
"I couldn't get her in the dustbin, so I thought,
'I'll cut her legs off.'"
Then, he cuts her head off.
It's unimaginable.
♪♪
-Officers who found Heather's remains
found signs that she was not alone.
-When this story happened,
it was a huge shock to the people of Gloucester.
The whole thing became a bit of a circus, really,
as far as the press and media interest.
It was moving so quickly, there was so much happening,
there were so many developments,
in terms of bodies being found.
-West had hinted that there were further bodies to be discovered.
He led detectives down to the cellar,
indicating where other victims were hidden.
-Human remains found in the cellar
are carried away for forensic examination.
-Despite Fred claiming all responsibility
and confessing where the victims were buried,
police had sufficient evidence
to arrest Rose on suspicion of murder.
-When I visited Rose,
she was relaxed and not kind of dumbstruck.
She did seem slightly removed from it all.
-She just -- It's blocked out.
As her mother used to say, "She held herself in as a child,"
and maybe that's what she's doing.
-That probably speaks volumes
about this curious dichotomy in Rose's makeup.
You'd expect it would prompt some strong need to unload,
but there was none of that.
-The Crown Prosecution Service collated enough evidence
to charge Rose with ten counts of murder.
[Static crackles] -Frederick West,
the builder accused of mass murder,
just minutes away from a reunion with his wife, Rosemary,
is driven into Gloucester Magistrates Court.
-We saw Fred and Rose brought up,
one by one, into the dock
and we were quite surprised to see
just a very ordinary-looking, plumpish, middle-aged woman.
She didn't appear to be upset, disturbed, angry, indignant.
There was no real emotion that I can recall.
-The clear instructions were that she said she was innocent.
If there was anything had happened,
it was because of Fred.
-And the whole time that they sat in that court,
they deliberately were not looking at each other,
not talking to each other.
Had they fallen out? Was this a ruse, on their part?
-They probably did discuss the fact
about Fred taking the blame
and she would walk away from it.
She disowned him in the witness box.
-She just dropped him, end of.
Freddie forever -- that was over forever.
She wanted no more to do with him.
-There were clear signs that she was saying,
"No, you've admitted it, now go and rot."
[Static crackles] -Frederick West was found dead
in his cell in Winson Green Prison.
He was awaiting trial, accused of murdering
12 women and girls.
♪♪
-Rosemary West in public for the first time
since her husband was found hanging in his cell
on New Year's Day.
-Rose West was charged with ten counts of murder.
She was remanded in custody whilst she awaited trial.
I looked over the top of the railings
and it was Rose West [Laughs] and I thought, "Ooh!"
-Sandra Gregory was jailed for drug trafficking
and got to know Rose in HMP Durham.
-She swears a bit.
And she can foam a little bit at the mouth
when she gets a bit animated, but she'd say,
"They said that he killed himself to protect me.
They don't know nothing.
And you know what the ultimate murder is, Sandra?"
And I was like, "No, Rose, I don't."
"Their own! He did it because that's the ultimate murder!
Why was it only fucking Rose that's supposed to know
what he's doing in that fucking cellar?
It had a locked door on it, you know.
I never went down in that fucking cellar!
I'm up there, feeding all the kids!"
And I said, "Oh, and how many children
have you got, then, Rose?"
And she looked at me and said,
"Well, I used to have eight."
♪♪
I was like, "Ooh!"
I didn't progress that conversation.
-In October 1995,
Rose West was to stand trial for the ten murders.
-Rose was denying involvement.
Those were my instructions,
so that was the story that I would've accepted.
Therefore, professionally, you have to deal
with the evidence that seems to conflict
with what your client is telling you.
-I was astonished to hear that Rosemary West
was going to give evidence.
-Paul Cheston was the senior court correspondent
for the Evening Standard
and attended every day of the trial.
-She went into the witness box and immediately,
"I'm not to blame.
Fred did everything.
I had no idea what he was up to.
It was a complete mystery.
I was shocked and horrified to find that
members of my family were being killed by my husband."
As soon as you saw 25 Cromwell Street
and saw how small it was,
and as the number of bodies being found mounted,
you realized Fred was not operating on his own.
-Under cross-examination, it soon became apparent
that Rose was not telling the truth.
-She'd snookered herself in relation to Heather.
He had to kick her out because she was a lesbian.
And then it turns out Rose enjoyed lesbian relationships,
as well, and you think,
"Well, that's totally inconsistent."
And then they'd seen her around, they'd sent her money,
spoken to her on the phone.
Complete nonsense,
because Heather was buried in the garden.
I could have sat there and said, "Look, Rose,
you're lying through your teeth to me.
You're totally false.
Why don't you get with it and start admitting stuff?"
She said what was convenient to say.
And that's how she dealt with her evidence at court.
-She remained very impassive throughout the entire hearing,
giving very little away.
-Survivor Caroline Owens courageously spoke
about the horrific ordeal she suffered before her escape.
-Miss Owens claims she was subjected to
further serious sexual assaults,
including being beaten with a leather belt.
She told the court, "I was scared to death."
-She didn't appear to be upset, disturbed.
I think it's possible that she never really appreciated
the enormity of what was going on.
-But Rose would soon show her violent side,
when the prosecution presented the next key witness.
-Rosemary West was in the witness box for three days,
and was getting progressively more tired.
And Brian Leveson, as prosecutor,
cross-examined on a whole range of subjects,
and to build up to a climax
about asking her about Charmaine.
-She was very subdued about Charmaine.
She found it very difficult to revisit that.
-A neighbor from 25 Midland Road had come forward.
She had witnessed Rose's attitude
towards her first victim,
eight-year-old Charmaine, 25 years earlier.
-A neighbor had come into the house
and she was startled to see Charmaine
standing on a chair, stark naked,
bound with her hands behind her back,
and Rosemary West with a rolling pin
in an aggressive fashion.
And Brian Leveson pressed and pressed and pressed,
and eventually she snapped and shouted at him.
And that was the moment when the jury could see what she was,
not a cuddly housewife, mother of six,
but a short-tempered woman who would react
with a flash of temper when things do not go her way.
-She came unstuck, she didn't present as
a good witness in court.
-We perhaps had tended to want to think
that Rose would be the passive person who was just
putting up with it.
The more evidence we heard made us realize
that Rose was very much an active participant,
far more active than we ever could have imagined.
-Rosemary West was driven to court today
to hear the judge begin summing up seven weeks of evidence,
the result of almost 100 statements from witnesses.
-When the jury foreman read out the verdict of guilty,
you could see Rose West sway.
She was not expecting this.
-When Rose was finally taken down,
she was totally distraught.
The ground from under her feet had disappeared
and she was sobbing uncontrollably.
-She honestly thought that she was going to get away with this.
-Rosemary Pauline West,
on each of the ten counts of murder,
the sentence is one of life imprisonment.
-Well, she's equivocal on innocence.
The prospect of Rose...
suddenly deciding to kick the wall down and say,
"This is what it's all about, this is what I've done,
this is how I feel,"
um, I think the chances of that are nil.
-And as she crossed the courtyard,
our camera caught the final moments as,
holding white carrier bag,
she was taken inside, flanked by warders.
-Rose West will die in prison,
where she maintains her innocence to this day.
♪♪
-I don't know how many mornings Rose West counts,
saying that, "They're being really mean to me!
And they're being really unkind to me!"
And she didn't want to come out of her cell,
and was considering giving up her wing cleaning job.
And she was really kind of upset,
as though she was being bullied.
She just didn't have the strength of character
that I would've expected a serial killer to have had.
♪♪
-She had a reality that she hadn't been able to confront
since her childhood.
When I asked her to describe her childhood,
she describes a sugar-sweet,
candy-coated, flossy, merry time.
She presents the home life as these vigilant,
overprotective parents who would do anything for their children
and were always there, which was complete nonsense.
-Since childhood, Rose has preferred fantasy over reality,
something that contributed to her narcissism.
But Rose's path may have been destined to end
in this disturbing way before she was even born.
I think where the mother is mentally ill,
not engaging, and stressed, suffering from anxiety,
it's all that stuff that impacts on the unborn child.
The psychology starts in the womb.
-Daisy's deficiencies were contributing factors
in Rose's development,
but her narcissism was a result of the abuse
inflicted by her father.
-There's no doubt that Bill Letts
altered his daughter considerably.
-Rosemary West had no morals at any time in her life.
She was brought up in a house of depravity,
and where sexual practices and customs
applied to other people, they didn't apply to her.
-The abuse by Bill Letts made her ripe
for her partnership with Fred West.
-But there is a leap between sexual depravity and murder.
And Fred provided that bridge that she willingly crossed.
♪♪
-I think Rose became a serial killer
because she married Fred.
I think, had she married somebody else,
it might've been very different.
But add the two together, the so-called folie à deux,
then you have an absolutely lethal combination.
She was encouraged, and then once she got a taste for it,
she couldn't stop.
-People will hold their hands up in horror at the way
that Rose was treated,
and what presumably led to her becoming the way she was,
by the abuse she suffered.
We'd like to think that in this day and age,
that situation couldn't arise, but unfortunately,
from cases I've covered even recently,
it does still happen.
It shows, really, that social services
and all the things that maybe have been learnt
over the last 30 years or whatever,
since the West case and before then,
are simply not, for whatever reason,
being -- being brought into practice, you know?
Elements of checking and finding out and preventing
just still do not happen.
And I think it's partly because, very often,
the people who do this kind of thing are extremely devious
and they find ways round it.
-Rose's contrariness continued.
I prepared an appeal,
and that application went in,
and then at a late stage with that, in 2001,
she contacted me and said,
"I don't want you to proceed with this,"
because, she said, "Well, I've decided that
I might as well spend the rest of my life in prison."
So I said, "Does this mean you're admitting your guilt?"
And she said, "No, it doesn't."
So, again, there's that duplicity and contradiction
that you just can't get round.
♪♪
Does she deserve to die in prison?
If you accept she's guilty, then, yeah,
there can be absolutely no doubt she deserves to die in prison.
♪♪