Fred & Rose West: A British Horror Story (2025) s01e02 Episode Script
Rose
1
[foreboding music playing]
[recorder whirs]
[officer] What I'm concerned about,
Fred, is that you are gonna keep quiet
because you think,
or you are frightened to death
it would implicate Rose.
[Fred] Rubbish.
[intense, ominous music playing]
[Savage] Was she ever in the house
when you were killing somebody?
- [Fred] No.
- [Savage] Or cutting them up?
- [Fred] No.
- [Savage] Never once?
[Fred] No. She knew nothing
because I am sure of one thing.
If she'd have known,
she'd have been the first to report me.
Turn it off.
[eerie music playing]
[music fades out]
[gentle music playing]
[reporter 1] Cromwell Street
has become a magnet
for the sympathetic, the shocked,
and the downright curious.
It's still giving up its grisly secrets,
but already it's one of
the most infamous addresses in Britain.
[reporter 2] Detectives, who've unearthed
three bodies in the garden,
don't expect to find any more there.
The search for bodies
has now switched to inside the house,
as, piece by piece,
25 Cromwell Street is torn apart.
The case has developed
from a missing person
to three bodies in a garden,
and now, suddenly,
this acknowledgement
is made of nine more victims.
So the police now have to cope
with a multiple murder inquiry.
[music continues]
[Williams] Fred confessed
to a series of killings.
So from that point of view,
it wasn't a complicated investigation,
it wasn't complex.
The difficulties we had was,
one, identifying the victims,
and two, what to do about Rose.
You can only work
with the evidence that you've got.
Rose was in a safe house
with the children, Mae and Stephen,
where she spent the time whilst
we were excavating 25 Cromwell Street.
There were a lot of listening devices
throughout the premises,
and the intention would have been
to elicit, covertly,
some admissions to what Rose knew,
gathering evidence which should directly
implicate her in any of the murders.
[beep]
[Rose] I thought Dad was a very sick man.
And it's come out, he is a very sick man.
And the worst liar I ever could have
dreamed of.
But nobody could have known.
[music swells]
[Leo Goatley] She was devastated,
quite clearly distressed, um, and shocked.
[male reporter] She denies she knew
anything about the bodies.
- Is that correct?
- Yes, she does.
[male reporter] What about knowledge
of the killings?
- She totally denies that?
- Yes, she does.
Whilst there was
this huge shadow on Rose West,
clear instructions to me were that
she had got into a relationship with Fred
when she was still a young girl, 16.
He'd always been the dominant older party.
He'd manipulated her.
She'd been totally hoodwinked.
[music fades out]
[Rose] I mean,
if I got near the bastard now,
I'd put me hands round his throat.
This is something you don't forgive.
I'd never forgive that.
You don't forgive that.
You never forget it.
[Williams] Although she talked a lot
in the safe house,
there was no new information.
We were getting nothing,
absolutely nothing.
[dramatic music playing]
[Leach] Fred was
at Gloucester Police Station
for the murder of his daughter Heather.
I used to spend quite a lot of time
with Fred in the morning
before, um, Scott or Howard turned up.
So, you know,
we had chance to talk quite a lot.
And he said, "The other girls
that I've talked about before,
they're in the cellar."
So I had some paper,
and he drew the diagram of the cellar,
and he sort of pinpointed
where each of the bodies were.
Because he couldn't remember
what the names were, I just numbered them.
Police are concentrating the search
in the cellar area.
This follows a day's scanning
using imaging technology.
This highly sensitive equipment
allows them to see
into walls and underneath floors,
shadows on the monitor revealing
any object encased in bricks or concrete.
[male officer] Just a quick shot
of the, uh, threshold to this far room.
See the original access to the basement.
Staircase and a grille.
The cellar was accessible
down some fairly steep stairs.
[male officer] There's another room
off on the side there.
[Williams] It was clear that the kids
had used it as a den at some stage
because there was pictures on the wall.
But it was cold, it was dank,
it was particularly smelly
because Fred had split sewage pipes.
[music continues]
[Howard Ogden] We went to the cellar
at Cromwell Street
with a view
to guide the officers to then dig.
[Janet Leach] Fred came in the back way
because of the press,
and then they brought us
into the basement.
[eerie music playing]
[male officer] We're currently
in the basement of the premises.
The people present are
Mr. Frederick Walter Stephen West,
accompanied by Mr. Howard Ogden,
Mr. Scott Canavan,
and Mrs. Janet Leach,
um, appropriate adult.
Officers present,
Detective Chief Inspector Law, DC Savage.
[eerie music playing]
- Is there anything in here that we've
- Along that line, that line there.
Okay, under here.
[Ogden] So it's just
where you're standing then, Fred, yeah?
[Fred] She's there, or somewhere
just on the edge of there.
I don't think it's quite far over as that,
but just on the edge of there somewhere.
[Law] Right.
[Leach] It was strange.
I mean, because as he talked,
everything was so matter-of-fact.
You know, he, he'd get a little bit upset,
but then compose himself
very quickly and change,
you know, it was like his personalities
were like two different people. You know?
One of the officers asked him
to choose a spray can
to mark where the bodies were,
which had been drawn on the diagram.
He sort of marked the floors,
uh, quite near to the chimney breasts.
[Fred] It's across there.
[Law] And who is that?
[Fred] That's the second girl.
I just hated the man,
but I couldn't afford to let
any of my feelings sort of come out,
because he seemed to sense that.
So then the trust
wouldn't have been there.
I'd say that's probably where it came in.
He said, like,
all the children slept down there.
It was really dark and damp.
The smell, it was awful. It was just
I just [scoffs]
I could smell it.
When I went to sleep at night,
I could smell it.
[Hazel Savage] Fred,
is there anybody else in here?
[Fred] No.
Are you sure?
You realize all this will come up,
don't you?
[Fred] Yeah.
Well, I mean, what's one more? [echoing]
[music fades out]
[gentle music playing]
[sirens wail]
[reporter 1] Concrete from the cellar
of 25 Cromwell Street
was removed from the house
as police continue
their hunt for more bodies.
Today they announced that three more
sets of human remains had now been found.
These were found in the cellar area,
and this brings the total
in Cromwell Street to six.
[reporter 1] The bodies are believed
to be those of women as yet unidentified.
[Williams] For the first week,
we were hearing about
victims' remains being found.
With the discovery of each new body
comes the task of identification.
[male reporter 2] Revelations
in Gloucester have aroused fears
of thousands of people
who have missing relatives or friends.
[Williams] We knew just from
a local police force, Gloucestershire,
that we had
certain people missing on our books.
But then we expanded that
out to our neighboring counties,
neighboring police forces.
We had thousands of calls.
[John Bennett] The Missing Persons Bureau
in London
has from the outset of this investigation
been of considerable assistance to us.
We would hope that persons who have
for some reason distanced themselves
from their relatives or friends,
that they can make contact
with their relatives
or contact with the Missing Persons Bureau
and establish their safety.
[intense music continues]
[Belinda] There was a number coming along
the bottom of the screen, so I rang it.
And then within an hour or two,
this detective came to my door
and said to me,
"Can you explain why you think
your sister Juanita is one of those?"
I said, "I've just got this feeling."
I was about 15
when Juanita was last known of.
The last time I'd spoke to Juanita,
she'd been kicked out of home
because she was so naughty.
Well, she was Juanita.
I was in bed asleep, and I heard
these stones being thrown at the window.
So I looked out,
it was her, so I let her in.
And I said, "What happened last night?"
And she said,
"Oh, Mum and them wouldn't let me in."
I said, "Well, you know
the window will always be open for you."
She said, "Yeah,
and you've got to remember
that I'll always be there for you."
"No matter what or no matter when."
"Just find me."
[music fades out]
[ominous music playing]
As a journalist,
you want a story that's got legs,
as they say in journalism,
i.e. a story that's going to keep going.
And the West case had that quality.
It's a bit like a jigsaw puzzle.
You have some of the pieces
and, you know, you do the border.
And some pieces join up,
but there are missing pieces.
And early on, one of the pieces,
certainly that I tried to put in place,
was how did Fred and Rose meet?
And the truth was slightly obscure.
But essentially, in 1969,
Rose was a 15-year-old schoolgirl.
Fred West was a 27-year-old man.
And somehow he chatted her up
and they bonded.
And almost immediately,
she becomes pregnant with Heather.
[music intensifies]
[Fred] I trained Rose
[music ends]
to what I wanted.
That is why
our marriage worked out so well.
For a simple reason,
Rose had had no wild life.
She just blended into my way of living.
[Savage] Rose would act
under your instruction?
[Fred] Yes.
- Well, yeah. Yes.
- [Savage] To be fair to Rose.
[somber music playing]
[Goatley] Rose West was complex.
Her relationship with Fred was complex.
Rose was bringing up a family,
but at the same time,
Fred was also sending her out
with these other men.
[officer] Statements that I've read,
Mr. West, from people who know you
This chap says he learned about
your wife's sexual habits through you.
How she was a prostitute at the house.
[music intensifies]
I probed on that. She said, "Well,
I did it because Fred made me do it."
I was in love with your father.
Whenever I made love
with your father, that was it for me.
But I had to go out with this bloke
I didn't like and climb into his bed
and make love all night
and come home in the morning.
[Sounes] One of the big
talking points of the West case is,
who was in control?
I think certainly when they first met,
Fred must have been the dominant partner.
He had to have been.
He had much, much more life experience.
I thought Fred must have bewitched her,
and she must have gone along
with Fred's idea of what was okay,
sexually and otherwise.
[tense music continues]
[Rose] My mum tells me,
"Get an older man."
"He'll look after you.
He's had his life. He's had his flings."
"You know, you'll be all right."
I mean, and I'm with this man.
I am almost completely brainwashed.
You know, and I am doing what he says.
[music ends]
Now, how much he coerced her
is really unknown.
[Williams] As
the investigation progressed,
the focus then was
to go to speak to people
who would have knowledge
and understanding of Fred and Rose.
What did you know
about Fred and Rose's lifestyle?
Were you aware of any activities
that were going on at the premises?
At that time, the house would be packed.
[officer] Right.
I want to talk first of all, Mr. West,
about a statement of evidence
that we've received
from a lady called Elizabeth Agius.
[ominous music playing]
Rose started telling me
about her personal life.
How did I feel about it,
by she was a prostitute?
Um
I just told her it was her business.
It was nothing to do with me.
She did go into details
that she had, like,
microphones or something in the bedroom.
Because if she ever had,
uh, clients there,
Fred was always on the opposite side,
into the next room.
And, um, he likes to listen
to things like that.
[music intensifies]
But their life,
it was up to them
to whatever I thought turned them on.
And, you know,
I never took no notice, really.
[Williams] Rose came across,
in her early days,
as somebody who was
sweet, vulnerable, gullible.
The more we looked into her,
the more devious she appears to have come.
Fred and Rose, though a couple,
was clearly engaged in activities
which we would consider
not the social norm.
[officer] Has she been happy
to go along with this?
[Fred] Well, all I can say is that
for that 23 years we've been together.
I mean, do you think
she would have stayed?
She thinks just as much of me
as I do of her.
[Williams] You had these underlying,
sordid activities
that were constantly going on
at 25 Cromwell Street,
which people were aware of,
but for whatever reason chose not
to bring it
to the attention of the police.
This lady says
when she was shown around Cromwell Street,
she was shown a trapdoor
which led to the cellar.
[music fades out]
We went down there,
and Fred said, um, he wasn't sure
what to make of this yet.
He said, "I don't know whether to make it
a playing area for the children."
Or he nudged me and he used to say,
"Or else I could make this
into my torture room,
and just think," he said,
"what I could do
to you down here," he said.
"Nobody would hear me," he said,
"'cause I'd make it soundproof."
[dramatic music playing]
- [woman] Did you consider going to police?
- [Agius] No.
What they did was their business.
I accepted them as they are,
so long as I wasn't involved in anything.
[Williams] It was
extremely surprising to see
that this activity could take place
in a house
in the middle of the town center.
But the burning question,
the crucial question was,
what were the victims doing
in 25 Cromwell Street?
How did they get there?
[foreboding music playing]
[engine revs]
[somber music playing]
[officer] The conversation then got round
to the fact that Fred used to go out
looking for young girls
who were hitchhiking or thumbing lifts.
She says that when she asked
why you did it,
"Fred said that he liked
to pick up young women
to get them back to lodge with them."
"He said
he could get them into prostitution,
and he liked them to be aged
between 15 to 17 if possible."
What was going through my head
at the time was,
"This is great,
this is a breakthrough, great evidence."
[Britton] A key feature of Fred's strategy
was simply to go cruising
and to look for a victim of opportunity,
someone who seemed vulnerable.
[Williams] But we also realized
it wasn't just people living
in 25 Cromwell Street that went missing.
These victims were
from all over the country.
250,000 people go missing
in Britain every year.
The majority return home
within a few days.
But around 3,000 vanish without trace.
[gentle music playing]
[reporter 1] What has happened
to Lucy Partington?
Has she simply vanished for reasons
which her parents aren't aware?
Lucy's bus was ten minutes late
leaving the center of Cheltenham
and didn't arrive at the stop
on Evesham Road until half past ten.
But by then,
the 21-year-old student had vanished,
and there's been
no trace of her ever since. [echoing]
[somber music continues]
She was four years younger than me,
and, um, I was rather
the bossy older sister.
We were all together at Christmas
at my mum's house.
One of my brothers gave Lucy
a lift to her friend Helen's
and offered to pick her up afterwards,
and she said,
"No, it's fine. I'll get the bus."
And was never seen again.
[reporter 2] What do you think
has happened to your daughter?
Well, I don't know. [laughs nervously]
A very difficult question.
You know, I think that whatever has
happened to her was against her will.
I'm quite convinced myself
that she meant to catch that bus.
I don't think
she would have accepted a lift.
I don't think it would have been
in character with her.
[Marian] The police searched.
They dragged the lake by the bus stop.
They put up notices of missing person,
and nothing was found.
I would like this thing put to bed,
as they say in journalist terms.
Yeah, I would like the thing
Have it finished. If she is dead, let's
put an end to it. Let's have a funeral.
The whole thing is so uncertain,
isn't it, at the moment.
And I would like to know
what happened to her.
I don't like to think that I shall die
without ever knowing what happened to her.
- [man] Thank you very much.
- Okay.
[Marian] I first heard
about Cromwell Street when I was at work.
We just felt very restless,
and it was, you know, very disturbing
that all this was going on.
Maybe it was just because
this was about missing people.
And this was about bodies being found,
and it wasn't very far
from where Lucy disappeared.
I just remember
saying to my mum around that time,
"I think it's going to be better to know
than not to know."
And my mum said,
"I'm not so sure about that."
[music fades out]
[Fred] I never actually ever knew
their names.
[eerie music playing]
[Fred] I didn't want to know
or make up a name, whatever it was.
[Savage] No? What about Lucy?
She was well publicized as a missing girl.
[Fred] The thing is,
all these are so mixed up in my mind,
I haven't got a clue which is which.
[Savage] You put them there, didn't you?
- Don't know whether you put them there?
- [Fred] No.
- [Savage] Buried these people?
- Yeah, buried the people.
But I mean, I didn't
It was done quick and a long time ago.
[Canavan] He did know a couple of names,
but some were strangers.
Which, to me, put a different light
on Fred at that point.
I started to imagine then
what these poor victims had
actually gone through before they died.
[Savage] Fred, you've got
that awful smirk on your face again.
That's worrying me.
And I need to know
we're not going into another world now.
[Fred] No. But, I mean, every girl
I picked up, I didn't put in the basement.
- [Savage] Where did you put them?
- [Fred laughs]
I dropped them off
where they wanted to go.
[sinister laughter echoes]
[Britton] In the early interviews,
what you see is a cunning man
who's living in a fantasy.
[Fred] I mean, each one was
their own kinky sex, that's all it was.
I mean, that's why
you probably find it hard.
It was what they
their thing that they wanted to try, do.
[Ogden] So far as Fred is concerned,
his approach
is largely entirely matter-of-fact.
Really concerned about himself
as opposed to the deceased.
[Fred] It was just this urge
at the time when they they upset me,
that I went for 'em.
And the whole fear,
and this is something
that we've got to go into,
was that the biggest fear that was in me,
was Rose finding out that
I was messing with other women.
Frederick West seems unmoved
by the fact that these people are dead.
And what we see are the hallmarks
of the sadistic sexual psychopath.
[eerie music playing]
[reporter 1] More human remains
have been found
at the house in Gloucester
being searched by police.
The latest discovery
in the cellar of the house
brings to nine the number of bodies
found at the home of Frederick West.
[eerie music swells]
[Fred] The whole thing now,
you've got them all.
Yeah.
So there ain't no more in the basement.
[Sounes] When the police excavation
on Cromwell Street stopped
[somber music playing]
they were bringing
the victim remains out.
Fleet Street is down there,
BBC is down there,
the TV, Sky News, CNN,
Canadian television, French television.
They're all there because victims
are being brought out in black boxes.
It goes around the world.
When the victims' remains
were all excavated,
and you saw the conditions
in which those remains were coming up,
you saw they were dismembered,
you saw evidence
that they had been taped
and bound and gagged,
you start to think,
how could anybody do that?
And then you think
how those kids must have suffered
immediately before their death.
[music swells]
For every victim that we identified,
there would have been
10, 20, 30 names that remained missing
and were never found.
Eventually, we were able
to put a name to all the victims.
[reporter 2] 25 Cromwell Street
was the burial ground
for a total of nine young women.
They were Heather West,
Rosemary West's eldest daughter,
who was 16.
Shirley Robinson, who was
eight months pregnant by Frederick West.
Alison Chambers, who lived
in a children's home in Gloucester.
Lynda Gough, who'd left home in 1973.
Carol Cooper, who'd run away
from a children's home in Worcester.
Lucy Partington, who vanished
after visiting a friend in Cheltenham.
Thérèse Siegenthaler, a Swiss student
who'd vanished while hitchhiking.
Shirley Hubbard, who'd lived
with foster parents in Droitwich.
And Juanita Mott, another lodger.
We were picked up in a car,
shielded from the press
because they were camped outside,
and taken to the station,
and we were told,
"Really sorry to tell you,
but it is confirmed
that Juanita was found in the cellar."
[officer] You talked
to Hazel about a girl from Newent?
[Fred] Yeah.
[officer] If I said her name,
which we now think we might have
[Fred] Yeah.
would you think you'd recognize it?
[Fred] I'll certainly try.
[officer] Juanita Mott?
- [Fred] That's her.
- And what did you do with her?
[Fred] Buried her in that hole.
[gentle, somber music playing]
[Mary-Ann] It wasn't like,
"Oh, our little bubble's burst."
It was worse.
It was worse than you could ever imagine.
It was an explosion.
Poof, this is it.
Your life is never going to be the same
because of what he did to her.
[Belinda] Up until that day,
I honestly thought,
"One day she's going to get hold of us."
"Never know, she might
just knock on my door one day."
But she never came back.
[music continues]
There was a phone call from the police
saying they had some news for us.
Russell Williams arrived and then said,
Fred West had told them
that one of them was called Lucy.
[music intensifies]
The first question that
you always get asked is, "Are you sure?"
Because I guess
there would always be a little
[sighs] a little sliver of hope
that it's not their loved one
and their loved one's gonna
and walk through the door one day,
but we know that reality doesn't exist.
[Marian] My mum didn't express
much emotion at all,
but we met Dad off the train,
and he just broke down
and burst into tears,
and I we just held each other.
You don't really think.
You just feel
a huge amount of shock and denial.
That's right, you can't quite take it in.
It doesn't feel real.
[mystical music playing]
Especially because
the deaths were so brutal
and meaningless.
[Dezra] It all becomes reality that, yeah,
it's all confirmed that
you're never going to see her again,
and then you realize why she never
got in touch, that all makes sense.
It makes you realize that it must have
been complete hell for her at the end,
knowing that you're on your own.
Nobody knows you're there,
so no one's gonna come save you.
No one's going to
There's not gonna be a knock at the door
It's, um
It must have been horrific for her,
for all of them.
[Mary-Ann] She was hidden.
They were all hidden.
And my mum, having to see
my mum's face, listen to this
[exhales sharply]
[cries softly]
[crying] I saw my hero,
my mum, my hero [inhales sharply]
crumble.
[music fades out]
[Savage] Since you've been spoken to,
we've been able to piece together
eh, a little bit more about each body
as it's been recovered by the police.
Most of these people
have got some sort of material with them.
- [Fred] Oh, have they?
- Yes.
[Fred] I don't know, Hazel.
No idea. I can't
Well, why don't you know?
So that means then,
that somebody else might be involved.
If you didn't put it there.
- [Fred] Hazel.
- Well, I don't know.
[Fred] There is nobody else involved.
I did it all on my own.
[Savage] Right.
[Fred] And there is nobody else.
Let's get that straight.
[Savage] Right, so
Just because I don't remember
what I did to each one in detail,
surely after these good 20-odd years.
- [ominous music playing]
- [indistinct chatter]
Fred West had emphasized that there was
nobody else involved but himself.
Rosemary West
didn't know anything about it.
[Fred] This was all done
behind Rose's back.
I kept her pregnant.
I kept her with other men.
Everything out of my way
when I did things.
[officer] You said the other day you
and her mentally switched into each other.
- [Fred] Yes.
- You're "as one," you said.
That was your words.
[Fred] But there's a difference,
a lot of difference
between evil locking together and love.
[indistinct chatter]
[Fred] Eh?
Rosemary West is
the most important person in his world.
[laughing]
He needs to protect,
to keep safe, Rosemary West.
[Fred] I've been tempted
over the years to tell Rose, I must admit.
- But I never ever did.
- [Savage] Why, Fred?
[Fred] Um Well, one reason,
I didn't know how she'd take it,
what she'd do,
whether she'd walk out on me,
or what would happen,
or whether she'd think she was at risk.
I mean, Rose might look a bit hard faced
and that, but Rose is as soft as a kitten.
[dramatic music playing]
[Ogden] At all times,
Fred was seeking to protect Rose.
He had a notion that he would
go to prison for however long it may be,
but she would live nearby,
and she would visit him,
and that that relationship
would continue, uh, unabated.
[Sounes] Mad and weird as he was,
and mad and weird as she is,
on some depraved level,
they also loved each other.
Rose was his whole world,
and he wanted to save her.
[Rose] If they think I've got
fuck all to do with it,
they may as well put me
in a cell and throw the key away.
Because I shall always protest
my innocence,
and I don't care if I spend
the rest of my life in the fucking nick.
- [laughs]
- [eerie music playing]
[Ogden] I always sensed
that there was more to this story
than I was getting from Fred.
And by more, I mean
the knowledge and involvement by Rose.
[tense, ominous music playing]
[music fades out]
[Savage] The police have gone
to see a girl this afternoon.
Used to be the nanny?
[Fred] Oh, um, Carol.
[unsettling music playing]
I caught the news,
and all I can remember is it said
a man in Gloucester had been arrested
for all the killings that went on.
And I just broke down.
I got onto the police straight away,
and I just said,
"You need to really look into this
because he did the same to me years ago."
"He was gonna kill me."
[music stops]
[Sounes] When Fred was being questioned,
he's asked about Caroline Owens.
She lived at 25 Cromwell Street
as the nanny in 1972.
So in '94,
a detective was sent to see Caroline
and take a statement from her.
[ominous music playing]
When I was actually living there,
I wasn't aware
of what was actually going on,
um, especially with Rose
and the male visitors to the house.
During a conversation
one evening with Fred,
he said, "Me and Rose
want you to join our sex circle."
And I think he thought
that he could groom me.
To me, that was dirty, scary.
It wasn't me.
I left the Wests
and went back home to live.
But on December 6th,
I remember going to hitchhike
to see my boyfriend in Tewkesbury,
and I saw their car.
At the time, I was thinking,
they are gonna be really angry
with me because of how I left.
I didn't think they would
do anything really bad to me at all.
So I got in the car.
- [tense music playing]
- [engine revs]
[officer] You pull into a gateway
turn around and whack her one.
- She's semi-unconscious.
- [Fred] Rubbish.
[officer] And she's tied up
and taped and taken back.
- And you were with Rose.
- [Fred] No!
I was always on me own when I went.
- [officer] You weren't.
- [Savage] No, you weren't.
[officer] You went with your missus.
- [Savage] Rose sat on her.
- [Fred] No, she did not!
[officer] The truth is you will write Rose
out of anything you can.
[Fred] No! That is wrong!
[officer] There's these people buried
in the basement, the garden,
and your wife
didn't know anything about it.
It's just too ridiculous.
[Williams] Fred was not on his own.
Rose was in the car.
This MO, the way that they abducted her
was very similar to how we perceived
and imagined the other victims were taken,
that were taken
from the streets, hitchhiking,
or waiting at the bus stop as Lucy was.
That's a blueprint of what happened
to these other girls.
[Owens] At some point, I blacked out.
And when I came back round,
my hands were already tied behind my back.
And all the time he was saying,
"Now, just calm down."
Uh
"We're gonna take you back home.
We're gonna clean you up."
Uh
"Calm you down, give you a cup of tea,
then we'll go take you back home."
At that time, I wasn't sure
what was gonna happen.
[ominous music playing]
[Savage] When she's in the house,
she describes how
both you and Rose undressed her.
[Owens] They put a gag in my mouth.
My hands were tied behind my back.
I had a blindfold put on me.
And then I was put onto
this mattress on the floor.
That's when the sexual assault started.
Early hours of the morning,
all of that stopped.
He grabbed hold of me
by the throat and lifted me up,
shouting at me and telling me
that he was gonna keep me in the cellar.
"And when they've finished with you,
we're gonna kill you and bury you
under the paving stones of Gloucester."
[unsettling music swells]
[Savage] What about that, Fred?
- Absolute rubbish.
- [music stops]
[Williams] Eventually,
she managed to escape.
If Fred had been imprisoned
for the offense,
he would have come across the radar
a lot more than what he did
when it came to starting to look
for the abductions of these, uh, girls
that were happening around that time.
[somber music playing]
There'd been a court case in 1973,
and regrettably, scandalously, actually,
the Wests had got away with a fine.
They should have been jailed, really.
The level of abuse was far more serious
than the way it was actually dealt with
in the Magistrates', as a summary matter,
when really it involved rape
and should have been indicted
and go to the Crown Court.
And the outcome at that time
was a £25 fine, I think it was,
at the Magistrates' court
for both of the Wests.
[Williams] I think,
yes, it is a missed opportunity.
It was a missed opportunity
to raise the profile of Fred and Rose
to identify them as possible sex offenders
who could carry out abductions,
kidnapping, and imprisonment.
Fred and Rose did get off lightly with it.
- [Owens] What they did was evil.
- [intense, ominous music playing]
[crying] It's almost like,
"Oh well, we got away with it."
"But only by the skin of our teeth.
So next time, they've got to die."
[dramatic music playing]
[Savage] In hindsight, did you ever think
she was a "practice run" for you?
[Fred] What do you mean, "practice run"?
[officer] The others ended up
being taped, and they're dead.
The only difference is with Mrs. Owens
is she's still wandering around, luckily.
Was it a practice run?
[Britton] The relationship
between Frederick and Rosemary West
was essential to this whole case.
When she came to Frederick West,
she was a relatively young woman.
A girl, almost, and that, yes,
she had had a difficult early life.
She had had a sexually abusive life.
But it was Frederick West who taught her,
allowed her to fly
in this sadistic, cruel world.
[Agius] One day Rose said
she was going out with Fred.
And I said, "Well, why are you
going with him, you know?"
And she turned and said to me,
"So long as there's a woman
in the car with a male,
there's always an easy chance
for another girl
who they're going to pick up
and get inside the car."
"Because she will be there with him."
[Britton] What I'm seeing is
a series of behaviors that tell me
I'm looking at a pair
of sexually sadistic predators.
Not one but two.
[eerie music playing]
[Savage] I could understand
if it was very difficult
for you to tell us if Rose was involved.
I know that,
and you know I know that, don't you?
We're not stupid, hmm?
[dramatic music playing]
You're not alone in this whole saga.
Fred?
[Fred] From the very first day
of this inquiry,
my main concern has been
to protect other person or persons.
I have not, and still not
told you the whole truth
about these matters.
- [music fades out]
- [high-pitched ringing]
[tape clicks off]
[chilling music playing]
[foreboding music playing]
[recorder whirs]
[officer] What I'm concerned about,
Fred, is that you are gonna keep quiet
because you think,
or you are frightened to death
it would implicate Rose.
[Fred] Rubbish.
[intense, ominous music playing]
[Savage] Was she ever in the house
when you were killing somebody?
- [Fred] No.
- [Savage] Or cutting them up?
- [Fred] No.
- [Savage] Never once?
[Fred] No. She knew nothing
because I am sure of one thing.
If she'd have known,
she'd have been the first to report me.
Turn it off.
[eerie music playing]
[music fades out]
[gentle music playing]
[reporter 1] Cromwell Street
has become a magnet
for the sympathetic, the shocked,
and the downright curious.
It's still giving up its grisly secrets,
but already it's one of
the most infamous addresses in Britain.
[reporter 2] Detectives, who've unearthed
three bodies in the garden,
don't expect to find any more there.
The search for bodies
has now switched to inside the house,
as, piece by piece,
25 Cromwell Street is torn apart.
The case has developed
from a missing person
to three bodies in a garden,
and now, suddenly,
this acknowledgement
is made of nine more victims.
So the police now have to cope
with a multiple murder inquiry.
[music continues]
[Williams] Fred confessed
to a series of killings.
So from that point of view,
it wasn't a complicated investigation,
it wasn't complex.
The difficulties we had was,
one, identifying the victims,
and two, what to do about Rose.
You can only work
with the evidence that you've got.
Rose was in a safe house
with the children, Mae and Stephen,
where she spent the time whilst
we were excavating 25 Cromwell Street.
There were a lot of listening devices
throughout the premises,
and the intention would have been
to elicit, covertly,
some admissions to what Rose knew,
gathering evidence which should directly
implicate her in any of the murders.
[beep]
[Rose] I thought Dad was a very sick man.
And it's come out, he is a very sick man.
And the worst liar I ever could have
dreamed of.
But nobody could have known.
[music swells]
[Leo Goatley] She was devastated,
quite clearly distressed, um, and shocked.
[male reporter] She denies she knew
anything about the bodies.
- Is that correct?
- Yes, she does.
[male reporter] What about knowledge
of the killings?
- She totally denies that?
- Yes, she does.
Whilst there was
this huge shadow on Rose West,
clear instructions to me were that
she had got into a relationship with Fred
when she was still a young girl, 16.
He'd always been the dominant older party.
He'd manipulated her.
She'd been totally hoodwinked.
[music fades out]
[Rose] I mean,
if I got near the bastard now,
I'd put me hands round his throat.
This is something you don't forgive.
I'd never forgive that.
You don't forgive that.
You never forget it.
[Williams] Although she talked a lot
in the safe house,
there was no new information.
We were getting nothing,
absolutely nothing.
[dramatic music playing]
[Leach] Fred was
at Gloucester Police Station
for the murder of his daughter Heather.
I used to spend quite a lot of time
with Fred in the morning
before, um, Scott or Howard turned up.
So, you know,
we had chance to talk quite a lot.
And he said, "The other girls
that I've talked about before,
they're in the cellar."
So I had some paper,
and he drew the diagram of the cellar,
and he sort of pinpointed
where each of the bodies were.
Because he couldn't remember
what the names were, I just numbered them.
Police are concentrating the search
in the cellar area.
This follows a day's scanning
using imaging technology.
This highly sensitive equipment
allows them to see
into walls and underneath floors,
shadows on the monitor revealing
any object encased in bricks or concrete.
[male officer] Just a quick shot
of the, uh, threshold to this far room.
See the original access to the basement.
Staircase and a grille.
The cellar was accessible
down some fairly steep stairs.
[male officer] There's another room
off on the side there.
[Williams] It was clear that the kids
had used it as a den at some stage
because there was pictures on the wall.
But it was cold, it was dank,
it was particularly smelly
because Fred had split sewage pipes.
[music continues]
[Howard Ogden] We went to the cellar
at Cromwell Street
with a view
to guide the officers to then dig.
[Janet Leach] Fred came in the back way
because of the press,
and then they brought us
into the basement.
[eerie music playing]
[male officer] We're currently
in the basement of the premises.
The people present are
Mr. Frederick Walter Stephen West,
accompanied by Mr. Howard Ogden,
Mr. Scott Canavan,
and Mrs. Janet Leach,
um, appropriate adult.
Officers present,
Detective Chief Inspector Law, DC Savage.
[eerie music playing]
- Is there anything in here that we've
- Along that line, that line there.
Okay, under here.
[Ogden] So it's just
where you're standing then, Fred, yeah?
[Fred] She's there, or somewhere
just on the edge of there.
I don't think it's quite far over as that,
but just on the edge of there somewhere.
[Law] Right.
[Leach] It was strange.
I mean, because as he talked,
everything was so matter-of-fact.
You know, he, he'd get a little bit upset,
but then compose himself
very quickly and change,
you know, it was like his personalities
were like two different people. You know?
One of the officers asked him
to choose a spray can
to mark where the bodies were,
which had been drawn on the diagram.
He sort of marked the floors,
uh, quite near to the chimney breasts.
[Fred] It's across there.
[Law] And who is that?
[Fred] That's the second girl.
I just hated the man,
but I couldn't afford to let
any of my feelings sort of come out,
because he seemed to sense that.
So then the trust
wouldn't have been there.
I'd say that's probably where it came in.
He said, like,
all the children slept down there.
It was really dark and damp.
The smell, it was awful. It was just
I just [scoffs]
I could smell it.
When I went to sleep at night,
I could smell it.
[Hazel Savage] Fred,
is there anybody else in here?
[Fred] No.
Are you sure?
You realize all this will come up,
don't you?
[Fred] Yeah.
Well, I mean, what's one more? [echoing]
[music fades out]
[gentle music playing]
[sirens wail]
[reporter 1] Concrete from the cellar
of 25 Cromwell Street
was removed from the house
as police continue
their hunt for more bodies.
Today they announced that three more
sets of human remains had now been found.
These were found in the cellar area,
and this brings the total
in Cromwell Street to six.
[reporter 1] The bodies are believed
to be those of women as yet unidentified.
[Williams] For the first week,
we were hearing about
victims' remains being found.
With the discovery of each new body
comes the task of identification.
[male reporter 2] Revelations
in Gloucester have aroused fears
of thousands of people
who have missing relatives or friends.
[Williams] We knew just from
a local police force, Gloucestershire,
that we had
certain people missing on our books.
But then we expanded that
out to our neighboring counties,
neighboring police forces.
We had thousands of calls.
[John Bennett] The Missing Persons Bureau
in London
has from the outset of this investigation
been of considerable assistance to us.
We would hope that persons who have
for some reason distanced themselves
from their relatives or friends,
that they can make contact
with their relatives
or contact with the Missing Persons Bureau
and establish their safety.
[intense music continues]
[Belinda] There was a number coming along
the bottom of the screen, so I rang it.
And then within an hour or two,
this detective came to my door
and said to me,
"Can you explain why you think
your sister Juanita is one of those?"
I said, "I've just got this feeling."
I was about 15
when Juanita was last known of.
The last time I'd spoke to Juanita,
she'd been kicked out of home
because she was so naughty.
Well, she was Juanita.
I was in bed asleep, and I heard
these stones being thrown at the window.
So I looked out,
it was her, so I let her in.
And I said, "What happened last night?"
And she said,
"Oh, Mum and them wouldn't let me in."
I said, "Well, you know
the window will always be open for you."
She said, "Yeah,
and you've got to remember
that I'll always be there for you."
"No matter what or no matter when."
"Just find me."
[music fades out]
[ominous music playing]
As a journalist,
you want a story that's got legs,
as they say in journalism,
i.e. a story that's going to keep going.
And the West case had that quality.
It's a bit like a jigsaw puzzle.
You have some of the pieces
and, you know, you do the border.
And some pieces join up,
but there are missing pieces.
And early on, one of the pieces,
certainly that I tried to put in place,
was how did Fred and Rose meet?
And the truth was slightly obscure.
But essentially, in 1969,
Rose was a 15-year-old schoolgirl.
Fred West was a 27-year-old man.
And somehow he chatted her up
and they bonded.
And almost immediately,
she becomes pregnant with Heather.
[music intensifies]
[Fred] I trained Rose
[music ends]
to what I wanted.
That is why
our marriage worked out so well.
For a simple reason,
Rose had had no wild life.
She just blended into my way of living.
[Savage] Rose would act
under your instruction?
[Fred] Yes.
- Well, yeah. Yes.
- [Savage] To be fair to Rose.
[somber music playing]
[Goatley] Rose West was complex.
Her relationship with Fred was complex.
Rose was bringing up a family,
but at the same time,
Fred was also sending her out
with these other men.
[officer] Statements that I've read,
Mr. West, from people who know you
This chap says he learned about
your wife's sexual habits through you.
How she was a prostitute at the house.
[music intensifies]
I probed on that. She said, "Well,
I did it because Fred made me do it."
I was in love with your father.
Whenever I made love
with your father, that was it for me.
But I had to go out with this bloke
I didn't like and climb into his bed
and make love all night
and come home in the morning.
[Sounes] One of the big
talking points of the West case is,
who was in control?
I think certainly when they first met,
Fred must have been the dominant partner.
He had to have been.
He had much, much more life experience.
I thought Fred must have bewitched her,
and she must have gone along
with Fred's idea of what was okay,
sexually and otherwise.
[tense music continues]
[Rose] My mum tells me,
"Get an older man."
"He'll look after you.
He's had his life. He's had his flings."
"You know, you'll be all right."
I mean, and I'm with this man.
I am almost completely brainwashed.
You know, and I am doing what he says.
[music ends]
Now, how much he coerced her
is really unknown.
[Williams] As
the investigation progressed,
the focus then was
to go to speak to people
who would have knowledge
and understanding of Fred and Rose.
What did you know
about Fred and Rose's lifestyle?
Were you aware of any activities
that were going on at the premises?
At that time, the house would be packed.
[officer] Right.
I want to talk first of all, Mr. West,
about a statement of evidence
that we've received
from a lady called Elizabeth Agius.
[ominous music playing]
Rose started telling me
about her personal life.
How did I feel about it,
by she was a prostitute?
Um
I just told her it was her business.
It was nothing to do with me.
She did go into details
that she had, like,
microphones or something in the bedroom.
Because if she ever had,
uh, clients there,
Fred was always on the opposite side,
into the next room.
And, um, he likes to listen
to things like that.
[music intensifies]
But their life,
it was up to them
to whatever I thought turned them on.
And, you know,
I never took no notice, really.
[Williams] Rose came across,
in her early days,
as somebody who was
sweet, vulnerable, gullible.
The more we looked into her,
the more devious she appears to have come.
Fred and Rose, though a couple,
was clearly engaged in activities
which we would consider
not the social norm.
[officer] Has she been happy
to go along with this?
[Fred] Well, all I can say is that
for that 23 years we've been together.
I mean, do you think
she would have stayed?
She thinks just as much of me
as I do of her.
[Williams] You had these underlying,
sordid activities
that were constantly going on
at 25 Cromwell Street,
which people were aware of,
but for whatever reason chose not
to bring it
to the attention of the police.
This lady says
when she was shown around Cromwell Street,
she was shown a trapdoor
which led to the cellar.
[music fades out]
We went down there,
and Fred said, um, he wasn't sure
what to make of this yet.
He said, "I don't know whether to make it
a playing area for the children."
Or he nudged me and he used to say,
"Or else I could make this
into my torture room,
and just think," he said,
"what I could do
to you down here," he said.
"Nobody would hear me," he said,
"'cause I'd make it soundproof."
[dramatic music playing]
- [woman] Did you consider going to police?
- [Agius] No.
What they did was their business.
I accepted them as they are,
so long as I wasn't involved in anything.
[Williams] It was
extremely surprising to see
that this activity could take place
in a house
in the middle of the town center.
But the burning question,
the crucial question was,
what were the victims doing
in 25 Cromwell Street?
How did they get there?
[foreboding music playing]
[engine revs]
[somber music playing]
[officer] The conversation then got round
to the fact that Fred used to go out
looking for young girls
who were hitchhiking or thumbing lifts.
She says that when she asked
why you did it,
"Fred said that he liked
to pick up young women
to get them back to lodge with them."
"He said
he could get them into prostitution,
and he liked them to be aged
between 15 to 17 if possible."
What was going through my head
at the time was,
"This is great,
this is a breakthrough, great evidence."
[Britton] A key feature of Fred's strategy
was simply to go cruising
and to look for a victim of opportunity,
someone who seemed vulnerable.
[Williams] But we also realized
it wasn't just people living
in 25 Cromwell Street that went missing.
These victims were
from all over the country.
250,000 people go missing
in Britain every year.
The majority return home
within a few days.
But around 3,000 vanish without trace.
[gentle music playing]
[reporter 1] What has happened
to Lucy Partington?
Has she simply vanished for reasons
which her parents aren't aware?
Lucy's bus was ten minutes late
leaving the center of Cheltenham
and didn't arrive at the stop
on Evesham Road until half past ten.
But by then,
the 21-year-old student had vanished,
and there's been
no trace of her ever since. [echoing]
[somber music continues]
She was four years younger than me,
and, um, I was rather
the bossy older sister.
We were all together at Christmas
at my mum's house.
One of my brothers gave Lucy
a lift to her friend Helen's
and offered to pick her up afterwards,
and she said,
"No, it's fine. I'll get the bus."
And was never seen again.
[reporter 2] What do you think
has happened to your daughter?
Well, I don't know. [laughs nervously]
A very difficult question.
You know, I think that whatever has
happened to her was against her will.
I'm quite convinced myself
that she meant to catch that bus.
I don't think
she would have accepted a lift.
I don't think it would have been
in character with her.
[Marian] The police searched.
They dragged the lake by the bus stop.
They put up notices of missing person,
and nothing was found.
I would like this thing put to bed,
as they say in journalist terms.
Yeah, I would like the thing
Have it finished. If she is dead, let's
put an end to it. Let's have a funeral.
The whole thing is so uncertain,
isn't it, at the moment.
And I would like to know
what happened to her.
I don't like to think that I shall die
without ever knowing what happened to her.
- [man] Thank you very much.
- Okay.
[Marian] I first heard
about Cromwell Street when I was at work.
We just felt very restless,
and it was, you know, very disturbing
that all this was going on.
Maybe it was just because
this was about missing people.
And this was about bodies being found,
and it wasn't very far
from where Lucy disappeared.
I just remember
saying to my mum around that time,
"I think it's going to be better to know
than not to know."
And my mum said,
"I'm not so sure about that."
[music fades out]
[Fred] I never actually ever knew
their names.
[eerie music playing]
[Fred] I didn't want to know
or make up a name, whatever it was.
[Savage] No? What about Lucy?
She was well publicized as a missing girl.
[Fred] The thing is,
all these are so mixed up in my mind,
I haven't got a clue which is which.
[Savage] You put them there, didn't you?
- Don't know whether you put them there?
- [Fred] No.
- [Savage] Buried these people?
- Yeah, buried the people.
But I mean, I didn't
It was done quick and a long time ago.
[Canavan] He did know a couple of names,
but some were strangers.
Which, to me, put a different light
on Fred at that point.
I started to imagine then
what these poor victims had
actually gone through before they died.
[Savage] Fred, you've got
that awful smirk on your face again.
That's worrying me.
And I need to know
we're not going into another world now.
[Fred] No. But, I mean, every girl
I picked up, I didn't put in the basement.
- [Savage] Where did you put them?
- [Fred laughs]
I dropped them off
where they wanted to go.
[sinister laughter echoes]
[Britton] In the early interviews,
what you see is a cunning man
who's living in a fantasy.
[Fred] I mean, each one was
their own kinky sex, that's all it was.
I mean, that's why
you probably find it hard.
It was what they
their thing that they wanted to try, do.
[Ogden] So far as Fred is concerned,
his approach
is largely entirely matter-of-fact.
Really concerned about himself
as opposed to the deceased.
[Fred] It was just this urge
at the time when they they upset me,
that I went for 'em.
And the whole fear,
and this is something
that we've got to go into,
was that the biggest fear that was in me,
was Rose finding out that
I was messing with other women.
Frederick West seems unmoved
by the fact that these people are dead.
And what we see are the hallmarks
of the sadistic sexual psychopath.
[eerie music playing]
[reporter 1] More human remains
have been found
at the house in Gloucester
being searched by police.
The latest discovery
in the cellar of the house
brings to nine the number of bodies
found at the home of Frederick West.
[eerie music swells]
[Fred] The whole thing now,
you've got them all.
Yeah.
So there ain't no more in the basement.
[Sounes] When the police excavation
on Cromwell Street stopped
[somber music playing]
they were bringing
the victim remains out.
Fleet Street is down there,
BBC is down there,
the TV, Sky News, CNN,
Canadian television, French television.
They're all there because victims
are being brought out in black boxes.
It goes around the world.
When the victims' remains
were all excavated,
and you saw the conditions
in which those remains were coming up,
you saw they were dismembered,
you saw evidence
that they had been taped
and bound and gagged,
you start to think,
how could anybody do that?
And then you think
how those kids must have suffered
immediately before their death.
[music swells]
For every victim that we identified,
there would have been
10, 20, 30 names that remained missing
and were never found.
Eventually, we were able
to put a name to all the victims.
[reporter 2] 25 Cromwell Street
was the burial ground
for a total of nine young women.
They were Heather West,
Rosemary West's eldest daughter,
who was 16.
Shirley Robinson, who was
eight months pregnant by Frederick West.
Alison Chambers, who lived
in a children's home in Gloucester.
Lynda Gough, who'd left home in 1973.
Carol Cooper, who'd run away
from a children's home in Worcester.
Lucy Partington, who vanished
after visiting a friend in Cheltenham.
Thérèse Siegenthaler, a Swiss student
who'd vanished while hitchhiking.
Shirley Hubbard, who'd lived
with foster parents in Droitwich.
And Juanita Mott, another lodger.
We were picked up in a car,
shielded from the press
because they were camped outside,
and taken to the station,
and we were told,
"Really sorry to tell you,
but it is confirmed
that Juanita was found in the cellar."
[officer] You talked
to Hazel about a girl from Newent?
[Fred] Yeah.
[officer] If I said her name,
which we now think we might have
[Fred] Yeah.
would you think you'd recognize it?
[Fred] I'll certainly try.
[officer] Juanita Mott?
- [Fred] That's her.
- And what did you do with her?
[Fred] Buried her in that hole.
[gentle, somber music playing]
[Mary-Ann] It wasn't like,
"Oh, our little bubble's burst."
It was worse.
It was worse than you could ever imagine.
It was an explosion.
Poof, this is it.
Your life is never going to be the same
because of what he did to her.
[Belinda] Up until that day,
I honestly thought,
"One day she's going to get hold of us."
"Never know, she might
just knock on my door one day."
But she never came back.
[music continues]
There was a phone call from the police
saying they had some news for us.
Russell Williams arrived and then said,
Fred West had told them
that one of them was called Lucy.
[music intensifies]
The first question that
you always get asked is, "Are you sure?"
Because I guess
there would always be a little
[sighs] a little sliver of hope
that it's not their loved one
and their loved one's gonna
and walk through the door one day,
but we know that reality doesn't exist.
[Marian] My mum didn't express
much emotion at all,
but we met Dad off the train,
and he just broke down
and burst into tears,
and I we just held each other.
You don't really think.
You just feel
a huge amount of shock and denial.
That's right, you can't quite take it in.
It doesn't feel real.
[mystical music playing]
Especially because
the deaths were so brutal
and meaningless.
[Dezra] It all becomes reality that, yeah,
it's all confirmed that
you're never going to see her again,
and then you realize why she never
got in touch, that all makes sense.
It makes you realize that it must have
been complete hell for her at the end,
knowing that you're on your own.
Nobody knows you're there,
so no one's gonna come save you.
No one's going to
There's not gonna be a knock at the door
It's, um
It must have been horrific for her,
for all of them.
[Mary-Ann] She was hidden.
They were all hidden.
And my mum, having to see
my mum's face, listen to this
[exhales sharply]
[cries softly]
[crying] I saw my hero,
my mum, my hero [inhales sharply]
crumble.
[music fades out]
[Savage] Since you've been spoken to,
we've been able to piece together
eh, a little bit more about each body
as it's been recovered by the police.
Most of these people
have got some sort of material with them.
- [Fred] Oh, have they?
- Yes.
[Fred] I don't know, Hazel.
No idea. I can't
Well, why don't you know?
So that means then,
that somebody else might be involved.
If you didn't put it there.
- [Fred] Hazel.
- Well, I don't know.
[Fred] There is nobody else involved.
I did it all on my own.
[Savage] Right.
[Fred] And there is nobody else.
Let's get that straight.
[Savage] Right, so
Just because I don't remember
what I did to each one in detail,
surely after these good 20-odd years.
- [ominous music playing]
- [indistinct chatter]
Fred West had emphasized that there was
nobody else involved but himself.
Rosemary West
didn't know anything about it.
[Fred] This was all done
behind Rose's back.
I kept her pregnant.
I kept her with other men.
Everything out of my way
when I did things.
[officer] You said the other day you
and her mentally switched into each other.
- [Fred] Yes.
- You're "as one," you said.
That was your words.
[Fred] But there's a difference,
a lot of difference
between evil locking together and love.
[indistinct chatter]
[Fred] Eh?
Rosemary West is
the most important person in his world.
[laughing]
He needs to protect,
to keep safe, Rosemary West.
[Fred] I've been tempted
over the years to tell Rose, I must admit.
- But I never ever did.
- [Savage] Why, Fred?
[Fred] Um Well, one reason,
I didn't know how she'd take it,
what she'd do,
whether she'd walk out on me,
or what would happen,
or whether she'd think she was at risk.
I mean, Rose might look a bit hard faced
and that, but Rose is as soft as a kitten.
[dramatic music playing]
[Ogden] At all times,
Fred was seeking to protect Rose.
He had a notion that he would
go to prison for however long it may be,
but she would live nearby,
and she would visit him,
and that that relationship
would continue, uh, unabated.
[Sounes] Mad and weird as he was,
and mad and weird as she is,
on some depraved level,
they also loved each other.
Rose was his whole world,
and he wanted to save her.
[Rose] If they think I've got
fuck all to do with it,
they may as well put me
in a cell and throw the key away.
Because I shall always protest
my innocence,
and I don't care if I spend
the rest of my life in the fucking nick.
- [laughs]
- [eerie music playing]
[Ogden] I always sensed
that there was more to this story
than I was getting from Fred.
And by more, I mean
the knowledge and involvement by Rose.
[tense, ominous music playing]
[music fades out]
[Savage] The police have gone
to see a girl this afternoon.
Used to be the nanny?
[Fred] Oh, um, Carol.
[unsettling music playing]
I caught the news,
and all I can remember is it said
a man in Gloucester had been arrested
for all the killings that went on.
And I just broke down.
I got onto the police straight away,
and I just said,
"You need to really look into this
because he did the same to me years ago."
"He was gonna kill me."
[music stops]
[Sounes] When Fred was being questioned,
he's asked about Caroline Owens.
She lived at 25 Cromwell Street
as the nanny in 1972.
So in '94,
a detective was sent to see Caroline
and take a statement from her.
[ominous music playing]
When I was actually living there,
I wasn't aware
of what was actually going on,
um, especially with Rose
and the male visitors to the house.
During a conversation
one evening with Fred,
he said, "Me and Rose
want you to join our sex circle."
And I think he thought
that he could groom me.
To me, that was dirty, scary.
It wasn't me.
I left the Wests
and went back home to live.
But on December 6th,
I remember going to hitchhike
to see my boyfriend in Tewkesbury,
and I saw their car.
At the time, I was thinking,
they are gonna be really angry
with me because of how I left.
I didn't think they would
do anything really bad to me at all.
So I got in the car.
- [tense music playing]
- [engine revs]
[officer] You pull into a gateway
turn around and whack her one.
- She's semi-unconscious.
- [Fred] Rubbish.
[officer] And she's tied up
and taped and taken back.
- And you were with Rose.
- [Fred] No!
I was always on me own when I went.
- [officer] You weren't.
- [Savage] No, you weren't.
[officer] You went with your missus.
- [Savage] Rose sat on her.
- [Fred] No, she did not!
[officer] The truth is you will write Rose
out of anything you can.
[Fred] No! That is wrong!
[officer] There's these people buried
in the basement, the garden,
and your wife
didn't know anything about it.
It's just too ridiculous.
[Williams] Fred was not on his own.
Rose was in the car.
This MO, the way that they abducted her
was very similar to how we perceived
and imagined the other victims were taken,
that were taken
from the streets, hitchhiking,
or waiting at the bus stop as Lucy was.
That's a blueprint of what happened
to these other girls.
[Owens] At some point, I blacked out.
And when I came back round,
my hands were already tied behind my back.
And all the time he was saying,
"Now, just calm down."
Uh
"We're gonna take you back home.
We're gonna clean you up."
Uh
"Calm you down, give you a cup of tea,
then we'll go take you back home."
At that time, I wasn't sure
what was gonna happen.
[ominous music playing]
[Savage] When she's in the house,
she describes how
both you and Rose undressed her.
[Owens] They put a gag in my mouth.
My hands were tied behind my back.
I had a blindfold put on me.
And then I was put onto
this mattress on the floor.
That's when the sexual assault started.
Early hours of the morning,
all of that stopped.
He grabbed hold of me
by the throat and lifted me up,
shouting at me and telling me
that he was gonna keep me in the cellar.
"And when they've finished with you,
we're gonna kill you and bury you
under the paving stones of Gloucester."
[unsettling music swells]
[Savage] What about that, Fred?
- Absolute rubbish.
- [music stops]
[Williams] Eventually,
she managed to escape.
If Fred had been imprisoned
for the offense,
he would have come across the radar
a lot more than what he did
when it came to starting to look
for the abductions of these, uh, girls
that were happening around that time.
[somber music playing]
There'd been a court case in 1973,
and regrettably, scandalously, actually,
the Wests had got away with a fine.
They should have been jailed, really.
The level of abuse was far more serious
than the way it was actually dealt with
in the Magistrates', as a summary matter,
when really it involved rape
and should have been indicted
and go to the Crown Court.
And the outcome at that time
was a £25 fine, I think it was,
at the Magistrates' court
for both of the Wests.
[Williams] I think,
yes, it is a missed opportunity.
It was a missed opportunity
to raise the profile of Fred and Rose
to identify them as possible sex offenders
who could carry out abductions,
kidnapping, and imprisonment.
Fred and Rose did get off lightly with it.
- [Owens] What they did was evil.
- [intense, ominous music playing]
[crying] It's almost like,
"Oh well, we got away with it."
"But only by the skin of our teeth.
So next time, they've got to die."
[dramatic music playing]
[Savage] In hindsight, did you ever think
she was a "practice run" for you?
[Fred] What do you mean, "practice run"?
[officer] The others ended up
being taped, and they're dead.
The only difference is with Mrs. Owens
is she's still wandering around, luckily.
Was it a practice run?
[Britton] The relationship
between Frederick and Rosemary West
was essential to this whole case.
When she came to Frederick West,
she was a relatively young woman.
A girl, almost, and that, yes,
she had had a difficult early life.
She had had a sexually abusive life.
But it was Frederick West who taught her,
allowed her to fly
in this sadistic, cruel world.
[Agius] One day Rose said
she was going out with Fred.
And I said, "Well, why are you
going with him, you know?"
And she turned and said to me,
"So long as there's a woman
in the car with a male,
there's always an easy chance
for another girl
who they're going to pick up
and get inside the car."
"Because she will be there with him."
[Britton] What I'm seeing is
a series of behaviors that tell me
I'm looking at a pair
of sexually sadistic predators.
Not one but two.
[eerie music playing]
[Savage] I could understand
if it was very difficult
for you to tell us if Rose was involved.
I know that,
and you know I know that, don't you?
We're not stupid, hmm?
[dramatic music playing]
You're not alone in this whole saga.
Fred?
[Fred] From the very first day
of this inquiry,
my main concern has been
to protect other person or persons.
I have not, and still not
told you the whole truth
about these matters.
- [music fades out]
- [high-pitched ringing]
[tape clicks off]
[chilling music playing]