The shoddy home at 25 Cromwell contained enough horrific secrets to pack a lifetime of nocturnal terrors.
The walls were the epitome of a stationary object omerta, keeping the lid on crimes so vile they remain stomach-churning three decades after they were first discovered.
This was the abode of British couple Fred and Rose West, their twisted domain.
***
The search was triggered by a dogged detective’s gut feeling that Fred and Rose were hiding something unspeakable. And there was also a family joke by their children that missing big sister Heather, 16, was “under the patio.”
But the detective was finally able to convince his superiors in Gloucester in southwest England to dig. They began searching on Feb. 24, 1994. Fred West looked on nervously from an upstairs window.
Cops would discover much more than his daughter’s remains. And at 5 p.m. the next day, Fred admitted killing his daughter and burying her underneath the patio. Rose was also arrested.
Heather West’s remains were discovered the next day along with another human bone. Investigators continued digging up the backyard and tearing apart the house. There would be a total of nine bodies with more suspected victims.
Two more sets of remains were discovered at their former home and another two in nearby fields. British tabloids called their home the House of Horrors.
***
To the outside world, the Wests seemed like a normal, working-class couple. What wasn’t obvious were their sordid sexual appetites.
Fred West was born in 1941 and made his living as a builder. He moved to Gloucester in 1962 and five years later began a torrid sexual affair with Rosemary Letts, who was 15 years old at the time and 10 years his junior.
In Rose, hyper-sexed Fred found his match for doubles in deviance. Fred said he came by his sexual appetites naturally after his mother introduced him to sex when he was 12 years old while his father had sex with his sisters.
In May 1967, he killed for the first time: 18-year-old Scotish nanny Anne McFall who looked after his children. Fred, his then-wife, the nanny and the kids lived in a large mobile home. The nanny and her employer would have sex when the wife was away.
His first wife vanished in 1969.
Hovering in the background was Rose, Britain’s most prolific female serial killer. She was born into a dysfunctional home and her schizophrenic father repeatedly sexually abused her. She met Fred at a bus stop.
“No one is born evil, but Rose West certainly became that way,” Criminologist Dr. Jane Carter Woodrow told Metro UK. “Fred West had a very similar background to Rosey, but even more extreme.”
The criminologist called it a “dreadful accident waiting to happen.”
Journalist Howard Sounes wrote in The Full Story of Fred and Rose West and the Gloucester House of Horrors: “When [Rose] met Fred she was an impressionable girl who already put little value on herself or her body, a girl familiar with abuse and cruelty.
“The peculiarities of Fred and Rose’s characters combined to create something terrifying and unique.”
A surviving son, Steve West, noted that his parents weren’t quite right.
He said: “They encouraged each other in what they did. If they had both married someone else I don’t think it would have happened to the extent it did – two wrong people brought together.”
But Fred and Rose did marry each other.
***
Between 1967 and 1987, the Wests raped, tortured and murdered a large number of young women and girls. In addition, the demented duo engaged in taboo sexual practices with teens they invited into the house at 25 Cromwell — and their own children.
For extra cash, Rose worked as a prostitute sexually entertaining men, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups. She called her lair Rose’s Room and it had a red light to keep her children away.
Rose even claimed she was sexually insatiable and did not care whether the carnal capers were with men or women.
***
In addition to killing the nanny and his first wife, the couple killed the following victims:
Fred’s daughter Charmaine, 8, disappeared in 1971; Lynda Gough vanished in April 1973; Carole Ann Cooper disappeared on Nov. 10, 1973; Lucy Partington, a 21-year-old university student, disappeared two days after Christmas in 1973; College student Therese Siegenthaler, 21, disappeared during Easter 1974; Shirley Hubbard, 15, the youngest victim; Juanita Mott, 18, vanished in April 1975; Orphan Alison Chambers, 16, vanished in August 1979, and Shirley Anne Robinson rented a room and became Fred’s sexual playmate. She became pregnant, she disappeared in May 1978.
***
Fred West was charged with 12 murders. But before he could face trial, he hanged himself on New Year’s Day 1995. Cops still believe there are numerous other murders connected to creepy Fred.
Rose went on trial in November 1995 in one of the biggest courtroom events in British history. She was convicted of 10 murders and will never get out of prison. She blamed the heinous killings of Fred.
Further, she claimed that Fred had physically and sexually abused her. But investigators believe the matronly-looking killer is keeping more secrets.
One detective said: “[We are] absolutely certain she knows a lot more than she has ever told us.”
Criminologist Woodrow believes Rose West will “take her secrets to the grave” and allow the “torture” and torment of their victims and their families to continue. She has no doubt there are more victims.
“Rose has an element of control and she may well have that final information about bodies in other sites,” Woodrow said. “Rose almost certainly knows a lot more.”