Killers_ The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time - Cawthorne, Nigel [93]
Rosemary was noticeably different from the other Letts’ children. In her cot she developed the habit of rocking violently and sometimes she rocked so vigorously that she could move her pram across the room, even when the brake was on.
As she grew older, she rocked only her head – but for hours on end as if she was in a trance. The family soon realised that she was a bit slow. They called her ‘Dozy Rosie’. However, with big brown eyes and a clear complexion, she was a pretty child. This appealed to her father and, by doing everything he asked without question, she became the apple of his eye and escaped the beatings he meted out to the other children although there were rumours that she had an incestuous relationship with her father and that he molested young girls.
Things did not go well for Rosemary when she went to school though. With no appreciable intellectual gifts, she did not do well academically. As she grew older, she developed a tendency towards chubbinesss and was teased relentlessly. In response, she lashed out.
As an adolescent, Rose became precocious sexually. After taking a bath, she would walk around the house naked, then climb into bed with her younger brother and fondle him. Her father forbade her to go out with boys her own age. Not that many were interested. Both her reputation as an ill-tempered, sullen, aggressive loner and her chubbiness put the local boys off. Instead she concentrated on the older men in the village.
After 15-year-old Mary Bastholm disappeared from a bus stop in Gloucester in January 1968, girls in the area were on their guard. But Rosemary’s growing interest in sex meant that she would not stay home and, on one occasion, one of the older men she was seeing raped her.
At the beginning of 1969, Daisy Letts could stand life with her violent husband no longer. She left and moved in temporarily with her older daughter Glenys and her husband, Jim Tyler. Free from her father’s strictures, the 15-year-old Rose spent all her time going out. Her brother-in-law said that Rose carried on with a numer of older men and that she had even tried to seduce him. After a few months, to everyone’s surprise, Daisy moved back to Bill, bringing Rose with her. It was then that Rose met 28-year-old Fred West.
Whatever Bill Letts’s shortcomings as a parent, he tried to keep his underage daughter away from West. When Bill discovered that Rose was having sex with West, he reported him to the Social Services. This proved ineffective, so Bill turned up at West’s caravan and threatened him. The relationship was halted briefly when West went to prison for theft and failure to pay fines. But Rose was already pregnant with West’s child. At 16, she left her father’s house and moved into West’s caravan to take care of Rena’s two daughters.
In 1970, Rose gave birth to the ill-fated Heather. With Fred in jail, no money and three children to take care of, the teenage Rose found it hard to cope. Her temper flared constantly. She particularly resented having to take care of another woman’s children and treated Charmaine and Anne-Marie abominably.
In the summer of 1971, eight-year-old Charmaine went missing. Rose told Anne-Marie that their mother Rena had come to get her. There is no doubt that Rose killed her. Colin Wilson, author of The Corpse Garden, believes that she was not responsible for her actions. He thinks that Rose ‘simply lost her temper, and went further than usual in beating or throttling her. She was, as Anne-Marie said, a woman entirely without self-control; when she lost her temper, she