Killers_ The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time - Cawthorne, Nigel [94]
West could not have killed Charmaine as he was in jail at the time. However, he was complicit in concealing her body under the kitchen floor of 25 Midland Road, a house in Gloucester they had recently moved into. When the body was found, the fingers and toes were missing, just like Anna McFall’s. Fred and Rose were now bound together by their crime. Later, when Rose’s father came to take her away from West, West said: ‘Come on, Rosie, you know what we’ve got between us.’
This upset Rose, Bill Letts noted. Afterwards Rose told her parents why she could not leave
‘You don’t know him!’ she said. ‘You don’t know him! There’s nothing he wouldn’t do – even murder!’
In the 1960s, a large number of West Indian immigrants had come to Gloucester. They were largely single men and Rose invited many of them over to the house for sex – both for fun and to earn a little extra money. Fred encouraged this. He was a voyeur and enjoyed watching her have sex through a peephole. Although over-sexed, Fred would only join in if the sex involved bondage, sadism, lesbianism or vibrators. He also took suggestive pictures of Rose, using them in advertisements in magazines for ‘swingers’ and other publications where he advertised her services as a prostitute.
Eventually Rena came to look for her daughter Charmaine. Unable to get any sense out of Fred or Rose, Rena visited Fred’s father, Walter, in August 1971, hoping he could shed some light on what happened to Charmaine. As a result, Fred decided to kill Rena. It seems that he got her back to the house in Midland Road, got her drunk and strangled her. He dismembered her body, put the bits in bags and buried her in Fingerpost Field near Much Marcle in the same general area as he buried Anna McFall. Again the fingers and toes were missing.
Fred and Rose began employing their neighbour, Elizabeth Agius, as a babysitter. On more than one occasion, when the Wests returned home, Elizabeth asked them where they had been. They said they had been cruising around looking for young girls, preferably virgins. Fred explained that he had taken Rose along, so then they would not be afraid to get into the car with him. Elizabeth thought they were joking, but later Fred propositioned her. The Wests later drugged and raped her. They were deadly serious.
In January 1972, Fred and Rose married at Gloucester Registry Office. And in June, they had another daughter who they named Mae. They decided they needed a bigger house to raise their growing family and accommodate Rose’s prostitution business and they moved into 25 Cromwell Street. It had a garage and a spacious cellar. Frank as ever, Fred told Elizabeth Agius that he planned to convert the cellar into a room where Rose could entertain her clients. Or he would soundproof it and turn it into his ‘torture chamber’. This, in fact, was what he did.
Its first inmate was his own eight-year-old daughter, Anne-Marie. He told her that he and Rose were such caring parents that they were going to teach her how to satisfy her husband when she got married. They stripped her and gagged her. Her hands were tied behind her back and Rose held her down while Fred raped her. This hurt her so much that Anne-Marie could not go to school for several days. She was warned not to tell anyone, otherwise she would be beaten. The rapes continued. On one occasion she was strapped down so her father could rape her quickly during his lunch hour.
Fred and Rose continued cruising the vicinity, looking for young girls. At the end of 1972, they picked up 17-year-old Caroline Owens, who they hired as a live-in nanny, promising her family that they would take care of her. Caroline was very attractive, and Fred and Rose both tried to seduce her. She found them repellent, but when she said she was leaving, they stripped her and raped her. Fred threatened that if she told anyone about it: ‘I’ll keep you in the cellar and let my black friends have you. And when we’re finished we’ll kill you and bury you under the paving stones of Gloucester.’
Caroline believed him. Terrified,