Rose West: The Making of a Monster (15 page)

But the die was cast and Rosie was told never to see that ‘filthy gypsy’ again. Possibly the young girl agreed for a quiet
life for as her mother was to say, she wouldn’t argue but would ‘just hold herself tight’. But, of course, Rosie had no intention
of sticking to it, and as soon as she was out of the house, headed off to her lover’s. And, just for good measure, she gave
up her job at the baker’s too and spent each day at the caravan park – looking after Fred’s daughters while he was at work.
Fred gave Rosie the £3 a week that the baker normally paid her so that she could still give her mother her keep, and prevent
her parents becoming suspicious when she no longer returned home with the leftover cakes. Every morning Rose would head off
to catch the bus for Cheltenham and, as soon as the coast was clear, slope off across the fields towards the caravan park.

Fred gave up his job at Costain’s and took one at the gravel pits in Stoke Road, nearer his home, so that he could spend more
time with Rosie. Rosie, for her part, took over number 17 the Lakehouse as if it was her own home, tidying and scrubbing the
caravan like never before. She also collected up the trophy underwear that Fred had stolen from his conquests, probably to
use for masturbation purposes. It is likely that in setting out
her territory, Rosie also threw out Rena’s clothes, which were hanging in the closet, and replaced them with her fur coat
and lacy dress. When Fred came home that evening, she thrust the box full of her rivals’ belongings at him telling him to,
‘Get rid.’ And with a grin on his face, he duly did.

Rosie, by day, had now become the little housewife and playmate of her lover’s daughters: three children together. In the
evening, Fred came home and made love to her before she rushed off to her parents’ house, pretending to have been serving
bread and cakes all day. And, masturbating one or both of her brothers at night, she fell asleep and dreamed of Freddie: Rosie
was in love.

F
RED WASN’T GOOD AT
sex. He had a small penis and always preferred the role of voyeur with his wife, Rena, as she had sex with other men. Soon
Fred would want to observe his young girlfriend with other men and to introduce Rosie to his other penchant: sadomasochism.

Fred wanted to be tied up and beaten, and purposefully left S&M pornography lying around the caravan for his young mistress
to see. He also kept naked pictures of Rena in the caravan and made sure Rosie heard all about his wife’s wild antics, from
sexual sadism through to voyeurism and orgies. Rena was, he said, a woman willing to do anything for pleasure. He manipulated
the highly sexed and curious young girl into joining in with his perverse games, selling them to her as an exciting and ‘grown-up’
thing to do. And, being young and naïve, Rosie took the bait, indulging her lover in his fantasies in a bid to outdo his wife.

But Fred’s fantasies didn’t stop there. It was while she was cleaning out the caravan when Freddie was at work that she discovered
a pile of letters tucked away, addressed to a Miss Mandy James. Rosie didn’t hesitate in opening them, and discovered they
were from Rena’s clients; that her predecessor was working as a prostitute. Rosie even knew some of the men who’d written
the letters – married men whose children
she’d gone to school with. Fred’s plan had worked and before long there was a new Mandy on the scene: Mandy Mouse. Fred began
advertising her services by word of mouth, and soon a steady stream of customers began to call at his caravan to have sex
with the 15-year-old … But, as usual with Fred, this wasn’t about money, but recreating the arousal he’d experienced in his
early childhood as he watched his father having sex with young girls in the field.

Bill Letts had heard all about Rena West’s services from his workmates at Smith’s Aerospace who lodged up at the Lakehouse
caravan park. Now rumour had it that his own daughter was doing the same thing. Bill visited the bakery in Cheltenham where
his worst fears were confirmed – Rosie hadn’t been in to work for some while – and he was incandescent with rage. Rosie tried
to explain to her parents how she was now the paid nanny to Fred’s children, but Bill knew this wasn’t the whole truth. He
rang children’s services to say that his 15-year-old daughter was having sex with an older man – failing to mention his own
abusive relationship with his daughter. Rosie was taken into a home for troubled teenagers in Cheltenham.

Winter began to approach while Rosie was in care. At the care home, she was banned from seeing her lover and had to abide
by a strict set of rules dictating where she could go, who she could see and the time she had to be back by. Rosie hated every
minute of it and called it a prison – an irony, given where she now sees out her days. Rosie was also said to have felt abandoned
by her parents again when they did not make the short trip to visit her in the children’s home even once. This claim appears
to have substance but, because Bill and Daisy kept secrets from their children, very few of Rosie’s siblings even knew she
was in care. ‘It’s news to me, I really had no idea,’ Andy was to say of it many years later, even though he and Rosie had
been living under the same roof when she’d been taken away. The truth at Tobyfield Road continued,
as always, to be fragmented and compartmentalised between different family members.
^*

Without any visitors, the love-struck young teenager took to meeting Fred illicitly when she left the home to go to work each
day. She also began writing to him. As one letter read: ‘Dear Fred, I am glad you came to see me. Last night made me realise
we are not two soft chairs to be sat on … You told my Aunt about Rena, but what about telling me the whole story even if it
takes all day. I love you Fred, but if anything goes wrong it will be the end of both of us for good. We will have to go somewhere
far away where nobody knows us …’

Rosie had learnt from her auntie Eileen that Rena had gone back to Fred in her absence. Although Rena would leave almost as
soon as she’d returned, this was to have a marked effect on the young girl, who realised she could be usurped again at any
time by Rena, who was, after all, the mother of his children. And so it was that she set out to secure her lover for herself.

When Bill found out that Fred was still seeing his daughter, despite her being in care, he was fuming. He knew Fred often
went in The Swallow pub in Tobyfield Road after work and, donning a crash helmet and leather gloves, waited outside the pub
for Fred to emerge. As soon as Fred surfaced from The Swallow, Bill lunged at him with both fists flying. But Freddie was
a lover not a fighter, and took the punches and simply walked away. Soon after, Bill turned up at his caravan, shouting outside
it – much to the amusement of other park dwellers. Fred came to the door, where Bill threatened to burn down his mobile home
and chop him into little pieces if he didn’t leave Rosie alone. Once again Fred just grinned, while Rose took comfort in the
knowledge that soon she would turn 16
and be able to do as she pleased. And she was planning to move in with her lover: ‘Rosie and Freddie 4ever’. But as she looked
forward to that day, on 28 November – just a day before her birthday – Fred was sent down for thirty days for non-payment
of fines and a stolen tax disc. It was the first time, but not the last, that Fred would do ‘porridge’ in Gloucester prison.
His two little girls were once again taken into care, while Rosie herself had nowhere to go.

Her father, however, said she could come back home if she found a decent job, worked hard at it and paid her board. Oh, and
there was another proviso: she could never see Fred again. Rose was desperate to leave care and agreed to her father’s terms,
but of course had not the slightest intention of sticking to them and never seeing Fred again. An almighty row broke out between
herself and Bill, to which the police were called. A social worker who subsequently visited them said in his report that the
family ‘presented as quite reasonable’. Bill had managed to pull the wool over their eyes once again.

Christmas came and went with Rosie shut up in her bedroom, where she was not allowed to see anyone or to give or to receive
presents. Instead, she spent the whole of the festive period sitting on the bed that she shared with Graham and Gordon, making
rag dolls for Fred’s two girls. And, at night, she continued to comfort and abuse her little brothers.

But Christmas had given her time to think, and Rosie began to look forward to the New Year with renewed vigour. Fred would
be coming out of prison and she wanted to secure their future together, so that Rena would have no further claim on him. Getting
up early one morning in January 1970, Rosie set off for his works at the gravel pit near the Stoke Road, where she waited
in the foreman’s hut for him to arrive. It was freezing cold and dawn had yet to break; the foreman made her a cup of tea
as she waited.

Rosie told Freddie why she was there: she was 16 now and
wanted his baby. It had been all they’d talked about as they played in the fields around Stoke Orchard with the children during
the warm days of autumn – and now it was time to put that plan into action. Fred threw in his job on the spot and took her
off to his caravan, apologising to the foreman. ‘The missus. You understand, mate,’ he might have said. And soon Rosie found
she was pregnant. Keeping it a secret at Tobyfield Road, she rushed off excitedly to tell Fred the good news. As the couple
celebrated that night, it is impossible to imagine the fate that awaited their first child together …

With Rose now pregnant, Fred began to take Bill’s threats seriously and rented a bedsit in Cheltenham to keep out of his way.
The bedsit at 9 Clarence Road had a toilet, bathroom and kitchen, which was shared between a whole house full of bikers, hippies
and drifters passing through. Although Fred didn’t drink or take drugs himself, he didn’t mind the parties every night and
subsequent police busts. It was an anarchic existence, in which his pregnant teenage girlfriend, who hung out there with him,
did not look out of place. Indeed, life at Clarence Road was to make such an impression on Fred that he would later use this
as a model for Cromwell Street when he and Rose moved there.

By the time Rosie had slipped away from home to move in with Fred at the bedsit, he had obtained bar work in a pub nearby,
and was also working as a tyre fitter at Cotswolds Tyre Company in Cheltenham. Fred wanted to take the girls out of care so
that they could be a family. Whether he should actually have been allowed to have them was another matter. He had been sexually
abusing 6-year-old Charmaine for most of her short life, rubbing the naked child against his groin with a smirk on his face.
‘She’ll come if I carry on,’ he was to tell Rena’s friend Margaret, who saw him do this.

Despite Clarence Road being a cramped bedsit surrounded by ‘drop-outs’ whom Rosie disapproved of, the children’s home allowed
Fred to take his daughters home, as he now had Rosie
there to help with their care. They knew Rosie was only just 16 and told the couple that checks would be made on them. But,
as even Rose herself was to say, the bedsit ‘was a real pit, we were all in this little room together …’

Rosie was blissfully playing house, cooking dinners on the tiny Baby Belling in the corner and using the dressmaking skills
she’d learnt from Daisy to make clothes for the girls on an old sewing machine. With money in short supply, Rosie would simply
use one of the girl’s old dresses for a pattern, cutting around it with some inches to spare, to make a larger size. The children
always looked neat and tidy when they went to school, which probably kept the ‘welfare’ happy.

Rosie and Fred’s happy family scenario was short-lived, however, when Bill began trying to track his daughter down and contacted
the police. When the police finally caught up with the couple at Clarence Road, they were taken back to the police station,
where a police surgeon examined Rosie. To Bill’s chagrin, the surgeon found his daughter was only in the early stages of pregnancy,
which meant that charges of underage sex could not be brought against Fred and the police had to let him go. When Daisy first
heard news of the baby, she was so angry that she refused to speak to her daughter. Bill, however, responded by giving Rosie
‘the hiding of my life’, as she was later to say.

Once more social services intervened, sending Rosie to a mother and baby unit for teenage girls, to try to bring her to her
senses. Rosie stayed there for a week or two, during which time Bill arranged an abortion for her. Rosie promised her parents
that if they let her go home on the Friday evening, she would go into the clinic on Sunday night in preparation for the abortion
first thing on Monday morning. Rosie only agreed to this because she yearned to see Fred, and the more ‘grief’ she got at
home, the more she looked on him as her passport to freedom. How sad then that a man as disturbed as Fred had something
to offer this young girl, and she him – for by now Fred too had fallen in love. And thus it was that the couple decided they
would keep their precious baby, planning like Romeo and Juliet, or Freddie and Rosie, to run away together the night before
Rose was due to go into the clinic – only to kill their firstborn sixteen years later.

They had intended that Freddie should park his Vauxhall around the corner at the time Bill was going to take her. She would
run over to Fred and he’d whisk her away, heading for Scotland. But, over the weekend, her parents had a change of heart.
‘My father told me I could stay at home as long as I … had an abortion and no boyfriends. Or I was told I could go off with
this Fred West and never see my family again.’ Bill Letts also went on to say that, if he ever bumped into the pair together,
‘he would knife’ them.

Rose knew all about ‘Dad’ and knives, but was still not deterred. Jumping out of bed that Sunday morning, Rosie yanked open
the curtains to let in the day. Such was her excitement that she barely noticed the smoke rising from the neighbour’s bonfire
as it began to form a giant curl up to the sky. Taking the rag dolls she’d made for Anna-Marie and Charmaine from the window
ledge, she stuffed them into her bag, along with the few items of clothing she had, and a pair of shoes. Then, taking one
last look around the room and the bed she shared with her younger brothers, she closed the door on her childhood forever.