Rose West: The Making of a Monster (17 page)

Rosie would sleep in the large front room overlooking the park, with Heather in her cot beside her, while the two little girls
slept in a small room at the back of the house. Charmaine’s child-size bed was directly beneath the window and had a plastic
sheet on it as she would wet it, while Anna-Marie’s bed was pushed against the wall opposite.

It was here that Rose would strip the girls and tie them to their beds, where they were not allowed to speak or make a sound.
As Charmaine was the most trouble to Rose, she would sometimes lock her in the bedroom all day, with her hands tied behind
her back and her legs spread-eagled and strapped to the bed. But still the 8-year-old refused to cry or be beaten into submission
by the older girl, as it became a battle of wills between them.

If Rose caught the girls talking in bed at night she would beat them across the legs with the leather strap. She also began
to gag them with ripped-up sheets or strips of sticky tape over their mouths, so that they wouldn’t be heard by the neighbours
should they cry out. These were no longer the actions of a girl unable to cope, but something more sinister. This behaviour
had its roots in Fred and Rose’s earlier sex games involving bondage and sadomasochism at the caravan park, and which would
be the modus operandi they would use with their victims. As
Caroline Owens, the Wests’ first victim, said, ‘They were very efficient with the duct tape, as if they’d done it before.’
Clearly Rosie had come a long way quickly, from ‘comforting’ her brothers just the year before.

After abusing Charmaine and Anna-Marie in this horrible way, Rose would then carry on with her normal domestic routines as
if nothing had happened – just as she would later, after the murders. And just as a psychopath has no feelings for others,
so the teenager lacked any empathy for her little stepdaughters left in her care. Charmaine would whisper to her little sister
as they lay shivering in bed at night, ‘Mum’ll come and save us soon.’ And Rena did come, many times, for the children, right
up to her death. Rena had long since lost interest in Fred and their marriage, but had fought tooth and nail to get the children
back from him. But Fred was increasingly sadistic, and just smirked at Rena as he used the children to torment her. There
were times when she would stand outside the caravan door, screaming to see them, but he would not let her have them. Sometimes
Rena would come and just take Charmaine away; as the child was not related by blood to Fred, she feared for her, although
she had no idea he was sexually abusing her. When Rena was between lodgings, she sometimes took Charmaine off school and returned
her before the end of the day so that Rosie wouldn’t find out. With Rena’s own chaotic lifestyle, she is likely to have felt
relieved that her husband had Rose living permanently with him to care for the girls. This arrangement also suited Rosie as,
despite how difficult the children might be, it gave her a hold over Fred.

The bedroom that the two little sisters shared at Midland Road had large, dilapidated window frames, and the panes would rattle
when the wind blew outside. The two little girls would then hide beneath the covers, Charmaine whispering, ‘Anna-Marie, Anna-Marie,
the witches are trying to get in. They’re going to get us.’ But as Anna-Marie recalled later in her
book, the wicked witch was already inside the flat. And, worse still, she was honing her skills. The girls couldn’t even appeal
to Fred for help as he had put Rose in charge of ‘disciplining’ them, before he went into prison. Fred later admitted, ‘Rose
never liked Charmaine really. I turned a blind eye to it because I couldn’t do nothing about it. I wouldn’t separate them
[the girls]. It was either getting rid of Rose or putting them in a home …’ Nonetheless, he used the children as a means of
testing Rose’s boundaries, instructing her that ‘Charmaine was old enough for the strap now’ – his only stipulation being
that she ‘didn’t hit the children where it showed’. These words must have seemed familiar to Rosie, whose own mother had said
the same thing to Bill when he beat her siblings.

Having been mentored by Bill, Rosie was now being ‘coached’ by Fred and wanted to impress him, even when he was in prison.
And when he wasn’t, he would tell the children, ‘Your mum does it because she loves you.’ The lovers were then said to have
exchanged a look as if they shared a secret – which they soon would …

R
OSE MADE THE FORTY-MILE
round trip with the girls and the baby to see prisoner 401317 in Leyhill open prison whenever she could, including on family
sports day where Anna-Marie took part in the egg and spoon race. Somewhere around this time, Charmaine ‘disappeared’. What
actually happened that fateful day, or even which day it was, we will never know for certain unless Rose chooses to talk about
it. But what we do know is that Rosie took Charmaine to the local hospital, where she was treated for an injury to her ankle,
on the evening of 28 March 1971, just six days after the child’s eighth birthday. Anna-Marie was certain her stepmother would
have been responsible for the wound, and that she must have realised the seriousness of it for her to have taken Charmaine,
whom she despised, for medical treatment. Charmaine was now attending the same Casualty department that Anna-Marie had been
treated at, but again this did not lead to any enquiries being made. The strange-looking puncture still remains a mystery,
but was possibly caused by a knife.

Meanwhile Daisy, having had no news of their youngest daughter for over a year, pestered her husband to forgive and forget
and go to visit her. Taking Glenys and Graham with them, the warring couple set off to see Rosie together – united for once.
Or so it seemed, for a more cynical motive would
later emerge for Bill’s ‘forgiveness’ of his daughter. When the Letts arrived at the flat, they were confronted by squalor.
The wooden floorboards were stained and grubby, dirty terry nappies littered the front room, while unwashed crockery was piled
high in the sink.

‘The place was a shambles, you wouldn’t want your dog to live in it,’ Graham was to say. Daisy was shocked while Bill, with
his obsessive cleanliness, couldn’t even bring himself to sit down. Daisy wasn’t impressed by Rose’s foul language either,
and put this down to Fred’s influence. She also noticed her daughter’s eyes were red from crying, and that she’d lost weight
and was looking gaunt. As her brother Graham was to say to author Howard Sounes, ‘Rosemary couldn’t cope; it hit her all of
a sudden and she got run down.’ After the visit, Daisy was so worried about her daughter that she called round to Midland
Road twice more, unannounced. On one of these visits, she found Rosie had gone out with Anna-Marie and the baby, leaving Charmaine
alone in the flat. Soon after, the plucky little girl would be dead.

The Prison Letters

During Fred’s period of imprisonment, the star-crossed lovers sent each other letters with hearts and kisses on them. In Rose’s
letter of 4 May 1971, she talks about her problems with Charmaine.

To My Darling,

… Hey love, that’s great, just three more visits, it’ll take up half the time I’ve got to wait for you …

Darling, about Char, I think she likes to be handled rough. But darling, why do I have to be the one to do it? I would keep
her for her own sake, if it wasn’t for the rest of the children. You can see her coming out in Anna now. And I hate it.

… Oh love, about our son. I’ll see the doctor about the pill. And then we’ll be safe to decide about it when you come home
…

Well love, keep happy. Longing for the 18th.

Your ever worshipping wife,

Rose.

The letter is as interesting as it is ambiguous. It could mean she is discussing letting the child go to live with her mother
(who should also be the one to discipline her rather than ‘why do I have to be the one to do it?’). Or it could be saying
something far more sinister, as the prosecution implied at Rose’s trial: her intent to murder the child. And if she did intend
murder, then the letter shows her utter callousness towards the little girl.

Although Rose’s suggestion that the child likes to be ill-treated may sound ludicrous, she had grown up with violence and
been coached in sadomasochism by Fred, so she may have believed this to be true. It is also interesting that now she was with
Fred, she no longer referred to herself by her childhood name of Rosie, but by the more grown-up Rose. Fred replied a short
while after. ‘So you say yes to Char, that good. I will see to it when I get out, but don’t tell her for you know what she
is like and you can have our son as soon as I come out.’

This backs up the notion that the discussion was about letting the child go to her mother’s, although Fred warns her not to
tell Charmaine beforehand so that she doesn’t become overexcited. In fact, Fred would not make it home before the little girl
was murdered.

Three days after Fred received the letter, on 7 May, Rose visited him with all the children. During the visit, Fred gave her
a painting of herself on her knees, naked, at sunset – presumably painted in the prison workshop from imagination. The couple
were then said to have ignored the children as, across the table in the visits room, Rose regaled Fred with her recent exploits
involving bus drivers he’d sent her to pick up at the depot. But, even though she was hard up, no money exchanged hands as
by the time Fred got out of prison the gas and electricity had been cut off.

A week later, on 14 May, Fred wrote to Rose to tell her about a model gypsy caravan he’d made her out of matchsticks. The
caravan turned into a jewellery box on which he had carved a heart and inscribed, ‘To Rose love Fred’. On the letter, he wrote
at the top ‘Our family of Love’. How ironic this would turn out to be.

Although Fred was the dominant partner of the two, at least at this point, he was far less able than Rosie when it came to
literacy. In the same letter he wrote the following, which is an extract:

Darling be at home Tuesday for your Table will be cuming so be at home all day until thy cum it will be in the morning if
they do cum then cum see me but don’t cum to thy cum Darling …

Will it won’t be long be for the 24 [June] now Darling so get the pill if you want it or will be a mum to or son to son Darling.
I love you darling for ever my love. Yous has your say from now until for ever. Darling. Will Darling, untill I see you. All
my love I sind to you … Fred.’

By contrast, 17-year-old Rose writes well for someone who had been considered ‘Dozy’. On 22 May she wrote to Fred, ‘Darling,
I am sorry I upset you in my previous letters. I didn’t mean it … We’ve got a lot to do darling in the next couple of years.
And we’ll do it just loving each other …’

This is a chilling portent, given what their body count would be within the next two years. But in fact what the young girl
was asking for here was something quite ordinary. She wanted to get married (‘That ring means so much’) and to have a future
with Fred (‘FROM NOW AND UNTILL FOREVER’). The
couple already referred to each other as if they were married, signing themselves, ‘Your Ever Worshiping Husband’ and ‘your
worshipping wife’. Fred was still married, but there was no mention of a divorce here – although Rena too, like her little
girl, would soon cease to be a problem for Rose and Fred.

Things had been building to a head at home for a while. A few weeks after the injury to 8-year-old Charmaine’s ankle, Anna-Marie
opened the door to their bedroom to find her big sister naked and tied to the bed by her wrists and ankles, with the plastic
sheet beneath her. The little girl looked terrified and her hair was wet, as if she had been sweating or crying – although
Charmaine
never
cried. It was shortly after this that Anna-Marie came home from school to find her sister had gone.

The prosecution maintained that Rose killed Charmaine somewhere between the first visit on 7 May and Fred’s release from prison
on 24 June. Rose usually sent Anna-Marie and Charmaine off to St James’s Primary School together each morning, and they returned
home together each afternoon. On this particular morning, Rose sent 7-year-old Anna-Marie off on her own, keeping Charmaine
at home. Although Fred had said he would ‘see to it when he got home’, it is likely that Rose had arranged to hand the child
back to Rena herself – but, if this was the case, it never happened.

Rose was friendly with a neighbour at Midland Road, a Polish lady called Mrs Jagura, whom she would chat to over the garden
fence and exchange recipes with. During the course of one of their chats, Rosie had told her she could not ‘wait to get rid
of Charmaine’, and was waiting for the child’s mother to come and take her away. She had also mentioned this to Mrs Giles
upstairs, who had advised her that Fred’s girls should not be separated.

There are various theories about what happened next, but the one which the jury accepted is that Rose lost her temper with
the child and murdered her in one of her uncontrollable
rages. This is plausible for, if Rena was expected that day, the little girl may well have antagonised Rose before her mother
arrived and Rose would then have lashed out at her. As Rose’s son Stephen, born in 1973, was to say of his mother later on,
‘She had no self control … [she] would hit out with anything she could lay her hands on. If she had a sledgehammer in her
hand she’d have belted you with it.’
^*
Stephen also described how his mother would grab him and his siblings around the throat with both hands. She had lifted Stephen
off the ground this way as a young boy, throttling him until he passed in and out of consciousness. Stephen only survived
because Rose had been distracted by Fred coming home, whereupon she loosened her grip, letting the boy crash to the floor
without her even noticing. As Anna-Marie was to say of Rose, ‘It was as if she had mental blackouts … as if she didn’t know
what she was doing.’ Like a creature from a horror movie, Stephen’s eyes were entirely bloodshot and his neck was one large
purple bruise. Charmaine, however, would not even be this ‘lucky’.