Rose West: The Making of a Monster (21 page)

The couple told Caroline she would get her own room – and as she was one of fifteen children, this appealed to her. They also
promised to pay her a weekly wage of
£8
and to take her over to see her parents one evening each week. The tactic of using their children had also worked with her
parents, who gave Caroline the go-ahead to move in with them. The following day, as Caroline was packing her belongings, the
‘nice’ Mr and Mrs West even turned up to give her a hand, reassuring her parents they’d keep an eye on their daughter; that
she’d be safe with them. Only little Anna-Marie, as she silently watched the new nanny’s belongings being carried out to the
car, had any inkling of what Rose and Fred were actually smirking about.

Turning up at Caroline’s house to win her parents round and collect their prey was an audacious move on the couple’s part,
and indicates even at this early stage the lengths they were prepared to go to to get exactly what they wanted. And as soon
as Caroline arrived at the Wests’ home, she discovered they had lied to her, as she was not given her own room but had to
share with Anna-Marie. This turned out to be a godsend, however, as Anna-Marie relished the new nanny being there and clung
to her. Even though Caroline was only 16 herself, she realised the little girl was starved of affection and was frightened
whenever Rose and Fred were around. By sharing a room with her, Caroline at least felt able to protect and care for her some
of the time.

While Caroline took Anna-Marie to school and cared for baby Mae and toddler Heather, she soon realised their teenage mother
would be entertaining clients in another room. But, despite this side of Rose’s life, she always kept the children clean and
well turned out, and cooked decent meals for all the family, as Caroline was to say. And there were some fun times to be had
at the house in the early days, where ‘Alright Now’ by Free
would often be heard as the boys in the bedsits played it at full blast and joked around. Caroline also made friends with
Rose whom she later described as ‘simple-minded’. Her ‘whiny and drippy’ voice irritated Caroline, but the two teenage girls
would often spend their evenings together, chatting about boys and television.

After a while, however, things took a different turn, when Rose began playing with the younger girl’s hair, stroking it and
telling her she had beautiful eyes as they sat on the sofa together. The bathroom door at Cromwell Street did not have a lock
on it, and there were times when Rose would just barge in on the young nanny, talking to her and looking at her as she bathed.
At night, Rose would then put on transparent tops and, at Fred’s behest, try to draw Caroline into their sex games and the
parties they held upstairs with their guests – often Rose’s clients. After whispering in the kitchen together one day, Fred
and Rose came out smiling at Caroline as she nursed the baby. Rose then sat beside her while Fred told her, ‘We’d like you
to join our sex circle … You know – you, me, Rose – you like Rose, don’t you? … And a few men friends of ours, you’d enjoy
it. You haven’t tried a black man yet, have you? You wouldn’t want a white man after being spoilt by a black man … They’d
fuck the arse off you. How about it then? Are you game for it?’

Caroline was shocked and frightened, and in her book,
The Lost Girl,
says she could not believe that Rose was sitting beside her, letting Fred talk in that way to her. Caroline laughed nervously
and said, ‘Tell him to behave Rose!’

But, to her astonishment, Rose just carried on grinning at her and said, ‘Oh go on, Car, you’ll enjoy it, give it a go!’

When Caroline realised the couple were deadly serious, she protested she wasn’t that sort of person. Fred turned nasty at
this, threatening to tell her mother and her boyfriend what she’d been up to at their house – ‘they won’t want anything to
do with you any more, will they?’ he barked at Caroline, leaving
Rose to comfort the crying girl. As Rose hugged Caroline, she tried to get her to reconsider Fred’s proposition, while Fred
muttered as he left the room, ‘Fucking lesbians!’, and told Rose to ‘have it sorted’ before he returned.

While working as a nanny at the house, Caroline had become increasingly upset by Rose’s treatment of Anna-Marie, who she would
whack around the head at will and treat like her personal slave. John West was a frequent visitor to the house, and would
quietly watch Caroline from the corner of his eye. Fred, on the other hand, talked incessantly and crudely about sex, and
constantly bragged about his abilities as an abortionist. He also told Caroline that 8-year-old Anna-Marie was not a virgin,
watching the young teenager’s reaction to this as he did so. It was another ploy to test her out to see if he could draw her
in to the couple’s games. When Caroline showed her distress at his admission, he immediately tried to laugh it off, saying
the saddle had come off Anna-Marie’s Chopper bike and that she’d ‘damaged herself’ because of it.

In fact, shortly after raping the child that summer, Rose had made Anna-Marie wear large, heavy sex gadgets made out of metal
as she walked around the house doing the housework. The contraption had a vibrator inside, which the little girl had to keep
in place all day and which buzzed as she worked. Fred had made these hideous contraptions at Permali’s factory where he had
recently started work; they included a metal surround on a vibrator and a U-shaped gadget with handles on it.

Just after the rape, Rose had asked the terrified child to go down to the cellar again to ‘tidy up the toys’. When Anna-Marie
had tried to pass Rose on the stairs to go back up, the 18-year-old blocked her way and forced her to strip off. Strapping
the U-shaped sex gadget to the little girl, Rose had then gagged the child and begun whipping her, when Fred came home on
his lunch break. Rose had obviously put on the ‘show’ for her husband, who laughed uproariously at his
daughter’s distress. On this particular occasion, Fred had then quickly raped his daughter and gone back to work. But rather
than just acting as her husband’s assistant, for his pleasure, Rose decided to continue the little girl’s ordeal to fulfil
her own sadistic desires. After screaming at Anna-Marie and beating the child, Rose lifted her skirts to reveal a vibrator
attached to a belt with which she raped her. The internal cuts inflicted on the little girl were painful enough, but Rose
then took great pleasure in making her take a bath with salt in it.

Caroline, of course, knew nothing of this, but had heard enough to cause her to be frightened. After being both comforted
and propositioned by Rose, Rose was called away to see to her sleeping children. The moment she left the room, Caroline grabbed
her belongings and slipped out of the house, rushing home to her parents in the Forest of Dean. Rose and Fred hadn’t been
married a year by this time, but like two sex-crazed adolescents they once more decided that what they wanted, they
would
have – whatever it took. Where Liz had been for Fred, this time Caroline would be for Rose. According to Fred in his police
interview in 1994, it had been Rose’s idea ‘to get her’, as she wanted to ‘satisfy her urges with her’. As Caroline said,
‘He kept me in order with violence for her to do what she did …’

Fred told the police he’d come up with the plan as he’d wanted to see if Rose would actually go through with helping him abduct
a girl. Of course he was a known fantasist and liar (even blaming Rena in court for the tyres he’d stolen from his works).
But he was probably telling the truth here as the couple had not attempted to kidnap or rape Caroline when she’d got into
their car the first time, although they could easily have done so had they thought about it. Instead, they’d tried to groom
and seduce Caroline, but since that had failed, they were now changing their modus operandi. And, as they did so, they were
becoming increasingly locked in a
folie à deux,
or shared
madness, together – but one which would be far more extreme and insidious than anything Bill and Daisy had shared.

Fred had begun transmitting his delusional beliefs to Rose since she’d first moved in with him at 15. He’d exploited her youth
and her nymphomania by encouraging her to outdo Rena in sexual exploration, and to use his children as guinea pigs as he tutored
her in his own sadosexual fantasies. Rose was susceptible because she was young and had already been corrupted by her father.
And, very soon, under Fred’s tutelage, she’d developed an appetite for the power such practices gave her. It was a heady feeling
and something she’d never experienced before. Fred had then introduced her to cruising for girls and, as they egged each other
on to act out one of their fantasies, they decided to abduct a girl together: in this case, their former nanny. The danger
was, while sexual sadism is very rare amongst sex offenders, it is common amongst sexual murderers and serial killers – and
Rose and Fred were both sexual sadists.

The Abduction

On 6 December 1972, exactly one week after Rose turned 19, the couple decided to put their plan into action; it was Rose’s
birthday present to herself. As Rose and Caroline had been friends for a while, Rose knew things about the younger girl, such
as where she went and at what times of the day. She was pretty sure Caroline would be visiting her boyfriend Tony in Tewkesbury
on a Saturday night and, as Tony did not have a car, Rose knew Caroline would be hitchhiking home to the Forest of Dean afterwards.

Earlier that day, Rose and Fred had begun discreetly trailing Caroline in the car when she was out with Tony. It was just
a few weeks since Caroline had left Cromwell Street but, glancing over her shoulder, she noticed the couple driving around
in
their Ford Popular. Later that evening, as she waited for a lift home opposite Gupshill Manor pub as usual, the Wests pulled
up alongside her. Caroline was worried about their response to her leaving them high and dry, without a nanny. Rose, however,
had got that one covered, and jumped out of the car, beaming at her.

‘Hello Caroline! How are you? I’m sorry you left. We’ve missed you, haven’t we Fred?’

‘Yeah, and the kids have too,’ he nodded at her from inside the car. ‘Look, I’m sorry for what I said, I was only messing
around. Can we give you a lift home?’

Perhaps pleased to see some friendly faces as she stuck her thumb out that cold December night, but against her better judgement,
Caroline accepted their offer. Yes, the couple were odd, she told herself, but she’d worked for them and they hadn’t actually
hurt her or anything. She’d be all right.

The car only had two doors, and Rose got out to let Caroline climb into the back. The moment Fred pulled away, Rose said she
wanted a ‘chat’ with her, and clambered over the passenger seat to sit beside her in the back.

At first the two young women talked about the children, but as Fred drove through the dark countryside towards her home, Caroline
saw him leering at her in the rear-view mirror. He then demanded to know if she’d had sex with her boyfriend that night. Caroline
was frightened and begged Rose for help, ‘Tell him to leave it, Rose.’ But Rose didn’t answer; instead she grinned weirdly
at Caroline, just as she had at little Anna-Marie, before she and Fred had pounced on the child. ‘Have a feel, Rose!’ Fred
chimed in, smirking. ‘See if she’s wet!’ Rose didn’t hesitate and grabbed the girl’s crotch. Caroline pushed her hand away
in shock, whereupon Rose chortled and began fondling her breasts. Caroline burst into tears and said she wanted to go home,
which only made the couple laugh all the more. As Caroline recalled, ‘My fear just seemed to turn them on even more.’

The terrified girl then realised that Fred had taken a turning towards Chepstow, which was in the opposite direction to her
home. When she asked where they were going, Fred pulled up at a grass verge just past the Highnam roundabout in an isolated
part of the countryside, where Rose tried to maul and kiss her all the more. As Caroline fought her off, Fred yelled ‘bitch!’
at her and turned to help Rose. Licking his lips, he then lined up his punches, smacking the young girl on the temple several
times until she lost consciousness.

When Caroline came round she found her hands were tied behind her back, and Rose was gripping her securely in a bear hug while
Fred wrapped layers of duct tape around her head and mouth, making her gag. Caroline remembers the whole operation as being
‘very efficient’, and taking only seconds. Rose then pushed the girl into the foot-well of the car, and sat on her (just as
she had Anna-Marie), while Fred turned the car round and drove them back to Cromwell Street.

They arrived back at the house a little before midnight, where Fred got out of the car to check no one was around, and gave
the signal to Rose to bring the trussed-up girl inside. They then took her to a first-floor bedsit facing onto the street,
where Fred told her to be good and they’d tidy her up and let her go; but of course they had no intention of doing any such
thing and were just playing a cruel game of cat and mouse with her.

To keep their game going, Fred sat Caroline on the settee while Rose, bizarrely, went off to make them all a cup of tea. Fred
took out a knife and began cutting off the duct tape around Caroline’s head, all the while talking gently to her. In the process
he nicked her skin, making her bleed, for which he apologised – quite forgetting he’d knocked the poor girl unconscious only
minutes earlier. Rose brought in three cups of tea and also assumed the role of the caring kidnapper, cooing at Caroline,
‘There, there, you’ll be all right.’ The couple freed the girl’s
wrists so that she could drink the tea, and then tried to talk her into coming back to work for them. Fred told Caroline that
Rose ‘had a bun in the oven’ again, and needed a nanny even more now. He also told her they were hoping for a boy this time,
while Rose smiled at Caroline, ‘Go on Car … it will be better this time.’

Clearly, the couple had lost touch with reality to believe that the terrorised young girl would ever want to see them again,
never mind work for them, after all they had put her through. Rose then put her arms around the young girl, and began kissing
her on the lips. Caroline pushed her away, screaming at her to leave her alone, at which point Fred grabbed hold of Caroline’s
head and forced her face-down into the settee, instructing Rose to ‘get the cotton wool’. Rose scurried off and returned with
a large wad of the cotton wool which, clearly practised at, she stuffed into Caroline’s mouth. The couple got out some strips
of old torn-up sheeting (the kind they’d used on Charmaine and Anna-Marie) and tied a strip around her head to keep the cotton
wool in place, using another strip to blindfold her with.