Rose West: The Making of a Monster (26 page)

Rose had realised for some while that she preferred sleeping with women, and although Fred had kidnapped at least two of their
victims specifically for her, he’d now become jealous of this too. When Caroline had been their nanny, he’d asked Rose to
talk her into having sex with them, then stormed out of the room, swearing ‘Bloody lesbians!’. But, during that summer, Rose
began to have consensual lesbian relationships and took off with a female lover for a holiday to Devon; ‘for a week in a red
Mini’, as Fred was to say, leaving him in charge of the children. Whether he actually looked after the little ones in her
absence is unlikely; the task was probably left to 12-year-old Anna-Marie, who was still also required to sleep with her father.

As Rose continued to pull away from Fred, he continued to be sick and to toil away at all hours, turning up for work exhausted
in the mornings when normally he’d had an abundance of energy. He also took on an allotment in Saintbridge in Gloucester at
the time, where he put in onion sets, potatoes and carrots. While this was probably a displacement to take his mind off his
problems with Rose, he could also have used it to conceal his large collection of human bones. The allotment had a shed on
it which, like the disused farm buildings, he could have used for dismembering bodies. For whatever reason he took on the
allotment, it soon became clear it wasn’t to produce vegetables, as he allowed all his crops to run to seed.

During 1976, as the economy went into recession, so Rose and Fred began to feel the pinch. Under changes to fire-alarm regulations
at the time, the couple had to ask the lodgers to
leave until Fred had made the necessary changes. Without income from the bedsits, and with little work around, Rose could
have started to charge her black clients (who, unlike the white ones, didn’t have to pay), but neither she nor Fred considered
this as an option. Fred did, however, manage to find work laying pipes for British Gas. The job was in Cumbria and, for the
next seven months, Fred moved in at the Belted Will Inn near Carlisle as the couple had a break from each other. Just a few
months earlier cuts had been made at Smith’s Aerospace, where Rose’s father had taken voluntary redundancy. Bill’s pay-off
was around £3,000 – which was enough to buy a small house with at the time. But this was of no interest to Bill who, to the
family’s shock, suddenly upped and left his long-suffering wife Daisy – who possibly hoped he wouldn’t return.

Vanishing into thin air without even leaving a note, the next sighting of Bill was in Northam, where his former neighbours
were surprised to see him standing outside his old house. It was a hot day, but he was wearing his mac and beret as he stood
silently staring at the house, as if recalling old memories. After a moment, he walked away without a word. It is believed
he then carried on touring round all his old haunts in Devon and Cornwall with his tent – possibly even sleeping under canvas
in a wood near to where he’d once worked in Bideford. Bill did not reappear again until 10 July, when he turned up with his
daughter Glenys at the wedding of his eldest son Andrew and his girlfriend Jackie at Cheltenham Register Office. The bride
and groom were as shocked as Daisy to see him there. Rosie wasn’t there as Andy hadn’t invited her after discovering she was
working as a prostitute.

Somewhere along the line, however, Rosie and her father had been in touch during that long, hot summer of 1976. With Fred
still working away, Rose and Bill had taken the children and set off once more for the holiday camp at Westward Ho! But, before
the children had even had time to settle into their chalet, Rose had begun working her way through the camp
orchestra. She was ‘at it like a dose of salts’, her stepdaughter Anna-Marie recalled in her memoirs. Rose became a standing
joke at the camp but, as ever, she neither cared nor noticed what people thought of her.

Bill did notice, however, and became enraged with the monster he’d created just down the road in Northam some years earlier.
The staff who worked at the camp – from the cleaner through to the chef – were Bill’s former neighbours and he was embarrassed.
But he was also furious with his daughter, as it meant he was now back of the queue for her sexual favours. Fred had told
the police after his arrest that Rose and her father had been ‘heavily into each other’ and that their relationship did not
end until Bill’s death. The holiday camp incident, however, marked a shift in the balance of power between Rosie and her father:
she had outgrown her childhood Svengali and now had the upper hand in their relationship, just as she was developing a dominant
role in her relationship with Fred.

Without Fred there to force her to sleep with other men, Rose should have been able to take it easy as she’d told Fred she
wanted to. But she couldn’t – and of course had been sex-obsessed long before she’d met Fred. And if testimony were ever needed
of Rose’s insatiable sexual appetite, one only had to open the fridge at Cromwell Street, which was packed to bursting with
pork pies from one of Rose’s clients who worked in the meat trade.

After Bill had a succession of rows with his daughter at the holiday camp, he packed his bags and the family holiday was cut
short. Fred also fled his digs equally unexpectedly, and set off for home, neither paying his hotel bill nor collecting his
wages. With his own sex obsession, he too couldn’t go anywhere without causing a stir. While in Cumbria he’d obtained a woman’s
phone number during a radio phone-in for second-hand goods, whereupon he’d plagued her with obscene calls. And there were
other unknown problems he’d had to escape from.

When Fred arrived back in Gloucester, Rose does not appear to have welcomed him home with open arms, but he and Bill became
closer. ‘He was a devious bastard, and he was a bastard too with young kids,’ Fred was to say of Rose’s father, although he
could well have been speaking about himself, such was their common ground. Both men enjoyed hard work and, using what was
left of Bill’s redundancy money, decided to set up in business together. At first they applied to join the Federation of Master
Window Cleaners to start up a window-cleaning round, and Fred even talked about turning the basement into an annexe where
Grampy Letts could live. In the event, although Grampy Letts did move in, he declined to live in the basement as he very probably
knew what was below it. The ‘odd couple’ then found themselves a former butcher’s premises at 214 Southgate Street, Gloucester,
which, with Jim Tyler and Graham’s help, they stripped out and set about turning it into a café. Although Fred’s building
work was of his usual botched standard, the décor was modern, and Bill furnished it with expensive tables and quality elm
chairs perforated with stars. The pair then decided on the name, The Green Lantern, and had a sign painted over the front.
But Rose knew both men well enough to know the cafe wouldn’t work and she took no interest in the project.

At the time, Rose had begun introducing Anna-Marie to her clients, making her take turns while Fred watched through his peepholes.
When the little girl had reached 12, Rose had dressed her up, daubed lipstick and blusher on her and taken her down to the
pub. The dresses Rose normally made her wear were her own billowing, floral cast-offs, which looked ridiculous on the child
but were part of Rose’s humiliation of her. On this occasion, Rose gave her a blouse and skirt to wear that was tasteful and
made her look grown-up. Fred dropped them off in his Bedford van while Rose plied the young girl with Gold Label barley wine
to get her drunk (just as her own father had with Pat and Joyce years earlier.) After a few drinks,
Rose and her stepdaughter began to laugh together and enjoy themselves, and during the course of the evening, some men came
over and bought them drinks. Rose had obviously taken Anna-Marie there as bait, but something went wrong – possibly the men
realised the girl’s age – and Rose and Anna-Marie left in a hurry.

Despite this, Rose and Anna-Marie’s happy mood continued until Fred’s van appeared round the corner to take them home. But
as soon as Rose set eyes on Fred, her mood turned dark and she snapped at the young girl: ‘If you think you’re going to be
friends with me, you’ve got another fucking think coming! You’re fucking joking!’ Thrusting Anna-Marie into the back of the
van and climbing in after her, Rose then gave her ‘a real hiding’, as the young girl later said. As Rose beat Anna-Marie,
Fred pulled the van over – he didn’t stop the attack as his daughter hoped, but joined in beating her as well. After the beating,
Rose held Anna-Marie down while Fred raped her and Rose scratched her breasts until they bled.

This attack gives us an interesting insight into Rose and Fred’s relationship. It was as if once the couple clapped eyes on
each other, they were immediately turned on to the prospect of abusing together. And, despite Rose’s dissatisfaction with
Fred, these horrific assaults and murders were the glue that held them together in
their folie à deux.

The Approved School

As well as turning Anna-Marie into a teenage prostitute, Rose had been grooming girls from the Jordan’s Brook House Approved
School. She and Fred had often cruised by in the van and would hang around outside, chatting to the girls and offering them
a shoulder to cry on. Serial killers are said to have a ‘normal face’, and Rose appears to have learnt how to groom
young girls before she’d even left Cleeve secondary school. Fleetingly making friends with a girl in a year or two lower at
school, Rose and Joy McConnell walked home together after school.

‘I was about thirteen or fourteen, and she was a bit older,’ Joy recalled. ‘She was a slim girl, taller than me with long
dark hair. I didn’t really know Rose before, but she was really warm and lovely and spoke to you as if you were her best friend.’

When Rosie invited her new friend round to her house to play, Joy waited by the gate as Rose instructed her, while she went
in the house.

‘I waited there for quite a few minutes,’ Joy said, when ‘her mother came out and really shouted at me, telling me to clear
off. I was really upset.’

Joy went home and didn’t see Rose again, but to this day remembers how charming she was. Only a few short years later, Rose
would use this charm to lure young girls into the Wests’ car and back to Cromwell Street.

Miss A, as she became known at Rose’s trial, had been a victim of incest and was desperate for affection; and, like the younger
Rose, the 14-year-old girl was crying out to be rescued. Miss A had been sent to Jordan’s Brook House Approved School in Gloucester
after being found in a stolen car with her boyfriend at the wheel, who was himself sent to borstal. Soon after arriving at
the approved school, Miss A was taken to Cromwell Street by one of the older girls, where she found Rose to be ‘nice and pleasant,
understanding and caring.’

Quite by coincidence, the young teenager’s boyfriend turned out to be none other than Rose’s own brother, Graham, who was
now 18. Miss A had no idea at the time that Rose was his sister, but was obsessed with Graham and, while at Jordan’s Brook
House, sent him a picture of a baby that she said was his. Graham had lost interest in the girl by now and knew he couldn’t
possibly be the father of the baby – but while this
young girl was being rejected by him, Rose was being kind and affectionate to her. And when she turned 15 the following year,
Rose and Fred sent her a birthday card.

For some time now, the Wests’ house had become known as a good place for the young and the lost to hang out. Rose would give
them squash, biscuits and sympathy, and during the following summer of 1977, Miss A began to spend more time there. Sometimes
she would stop off at Cromwell Street before catching the bus to visit her mother at the weekend. During these visits, Rose
sat close to the young girl on the settee and began talking to her about girls’ things, gradually throwing in inappropriate
questions such as, ‘Do you play with yourself?’ as if it was perfectly normal to ask. Soon Miss A would run away from the
approved school, sometimes sleeping rough or turning up on Rose’s doorstep, seeking shelter. Rose let her stay, but on one
occasion touched the girl’s breasts. Miss A had pushed her away, and Rose had let her sleep on the settee. Leaving the teenager
alone had done the trick, for some six weeks later she turned up at Cromwell Street again, where Rose invited her in. Rose
was wearing a see-through chiffon blouse and, as usual, no underwear, and was in the early stages of pregnancy again.

During her stay, Miss A went to use the bathroom, whereupon Rose followed her, calling up to Fred. When Miss A came out of
the bathroom, Rose took her to her bedroom where, to the young girl’s horror, there were two other girls in the room, both
of whom were naked. One was sitting on the floor, and the other lying on the bed – they were both about 14 years old. The
girl on the floor was Anna-Marie who, in her book, identified herself from the home-made tattoo on her arm that Miss A described
to the police, although Anna-Marie has no memory of the attack. Her stepmother had given her a bowl of Weetabix spiked with
sedatives at breakfast. When Anna-Marie had tried to spit them out, Rose had given her a back-hander and told
her, ‘It’s only a piece of grain, put it in your mouth and eat it!’ Anna-Marie was too scared to go against Rose, who stood
over her until she’d swallowed every last bit of the drug. The assaults on the underage girls that Miss A was about to become
a victim of that day had obviously been planned.

Rose then came up to Miss A and, putting her arm around her said, ‘It’s all right to touch, to feel, enjoy and show affection.’
She then took off the girl’s clothes as Fred watched. Having been abused before, Miss A was frozen with fear and felt helpless
to stop her. Rose also used the same type of manipulative language that Miss A had heard before when she’d been abused, and
it is the same kind of language Rose would have learnt herself from her abuser or abusers. Rose then turned her attentions
to the 14-year-old lying naked on the bed. Rolling her onto her front, Fred bound her wrists with duct tape and tied her ankles
either side of the bed. ‘He almost split her,’ as Miss A remembered. Rose then anally raped the girl with a vibrator. The
girl was crying with pain, but Rose merely turned to Fred who had an erection and asked him, ‘You enjoying this now? That
turn you on?’ Fred then raped the girl from behind while Rose fondled him. After he finished, Rose, with a look of pure hatred
on her face, ripped the duct tape from the girl, deliberately hurting her. Once more she exhibited her contempt for other
young women.