Rose West: The Making of a Monster (32 page)

Rose, however, didn’t help herself by lying in court. Some lies were more plausible but others seemed ridiculous (the cellar
was bolted from inside and she could barely remember Lynda Gough, their live-in nanny, who had been the victim of the Wests’
first murder together). However, as regards the latter, there was a huge throughput of tenants and their friends at Cromwell
Street over the years and, as Rose’s daughter was to say of her mother, she had a ‘terrible memory’. Rose had even told Mae
before the case: ‘If I can’t remember, that’s what I will have to tell them.’ As well as lying, Rose made jokes in very poor
taste about the deceased. And from being obsequious and manipulative – bowing to the judge and wearing a poppy near Remembrance
Day and a gold cross around her neck though she wasn’t religious – she would fly into rages. But, though she came across as
strange, obnoxious and offensive, liked S&M and was a cruel and abysmal parent, it still didn’t mean she was guilty of murder.

The jury, however, decided that Rose wasn’t Fred’s victim, as she portrayed herself, but that she and Fred had been ‘in it
together’. Rose was given ten life sentences, one for each of the murders, which has since been commuted to whole life and
means she will never be released. In prison, Rose continues to protest her innocence and at one point launched an appeal,
but then dropped it as she felt it would be impossible to live a normal life outside or to see her children in peace. ‘This
is the point where I spell it out for you, I AM INNOCENT OF MURDER!!’ she wrote to a pen friend in 2005.
^*
But despite Rose’s continued
protestations of innocence, there is one piece of evidence that has only recently come to light: an allegation which incriminates
Rose in at least one of the murders. In the supplement ‘Britain’s Worst Serial Killers’,
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Barry West, who was just 7 at the time his big sister Heather was killed, gives an eyewitness account of her death. Unbeknown
to his parents, the little boy was standing behind the door, watching through a crack in it, when his sister came home in
the early hours that June.

‘It was about 3 a.m. I heard my Mum slap her and I saw my Dad walk round behind her and put his leg out. Then my Mum just
booted her. She was kicking and kicking her and calling her a slag. Then when my Dad tried to get her to do things to him
[these would be sexual], she refused. I think that’s why she ended up dead. When my Dad finished with her Heather was too
weak to get up and my Mum kicked her in the head. I could see blood coming out of her head and her mouth. Then Mum stamped
on her head five times and Heather didn’t move again. Finally Mum rubbed her hands together saying very matter-of-factly,
“Right, let’s clear this up. Let’s get rid of this ****ing whore.” I could hear my Dad wrapping her in some plastic and I
could see my Mum scrubbing the floor with a bucket and brush.’

Barry was still only 14 when his mother stood trial for this murder and nine others. His whole life had been turned upside
down and he’d had to live with what he’d seen for years. Whether, because of the trauma of this, or out of misplaced loyalty
or fear, it is understandable that it is only now he has felt able to talk about it. In his account, Barry also recalled how
the next morning his father had asked him to help lay some patio slabs in the garden and to cover them over with twigs. ‘My
Mum continually lies about her involvement in the hope that one day she’ll be free,’ Barry went on to say. ‘But she knew every
detail of what took place …’

This ties in with what Stephen West was to say of his mother in court. ‘We lived a life and Mum said the total opposite.’
And as Mae wrote of her, ‘She won’t face the truth. She never has.’ Quite simply, Rose was and remains in denial. The truth,
in any case, will always be hard to get at because Rose, like Fred, has been a compulsive liar from an early age. Rose later
denied taking the calls from ‘Heather’ and even pretended in court not to know that Shirley Robinson was pregnant by Fred.
Moreover, if Fred had been out of prison when Charmaine was murdered, that doesn’t mean Rose wasn’t involved. She had been
tying up and abusing the little girl while Fred was away, and it may have been that when he returned home Charmaine was their
first torture and murder together: the rehearsal, as it were, before the series of murders.

There has also been speculation that the murders were a result of their sex sessions getting out of hand, using the huge dildos
and vibrators that the police took from the house. These would almost certainly have ruptured the young women, who would have
died of their injuries. Fred, in fact, near the end of his life, had told his appropriate adult, Janet Leach, that the victims
found at Cromwell Street were ‘some of Rose’s mistakes’ that she’d made while he was at work. He told his solicitor that he
knew she’d killed some of the victims with a ‘vibrator. Pushed in with Rose’s foot; that big bastard’, he said, referring
to a vibrator that was twelve inches long and four inches across. ‘She did so much damage to them with that, that she had
to fucking kill them,’ he continued. ‘Obviously she bound their mouths up with that fucking tape round their gobs … she’d
push the vibrator in as far as she could … then get hold of their legs and just push it in with her foot.’ And there was no
doubt that Rose kicked her children and had shoved large objects, including vibrators, candles and other implements, into
some of the surviving victims.

Detective Superintendent John Bennett, who led the investigation, also gives credence to this view when he recently said,

‘The whole case was about Rosemary being sexually insatiable. There were huge quantities of pornographic material and sex
objects in the house. I firmly believe that Rose murdered the girls and Fred disposed of the bodies.’
^*

Rose’s template, like Fred’s, was maladaptive and had been set at a very young age. Both were narcissistic, psychopathic and
had antisocial personality traits. Fred was also paranoid. Before Rose met him, she was already a sex offender (against her
brothers) and Fred had already killed. The couple also had in common highly toxic family backgrounds, including early abuse
by parents, violent, dominating fathers and aggressive mothers. Rose and Fred were also pathological liars.

The fact that two such people should meet in a lifetime was highly unlikely but, if they did, it was always going to be a
recipe for disaster.

Having introduced the young Rosie to sexual sadism, she took to it willingly, because she saw it as a way of getting her own
back over other young women, and began exceeding even Fred in cruelty. Had she not met Fred, she would have been violent and
dangerous to her children, perhaps even to the point of murder, as she had with Charmaine, but it is highly unlikely that
Rose would have become a serial killer. Myra Hindley, by contrast, had nothing to mark her out as a potential killer. Living
with her grandmother, she had a stable home life, had not been abused as a child, was not a bully, and was not sexually precocious,
being a virgin when she met Ian Brady at almost 20. She was also kind to the children she babysat regularly and, up until
the point she met Brady, was said to be reliable and sensible. Had she not met Brady, it is almost certain she would not have
killed.

Although there are some characteristics shared by serial killers, despite the similar upbringing of Rose’s siblings and her
children,
they did not go on to become murderers. This is because a person’s innate temperament and individual experiences differ. For
example, unlike Rose, Glenys was bright and had a reasonable relationship with her father; Andy was savagely beaten by his
father, but was protected to some extent by his mother as well as his girlfriend and her family. Developmental paths are complicated,
but when some ill-fated characteristics come together, linked with relationships and experiences, a serial killer can result
– such as happened in the case of Fred and his brother John, and Rose and her father Bill Letts; although two serial killers
in each family is
incredibly
rare. That one of them was a woman and that she was an extreme sexual sadist is even more so.

Rose and Fred were also highly organised – even practising their different methods of tying up their victims on Anna-Marie
first, and going on dummy runs to pick up young girls. There was also less chance of their being discovered because they buried
the young women at their home, and because they were expert at choosing their victims – who were mostly vulnerable young girls,
as Rose had been.

However, if we are to prevent such a phenomenon as Rose from happening again, then we must have quality child-protection systems
in place. We must also have sympathy for the young Rosie Letts: a little girl with plaits in her hair who was slow, emotionally
isolated and abused, preferring to stay at home with her mother and knit rather than be bullied by her peers. And Freddie,
too, a small scruffy boy smelling of pigs, going to school to be made fun of with just a raw turnip in his lunch box and being
taught by his father how to have sex with sheep at just 8 years of age. Neither Dozy Rosie nor Weird Freddie were protected
as children, the fallout of which was to be their hideous crimes together. Although Fred had killed his first wife, Rena,
and his mistress, Anna McFall, Rose was never in any danger of being his next victim because he loved her; but Rose appeared
entirely devoid of this emotion, as sociopaths
are. Lamenting the creature that he and his father-in-law had created, Fred said near the end of his life, ‘She’s got no feelings
at all Rose. She’s got no feelings for nothing.’

Rose was and is a mass of contradictions: childlike in her clothes and voice but clever in distancing herself from Fred, and
a person who could express herself fluently, even lyrically, in writing. She wrote to her daughter Mae while on remand, ‘It’s
been a lovely day here today. I have a nice view from my window. You want to see the sky sometimes, beautiful colours. Sometimes
the clouds are white and fluffy against a clear bright blue sky. We have an airbase nearby … air balloons come close over
the rooftops. I could see the people quite clearly in the baskets. Or you get jets making patterns against the sky …’

Above all Rose is an enigma. As Fred’s brother John was to say of her before his death, ‘I don’t think anybody gets to know
Rose. She’s just Rose. When you went there you took her as you found her or you didn’t take her at all.’

Rose Now

Rose has been taken out of society for the rest of her life and now sits in her cell or her ‘bubble’, as she calls it, where
she spends her days knitting, cleaning, and drinking tea from her china tea set. She also watches television – nature programmes
and the soaps – and was quoted in the press as saying, ‘I can’t watch anything about serial killers! No matter how make-believe.’
^*
Her day also consists of working out in the gym; she has reportedly lost several stone and ditched the oversized spectacles
for contact lenses.
^†
In the earlier years, she became friends with Myra Hindley when they were on the prison hospital
wing together, and more recently she has befriended Tracey Connelly, Baby Peter’s mother, who she is teaching to cook healthy
food ‘instead of junk’.
^*
This friendship is not so remarkable, given they are both high-profile prisoners who are reviled by other inmates.

Just like her father, Rose has set up a music club in her cell, where other Category A inmates can listen to and discuss some
of their favourite artists.
^†
In Rose’s case these include Westlife, Glen Campbell, Helen Shapiro, John Denver and Dusty Springfield. There is also rumoured
to be a Rose West cookbook pending for the prison.

In recent years Rose has turned down an offer of marriage from a pen friend when she discovered he had no money, telling him,
‘Even a girl in my position needs a man with a little more prospects!’ She ended their relationship just as swiftly and completely
as she has many others in her life, including the one with Fred. She has also severed all contact with her children, telling
Mae in a letter written in 2006, ‘I was NEVER a parent and could never be now.’ Although this shows an incredible coldness
towards her daughter, it is perhaps one of the most truthful things Rose has ever said. She could not have expected to be
a parent when she had no idea how to be. Rose does, however, continue to write to her mother and sends her birthday and Christmas
cards, although it is not known whether Daisy replies. The only family member who still visits Rose is, ironically, her stepdaughter
Anne Marie, whom she horribly abused all her young life. When a prison officer asked Anne Marie why she still comes to see
Rose, she replied, ‘It’s just like visiting someone in hospital …’

I
T IS FIFTEEN YEARS
since Rose West went to prison but, despite the passing of time, it is impossible to imagine how the families of the victims
of the Wests could ever come to terms with the horrendous way in which they lost their daughters, sisters and friends. It
is the stuff of worst nightmares. Yet the families of the victims were tremendously dignified and compassionate in reaching
out to Stephen West at the victims’ inquests in 1995. For Stephen, as well as being the son of the serial killers responsible
for the deaths of their loved ones, had also lost his sister, Heather, for whom he and his siblings were at last able to grieve.
The West children also lost their mother to a lifetime of imprisonment and their father to suicide, and probably felt confused
in their grieving for either parent. As Mae was to say of her father: ‘Despite everything, I still love him.’ And Anne Marie,
who learnt at last what had happened to her mother and little half-sister Charmaine, could grieve for them both and try to
come to terms with her loss.

The West children lived a life of the most hideous sexual, physical and psychological abuse at Rose and Fred’s hands which,
unsurprisingly, affected the ability of some of the children to be able to slot into society and to make ‘normal’ relationships
as they grew up. Stephen was violent towards his wife and the marriage ended almost as soon as it began. He also served a
short prison sentence in 2004 for underage sex. As his barrister, Stephen Mooney, rightly said at the time, ‘He had one of
the
most traumatic and distressing childhoods one can imagine, and what happened affected his emotional development. Anyone who
has suffered like him has a tendency to remain emotionally less well-developed for his age.’ Like his father before him, Stephen
has also tried to hang himself.