Rose West: The Making of a Monster (8 page)

Later, he appeared to have delusions of grandeur when he attempted to build the ha-ha, believed people were against him, became
preoccupied with violence, and suspected Daisy of having affairs – these are all symptomatic of paranoid schizophrenia. Bill
was also a sadist, who enjoyed inflicting pain and humiliation on his family, for when he threw away the children’s food and
tossed boiling water over his wife, he would be grinning with pleasure at ‘teaching them a lesson’. As Daisy told writer Howard
Sounes:
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‘… He [Bill] seemed to enjoy making you unhappy.’ But what Daisy didn’t know until she read his medical records many years
later, after his death, was that Bill had a secret he had managed to keep even from the Navy. As a young man, he had been
diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and had suffered ‘severe psychotic’ episodes ever since.

His illness, however, appears to have remained untreated for most of his adult life with all the devastating effects this
had on his family, including his youngest daughter, Rosie. As a former neighbour said, ‘The family had a terrible life with
Bill. He was a very violent and cruel man. He would beat his wife all the time and make a mess in the house so that she [Daisy]
and the children would have to clear it up.’

Clearly although appearances were important to Daisy, she could no longer hide what was going on behind closed doors. Bill’s
cruel streak was also evident when he began working at Bernard Smith’s TV repair shop in Barnstaple in the late 1950s. A former
engineer remembered working alongside him in the service department, where Bill would brag to his colleagues
about his time in the Navy, recalling with relish how he played tricks on the Wrens by giving them electric shocks – just
as he enjoyed Daisy being given electric-shock therapy. And it didn’t stop there as whenever a new apprentice joined the service
department, Bill would give them a shock with an electrical insulation tester known as the ‘Megger’: a device delivering some
400 volts. The engineers did not all share his enthusiasm for his cruel pranks or his warped sense of humour, but Bill would
find it immensely funny, guffawing with delight at the other person’s pain. This sadistic behaviour also smacks of the Yorkshire
Ripper, who would laugh manically at the expense of others as he played grisly pranks on them. This included using human skulls
to frighten schoolgirls with as they passed by the graveyard where he worked in Bingley, and grinning with pleasure as he
threw a 10-year-old girl down the stairs. But Bill wasn’t a killer. Or was he … ?

Bill did, however, have a few good days where he would happily plan for events such as family birthdays and anniversaries,
but Daisy became so disturbed by her husband’s behaviour, she began to think it was all to do with the moon. If the moon was
full, Daisy told herself, ‘I have to be careful.’ There is no doubt that Bill’s mental health affected Daisy’s, and of course
that of the children too. Had Daisy known about Bill’s diagnosis, she could have sought help, or even had him sectioned when
he had a psychotic episode. This would then have given the medical profession the chance to treat him and allowed the family
some peace. Instead, Rosie and her siblings grew up with this behaviour as the norm and, in the case of Andy Letts, labouring
under the misconception that they were somehow to blame for it.

Although Bill’s family were not aware of his illness, children in the area would notice his odd behaviour and call out ‘schizo’
as they passed him on the street, little realising just how close to the truth this was. This bears striking similarities
to Peter
Sutcliffe’s father, John, who also had a flamboyant style of dress and peculiar ways. When local kids met him in the streets
of Bingley they would shout the same thing, ‘Oi, schizo!’, and run away laughing.

Adults around Morwenna were also developing their own ideas about why the Letts children were never seen out playing. As a
neighbour said, ‘My mum worried all the time about us [being out] because of the tide, but their parents worried about what
they’d say [was going on indoors].’ The neighbours heard the children’s cries and called in social services, but were shocked
when, apart from the girls being sent away to a children’s home for a while, nothing changed. And if the neighbours complained
to Bill about it, he would simply close the windows, lock the doors and get out the copper stick.

When Daisy was well enough, she would take the children for long walks across the Burrows country park, to the sheltered beaches
of Northam, Westward Ho! and Appledore. Here they could escape their psychotic father and play to their hearts’ content: looking
for starfish in the rock pools, paddling and making sandcastles, until it was time to go home again when Daisy would ensure
they were cleaned up first. Daisy was still desperate to leave Bill, and promised Patsy she would just as soon as the younger
children had grown up. But every year Bill made sure there was another baby on the way to keep her there, although Daisy was
to have several miscarriages.

When the children got older, 8-year-old Andy or one of his big sisters would push the well-worn pram over the Burrows with
Gordon – the latest Letts arrival – inside. Three-year-old Graham would sit on the pram seat at the front, while Lassie, Glenys’s
collie, ran along beside this – briefly – happy little bunch. The children would pass an aged donkey in a field on their journey,
which they would make a fuss of and play games of trying to guess its age. Rosie, however, never went on any of these trips
but stayed at home with her mother, who would
teach her knitting and crochet and later dressmaking – which Rose would excel at and use as a means of enticing a young victim
to her bedroom in Cromwell Street many years later. Otherwise, little 7-year-old Rosie would be at home, alone with her father.

When Bill wasn’t trying to electrocute his workmates, he would take Patsy and Joyce out in the works van. One of the young
apprentices at Smith’s was keen on Patsy, but Bill warned him off her, telling him that his family were of the ‘Catholic persuasion’.
This was one of Bill’s many lies: the Letts’ were not raised as Catholics and didn’t go to church at all at this time. It
was no coincidence that this was when Daisy had just had another baby, and clearly Bill had his own ideas for Patsy.

When the 15-year-old got out of the bath one day, her father followed her into her bedroom where he pushed her onto the bed
and tried to remove her bathrobe. Patsy screamed as he tried to touch her and pushed him away. She then rushed out to the
landing, where Bill caught up with her and hurled the young girl down the stairs. Her injuries were such that she had to attend
the Casualty department at the local Barnstaple hospital. After making a second attempt to molest Patsy, Bill beat her when
she resisted. Patsy fled Northam soon after this, joining the Wrens with the help of her friend’s father, Mr Sander Job, who
gave her a reference. With Patsy gone, Bill bullied his next daughter, Joyce. On a trip out in the van, he took her to a pub.
Bill was barely a drinker himself, but tried to ply the 14-year-old with gin masked with orange juice. Joyce had always stood
up to her father, which didn’t go down well with Bill, who would hit her.

Soon afterwards, Daisy and the younger children helped Joyce move her bed across to her friend, Diane Glover’s house. Diane
was two years younger than Joyce and both girls attended secondary school in Bideford at the time. The younger girl remembered
sharing her bedroom for several weeks with Joyce,
who said her father ‘had turned strange’, and that she needed to get away from him. This begs the question: did Daisy know
that Bill had been physically abusive to both the older girls and had tried to sexually abuse Patsy? And if so, did she also
have any doubts or concerns about his special ‘bond’ with their youngest daughter?

Joyce began work in Bideford soon afterwards and moved back home, but when her father hit her again, she went to stay with
another friend. Glenys was the next daughter in line, but Bill did not turn his attentions to her. As a small child she could
happily sit on her father’s lap without him ever touching her inappropriately, or hitting her. Although the exact nature of
Bill’s relationship with his youngest daughter is unclear at this point, he had actually begun to look for opportunities elsewhere
to satisfy his lust for young girls.

The Rock & Roll Club

Bill had only been in his job at Smith’s for a year or so when, having been caught using the works van to go on day trips
to Plymouth, he was sacked. Bill found another job soon after, working for television repairers, Squires in Bideford, but
he quickly lost this job too and money became scarce once again. Some time before the last child, Gordon, was born in 1960,
Bill obtained a part-time evening job as a caretaker in the Order of Buffalo Hall behind the Kingsley Inn public house in
Northam. Ironically, given Bill’s track record with his own children, he set up a youth club in the hall with his friend,
Ronnie Lloyd. The two men played their favourite rock-and-roll records on Bill’s tape recorder and amplifiers. From Eddie
Cochran and Gene Vincent through to Buddy Holly and Elvis, the recordings were all in mono. There was very little for teenagers
to do in the village at the time, and these weekly rock-and-roll sessions soon
became popular, even though only fizzy pop and crisps were allowed. As a local lady who attended the club as a young girl
remembered, ‘Bill was always saying to the teenagers, “You’re not allowed to drink or misbehave.” He wouldn’t have any of
it.’ Even so, he didn’t let his own teenage daughters attend it.

Several months later, Bill fell behind with the rent on his council house. Rumour had it he had debts from a café and shop
he’d once run with a friend in Redruth during his time at a naval airbase. He was also said to be spending what little income
he had on himself, and buying modern recording equipment which he’d invite Joyce and her friends to sing into in the scullery.
But whether Bill couldn’t or wouldn’t pay the rent, he began making claims to the council that his house was poorly maintained.
When council officials called to see for themselves, Bill bolted the door and refused to let them in. At the same time, the
youth club closed down amidst rumours in the village …

I
N THE COLD WINTER
of February 1962, the family got up in the middle of the night, packed the few personal belongings they had and set off for
their new home in the large, sprawling city of Plymouth, in south Devon. As Bill could not afford to hire a removal van, the
family had to leave most of their furniture and belongings behind. Their leaving was not a surprise to everyone who passed
number 57 in the following days, as one of the girls had told her friend Rita that the family were about to do a ‘moonlight
flit’. But still it came as a shock to most of the neighbours at Morwenna as the Letts family had lived there for over a decade.

Bill and Daisy told the children they were moving as there was no work in north Devon. This was partly true, but as well as
owing rent on the house, there was another reason. As another neighbour said, ‘Social services stepped in and stopped the
youth club, then they flitted off’, after rumours of Bill’s penchant for young girls began to circulate. Once more Bill appears
to have been careful about the girls he selected, for both Rita Williams and Diane Glover, who lived with their parents in
the same street as the family, recalled never having any problems with him or even being aware of any abuse going on.

During his time at the repair shop, Bill had been making secret trips to Plymouth where, with his naval background, he’d found
full-time work on ships’ radar at the naval dockyard in Devonport. This, though, as with most things connected to Bill,
was not quite as important as he liked to make it sound and actually amounted to his working in the stores. But it was a job,
nonetheless, and one which would provide for his large family, Bill having found accommodation for them in an area close to
his works.

If the family had been cramped in their three-bedroomed semi at Northam, they were now having to squeeze into a confined attic
flat that boasted a tiny kitchen-cum-dining area, an even smaller middle room where they could watch TV, and an outside toilet
serving the two families living there. Joyce came with them, but the flat only had two bedrooms, which meant the six growing
girls and boys still had to share bedrooms and beds. Soon, however, Bill hit Joyce again, attacking her on the stairs and
blacking her eye. Joyce ran into the Scoblings’ flat below, shoeless and sobbing. Later that day, the 15-year-old returned
from work to find her belongings on the doorstep and Daisy (possibly at Bill’s behest) telling her to leave.

To escape their claustrophobic environment, the older of the five remaining children were allowed more freedom. As Andy recollected,
‘We were always out as we were too crowded.’ He and Rosie would play in the long yard at the back of the house with a pet
rabbit that one of the children had acquired. As he got older, Andy found he was able to wander off without being missed,
and would lose himself in the city and the wastelands where houses had once stood before the heavy bombing raids on the city
during the war. Rosie, though, still had to stay close by, in the yard or the flat.

Although moving from the close-knit village she had grown up in to a large city may have seemed strange to Rosie at first,
it was not the upheaval it might have been as she did not have any friends in Northam to miss. At Benbow Street, however,
she made her first little friend – the daughter of the family who owned the house and lived in the lower part of it: Joan
Scobling. Joan was a year older than Rose and, if Joan wasn’t there, there
were always plenty of other children at hand to play with. As a former neighbour, Mrs Blake, said, ‘I can remember the children
– with the Scoblings and the Letts, there seemed to be dozens of them around.’