“VERY controlled, secretive and full of rage” – those were the words used to describe Rose West by a man with insight like no other.
She is considered among Britain’s most sadistic serial killers, having tortured and murdered 10 young women, alongside her husband Fred, at their House of Horrors in Gloucester.
Fred and Rose West are known as two of Britain’s most evil killersRex Features
SWNS:South West News ServiceThe chilling ‘sex dungeon’ cellar where the Wests abused some of their victims[/caption]
News Group Newspapers LtdThe Wests’ former nanny Caroline Owens was victim of their sexual attacks[/caption]
In 1995, Rose was jailed for life for her callous crimes after police uncovered multiple mutilated female bodies buried in their garden, under their patio and in a sex-dungeon cellar.
Among them was their 16-year-old daughter Heather, the victim of violent sexual abuse by Fred, who forced her to watch pornography with him and wanted to impregnate her.
Leo Goatley, Rose’s solicitor, had first-hand insight into the killer’s warped brain and tells The Sun the 71-year-old will “go to the grave with many secrets”.
He listened to her sickening claims about Caroline Owens, a 17-year-old hired as a nanny for the Wests’ children who was drugged, beaten and sexually abused.
Leo recalls: “Like Fred, in a lot of her interviews she would deflect blame from themselves to the children.
“She would say things happened with Caroline but she was up for it, she wanted it… She says she was exaggerating. She’s making a fuss.
“Fred had this really warped idea that it was a father’s right to take his daughter’s virginity and that Heather was a lesbian. They claimed they just wanted her to have a good marriage and somehow this shocking abuse would facilitate that.”
The Wests have come back in to the spotlight upon the release of new Netflix docuseries Fred and Rose West: A British Horror Story.
The harrowing crimes of the couple, who were branded “the epitome of evil” in court, came to light in 1992 after their daughter Louise, 13, accused Fred of rape and Rose of child cruelty.
The case collapsed when eldest daughter Anne Marie, who was abused by them from the age of eight, refused to testify but remarks by the West children raised serious concern with police.
They launched a major investigation after hearing the youngsters were regularly threatened to be buried “under the patio like their sister Heather”, who vanished five years prior.
Collectively the Wests killed at least 12 women and girls – ranging from youngest victim, Rose’s stepdaughter Charmaine, eight, to the eldest Fred’s ex-wife Catherine ‘Reno’ Costello, 27.
Eight of the murdered young women were teenagers, some of whom lived with the couple. Others were employed as nannies and some schoolgirls were abducted from the street.
Fred never faced justice for his crimes, killing himself in HMP Birmingham before the couple’s trial, and Rose was among the few evil criminals to be sentenced to a whole life term – meaning she will never be released from prison.
Leo who represented Rose for 12 years from 1992, including her appeals, recalled she was a “sociable” woman, who “liked a joke” but there was a darker side simmering below the surface.
“She could also be very controlled and secretive sometimes, she would fly into a rage and shriek and spit,” he explained.
AlamyRose West, pictured after appearing in court in 1995, received a whole life tariff[/caption]
ShutterstockThe couple’s daughter Heather West was killed and buried under the patio[/caption]
AlamyLeo Goatley represented Rose West from 1992[/caption]
“I recall one witness described her as being ‘rough’ during a lesbian encounter. Rose insisted she was tender and got very upset.
“Another time, I’d be reading out a statement and asking her, ‘Were you with Fred in this van when you abducted Anne Marie?’.
“She’d trill and say ‘it’s nothing to do with me,’ even though she later admitted to it. It was a primitive human response.
“I don’t dispute that, in those moments, she would have been capable of extreme violence. She was, of course, complex and there was a maternal side to her too.”
‘Horrors locked away’
Leo believes Rose has “dissociated herself” from her unforgivable crimes and “locked the horrors of Cromwell Street away in a room of her mind”.
Instead of facing up to what she has done, Rose has donned a new mask – the homely, sewing ‘caregiver’ in prison, in a bid to distance herself from her evil wrongdoing.
“She’d much rather be the amenable, kindly old lady who likes to spend tea with a vicar’s wife who visits behind bars,” he says.
LIVES LOST: The victims of Fred and Rose West
By Raphael Adelugba, Tanyel Mustafa and Caroline Peacock
Anna McFall
The nanny of Fred and Rena West’s children, McFall was believed to have been murdered in 1967.
She was pregnant when she died, with West believed to have been the father.
Her body was found in June 1994 in a shallow grave.
Fred West denied murdering McFall but he is said to have confided to a visitor after his arrest that he stabbed her following an argument.
This happened before Rosemary West met him.
Charmaine West
With Fred in prison for the theft of car tyres and a vehicle tax disc, Rosemary was left to look after Fred and Rena’s daughters Charmaine and Anne Marie.
A neighbour Tracey is said to have found Charmaine tied to a wooden chair with her hands behind a back with Rosemary standing with a large wooden spoon.
Rosemary claimed she’d been taken by her mother, but her skeleton was found at the Midland Road property, hidden and missing bones.
Rena West
Rena is believed to have been murdered by strangulation.
Rosemary was not charged for this murder.
Lynda Gough
Lynda Gough was the first sexually motivated killing conducted by the Wests.
She moved into Cromwell Street in April 1973, having had affairs with several lodgers.
The Wests later claimed she’d been asked to leave after hitting one of their children.
Strangulation and suffocation were the likely causes of death.
Carol Ann Cooper
Cooper was murdered in November 1973, aged just 15.
On the night of November 9, she was allowed to spend the night at her grandmother’s house before a doctor’s appointment the next morning.
She attended the appointment and then met her boyfriend, before somehow ending up on Cromwell Street.
Her body was found more than twenty years later.
Lucy Partington
A 21-year-old medieval English student at Exeter University, she returned home for Christmas in December 1973.
She left a friend’s house in a rush to get the last bus from Cheltenham to Gretton on 27 December, with it believed she was abducted from this bus stop.
She was found more twenty years later, her dismembered body in the cellar of Cromwell Street.
Therese Siegenthaler
A 21-year-old Swiss sociology student at Woolwich Polytechnic.
She had planned to hitchhike to Ireland in Easter 1974. Her family reported her missing having not heard from her for some time.
Prosecution believe she was abducted before being killed, with Fred West later building a fake chimney over her grave.
Shirley Hubbard
Just 15 at the time of her death, Hubbard is believed to have been abducted by the Wests.
Her body was found following an excavation in the concrete and plastic membrane of the cellar floor.
Juanita Mott
In the summer of 1974, Mott moved into 25 Cromwell Street but later went missing when she was living in Newent.
Her body was found in March 1994, 19 years later, with West having concreted over the floor of the cellar.
Shirley Robinson
The first victim buried outside the house, Robinson had an affair with Fred West, and by autumn 1977, she was pregnant with West’s child.
It was initially claimed she had moved to Scotland but her body was later found.
When questioned, Rosemary West, herself pregnant with her daughter Tara at the time of the murder, claimed she did not remember her, which was described as “ludicrous” by the prosecution.
Alison Chambers
The last murder with a sexual motive established. She disappeared just before her 17th birthday, having been seen at 25 Cromwell Street throughout the summer.
Her body was buried underneath the patio.
Heather West
The first child born to Fred and Rosemary West, there is no evidence she was aware of the killings.
Sexually abused by her parents and having told friends, she suddenly went missing in 1987, with Rosemary claiming she had gone to Wales to be with a lesbian partner.
The couple would joke to their other children that they would “end up under the patio like Heather” if they misbehaved.
This, and their changing stories, lead to the search warrants for the property, which lead to their arrests.
This dissociation maintains a chilling remorselessness from the killer, who Leo says he has only seen emotional on a handful of occasions, including after Fred admitted to killing their daughter Heather.
“It was one of the few times I saw Rose in a collapsed, inconsolable state,” he tells us. “Whether they were tears of self-pity or remorse, I’ll never know.
“I have no doubt, now, that she knew Heather was buried in their garden.”
GettyPolice searching for victim remains in the Wests’ garden[/caption]
The 12 young women killed by Fred and Rose West
Another followed her being convicted of 10 counts of murder. Leo recalls she “was in tears and muttering something about Fred” while sat in her Winchester County Court cell.
‘Tacit admission’
However, in a twisted and telling moment, there was no such emotion after discovering her husband had taken his own life – instead, she appeared to be happy.
Leo says: “She was different…There were mixed emotions but a certain warm glow – a sense of hope that this was the end of the case, as far as she was concerned.”
One of the last times Leo spoke to Rose in early 2003, when he believes her mask slipped because she subtly ‘confessed’ to her crimes, by acknowledging she would never be released.
She told him she no longer wished to appeal her convictions, leading him to ask: “Does this mean you’re admitting it?”
Leo continued: “She said, ‘No, I just don’t think there’ll be any life for me outside and I’m going to get on with my life in prison,’ which sounded like a strange thing to say to me.
“I wasn’t happy with that. I took it as a tacit admission yet she never admitted murder to me.”
Locked up with other lifers, in HMP Durham, Rose was able to keep her head down in prison and enjoy a quiet life but Leo says she had been targeted in an arson attack.
“Rose was on a female wing with lots of other women serving long sentences, women who just wanted to get on and have some peace and quiet, even though they’d been convicted of some serious offences,” says Leo.
“About two years after her conviction, in the late nineties, they had women serving shorter sentences coming into the wing.
“Rose was never scared of these women but she wanted her space and to get on with her life. Someone tried to set light to her cell and that was a total disruption for her.
“That was her home so to be moved out of her cell she found distressing.”
He also reveals the last time he acted on her behalf was when she asked him to write to the prison governor over sewing and cooking classes that had been withdrawn.
It’s believed Rose – who is now in HMP New Hall in Yorkshire – could shed more light on the crimes that took place at the ‘House of Horrors’ but the killer refuses to assist police.
Leo says: “Now she has, I believe, neatly compartmentalised her life and is wanting to see out her days in peace. There’s no doubt she’ll go to the grave with many secrets.”
Leo Goatley’s book, Understanding Fred and Rose West, is out now.
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