A FORGOTTEN interview with the son of evil serial killers Fred and Rose West has revealed the torture he and his siblings suffered at the hands of their parents.
This includes sleeping above the bodies of their victims buried under the cellar.
Barry West was found dead from a suspected overdose in 2020 aged 40COLLECT
PA:Press Association ImagesMugshots of evil killers Fred and Rose West, who were arrested in 1994[/caption]
SWNS:South West News ServiceThe victims were found buried in the creepy cellar[/caption]
The until now unpublished account of youngest son Barry West gives a harrowing insight into what it was like growing up in Britain’s House of Horrors.
Barry, born in 1980, previously claimed he saw his parents murder his sister Heather when he was seven.
Fred and Rose West between them committed at least 12 murders of girls and young women between 1967 and 1987 in Gloucestershire.
In 1994 the couple were arrested and charged – with Fred taking his own life the following January in prison, while Rose was sentenced to 10 life terms with a whole life order.
Journalist and author Howard Sounes has shared his unearthed interview with Barry, from two years before he died of an overdose in 2020, aged 40, for the first time.
“My dad was a solid monster,” Barry told Sounes, reports The Mirror.
“But she [Rose] was a complete psycho. That’s what people don’t know: My mum was, child abuse-wise, the main person.
“My mum was completely sick in the head. She beat me way more than my dad did, and enjoyed it, absolutely enjoyed it.”
The West children were made to sleep in the cellar of the family’s home in Cromwell Street, Gloucester, under which they buried many of their victims.
Sometimes they were strapped to their beds – and Rose wore the cellar keys around her neck like a prison guard.
The evil mum would regularly snap and lash out – hitting and slapping, as well as stabbing and strangling her kids.
Her weapon of choice was often a novelty giant wooden spoon, which she’d wield like a baseball bat.
Barry told Sounes his nose is “on a slant” due to the amount of times Rose broke it, and had “massive scars” on the back of his head where he was struck over and over again.
He went on to describe the “intense enjoyment” his mum got out of “beating the s*** out of me”.
Barry recalls how one Christmas Day he hid some sprouts in a tissue on the back of a chair, and when Rose found them days later she forced him to eat the rotting vegetables.
He said she put her hand over his mouth and made him swallow his own sick.
Barry and his brothers were forced to grow their hair long and wore their sisters’ hand-me-downs to school – while their sisters were made to cut their hair short and wear boys’ shoes.
He said he and all his siblings had speech impediments growing up, a sign of child abuse.
Barry would get his “face punched in” at school every day, but was scared to go home.
He recalled how Fred would constantly talk about sex in front of his kids and about wanting to take his daughters’ virginities, as well as the family tradition of incest, and sex with animals.
The Wests’ ‘house of horrors’ in Cromwell Street, GloucesterPA:Press Association
The Wests forced their kids to sleep in the cellar
PA:Press AssociationRose took joy in beating her children[/caption]
Fred’s main ambition was to see Rose mounted by a bull.
Barry said he was forced into sexual situations with his mum aged eight or nine.
The kids were often forced to make phone bookings for “Mandy” – Rose’s prostitute alias, and Barry was even offered as an extra for clients.
A “giant man” became a regular who would rape Barry at the house.
He said the children were even made to watch homemade porn featuring their mum and she kept different underwear in labelled jars for each client.
There is a chance, according to some reports, that Fred was not Barry’s biological father at all, and he was the product of an incestuous relationship between Rose and her own dad Bill Letts.
He had allegedly abused her since she was a child, and regularly visited the Cromwell Street house, according to Rose’s notes from prison.
Murders
The Wests’ murder victims were usually attacked and killed, then often dismembered in the family bathroom.
Most of their children maintained they had no idea what was going on.
One child, who Sounes does not identify, however, claimed years later they were locked in a cupboard under the stairs and could hear shouting and screaming.
Who are the UK’s worst serial killers?
THE UK’s most prolific serial killer was actually a doctor.
Here’s a rundown of the worst offenders in the UK.
British GP Harold Shipman is one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history. He was found guilty of murdering 15 patients in 2000, but the Shipman Inquiry examined his crimes and identified 218 victims, 80 per cent of whom were elderly women.
After his death Jonathan Balls was accused of poisoning at least 22 people between 1824 and 1845.
Mary Ann Cotton is suspected of murdering up to 21 people, including husbands, lovers and children. She is Britain’s most prolific female serial killer. Her crimes were committed between 1852 and 1872, and she was hanged in March 1873.
Amelia Sach and Annie Walters became known as the Finchley Baby Farmers after killing at least 20 babies between 1900 and 1902. The pair became the first women to be hanged at Holloway Prison on February 3, 1903.
William Burke and William Hare killed 16 people and sold their bodies.
Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe was found guilty in 1981 of murdering 13 women and attempting to kill seven others between 1975 and 1980.
Dennis Nilsen was caged for life in 1983 after murdering up to 15 men when he picked them up from the streets. He was found guilty of six counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder and was sentenced to life in jail.
Fred West was found guilty of killing 12 but it’s believed he was responsible for many more deaths.
When they came out, fresh concrete had been poured in the cellar, they claimed.
And Barry says he saw sister Heather being killed.
He said the children didn’t run away because they considered their dad “like God” who would “find you”.
Heather vanished aged 16 in 1987 after saying she wanted to leave the house – before later being found dismembered under the patio.
It was a long-running family “joke” that Heather was buried in the garden, which became a sick reality when police diggers later moved in to search the property and its grounds.
As reported by The Sun last month, Barry said: “I heard my mum slap her, then I looked through the crack and saw my dad walk round behind her and put his leg out. Then he grabbed her neck and tripped her over.
“She went on to the floor. I could see her just a few feet away. Then my mum just booted her.
“She was kicking and kicking her and calling her a s**g. My dad still had her by the throat.”
Barry recalled to Sounes how he once tried to stab Fred to death with a screwdriver when he was 11, but his dad just laughed at him.
The kids did get some revenge on Rose by banding together as she came at them with the wooden spoon.
It was when the police investigation had begun into the Wests and just before the children were put into care.
They piled on top of their mum and she hit them until she was “knackered” and then “broke down”, with Barry saying it was the first time they “saw weakness”.
He later branded his mother a “psychopath” and said: “I was happy when my dad committed suicide and now I think they should put my mum in a room with all the parents of the people she helped murder so they could tear her to pieces.”
He tragically died of a suspected overdose in 2020, aged just 40, while he was living in a supported hostel for adults coming out of rehab or prison.
Sounes, who wrote a book on the depraved couple, met Barry and had stayed in touch. He said Barry was tormented by his childhood.
He said: “He was totally haunted by his childhood. How do you overcome being the son of Fred and Rose West?
“The whole West story is littered with these really tragic stories, there was a lot of collateral of the West murder case.”
The West family pictured at their daughter Anne-Marie’s weddingswns
News Group Newspapers LtdPolice digging up the garden at the property in Gloucester, where their victims were buried[/caption]
The house was eventually demolishedPA:Press Association
Fred took his own life in prison prior to being sentenced and Rose continues to serve a whole life orderRex Features
Ten of the West’s young victims Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
