Rose West: The Making of a Monster (35 page)

A section of the basement with the children’s paintings, and a bricked up wall.

The ten victims Rose was convicted of killing. From top left, clockwise: Thérèse Siegenthaler aged
21,
Charmaine West aged 2 in the picture (aged 8 when murdered), Heather West aged
16,
Shirley Robinson aged
18,
Shirley Hubbard aged
15,
Alison Chambers aged
16,
Carol Ann (Caz) Cooper aged
15,
Lucy Partington aged
21,
Juanita (Nita) Mott aged
18
and Lynda Gough aged 19.

The police digging up the patio at the back of 25 Cromwell Street where the remains of further victims were discovered, including
16-year old Heather West.

Human remains being removed from the cellar at
25
Cromwell Street.

Rose is sent to prison in
1995.
She will never be released.

Heather West aged
6,
at primary school. She looked very like her mother at the same age. Heather was Rose and Fred’s last victim.

Anna-Marie’s tribute to her sister Heather.

*
As told to Gordon Burn in
Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son
(1984).

*
In
Fred & Rose
(1995) by Howard Sounes

*
Plymouth Evening Herald,
22 November 1995

*
Plymouth Evening Herald,
22 November 1995

*
Published in the
News of the World,
28 September 2008

*
This can occur after witnessing or being involved in horrific events such as a serious road accident, terrorist attack or
violent personal or sexual assaults. It can also occur in situations where a person feels extreme fear, horror or helplessness.
It causes symptoms such as sweating, shaking, dizziness and stomach upsets. Andy Letts was known to faint as a child and Gordon
still has blackouts. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can also lead to depression, anxiety, phobias, and drug and/or
alcohol misuse.

*
She also added: ‘I don’t think she got much sexual pleasure from Fred, he wasn’t very well endowed.’

*
Published in the
News of the World,
28 September 2008

*
It was not until Rose’s case broke in 1994 that several members of the Letts family discovered their sister Patsy had died
sometime earlier.

*
Inside 25 Cromwell Street
by Stephen and Mae West (1995)

*
May later called herself Mae, by which name she is referred to hereafter.

*
Fred was possibly also spurred on by the ‘loads of kinky letters’ he received after the case, reinforcing the notion he
held that this was perfectly acceptable behaviour.

*
Although twenty years later, Rose was to stand in the dock and deny all knowledge of the clothes. ‘I’m not the kind of person
who would wear anyone else’s things; I’m rather proud that way,’ she was to say.

*
Fred was a kleptomaniac and rarely purchased anything unless he had to – including the materials he used for the cellar
and new extension.

*
Fred had modelled Cromwell Street on Clarence Road, and the police would later track down some 150 people who had passed
through there by the time of his arrest.

*
Rose’s Jamaican clients often used nicknames. This is a substituted nickname.

*
In 1996, John West was being tried on charges of rape against Anna-Marie and another of Fred’s daughters, but hanged himself
in his garage while on bail.

*
Published in the summer of 2010

*
The couple did not know the names of some of their victims and dental records were used to identify the deceased.

†
Typically serial killers either can’t wait to talk about their crimes, as a way of boasting how clever they’ve been to get
away with them, e.g., Peter Sutcliffe and Dennis Nilsen; or like Rose West and Peter Tobin, for example, they
never
speak about them.

*
Heather was killed eight years later as she was an inconvenience to the Wests, just as Shirley Robinson had been some years
earlier.

*
Stephen’s wife had twins, and Mae and another sibling each had a child by now.

*
Citing Bluebeard, who chopped off the heads of his wives, Mr Justice Mantell said that had one of Bluebeard’s wives escaped
death at his hands to tell her story, this would have been admissible of him committing a series of murders.

†
Forensic orthodontist Dr David Whittaker projected a photo of the little girl smiling, exposing her lack of front teeth,
taken shortly before her death. He then superimposed a transparent image of her skull over this, showing her burgeoning new
front teeth, and from this estimated when the child had died.

*
The police found the letters stored in a box in the attic at Cromwell Street, along with a newspaper cutting from their
trial in 1972, prison visiting orders and other documents they’d saved over the years.

*
Published in the
News of the World,
September 2008

*
Published in the
Mirror,
summer 2010

*
Mail
Online, 25 January 2008

*
Mail
Online, January 2008

†
Daily Mirror,
5 November 2005

*
From Tracey Connelly’s letter to a friend, published in the
News of
the World,
2 May 2010

†
Sunday Mirror,
28 November 2010

*
Daily Mirror,
31 October 2005

*
Western Morning News,
3 July 2004