An in-depth look at the real crime story of serial killers and couple, Fred and Rose West, revealing what took place at true house of horror, 25 Cromwell Street and other addresses in Gloucester over the course of many years. With witness testimony from those closest to the victims and rarely seen archive footage of the Wests. This true crime documentary also looks at recent police efforts to find the body of Mary Bastholm and tells her story, as well as the stories of the twelve other young women known to have been murdered by serial killers, Fred and Rose West, before they were caught and convicted in 1995.
They once professed to love the thrill of the kill and would often film their killings for their own sick pleasure. This true crime film will explore their psychology, how they killed and what may have led them to commit such heinous crimes, and tells the story of these depraved murderers from start to finish and explore their backgrounds, motivations and probable other crimes.
Fred and Rose West became Britain's most notorious killer couple, this true crime film tells the story of their victims and raises the question of how many more lives may have been lost to these most evil and deranged serial killer couple.
They once professed to love the thrill of the kill and would often film their killings for their own sick pleasure. This true crime film will explore their psychology, how they killed and what may have led them to commit such heinous crimes, and tells the story of these depraved murderers from start to finish and explore their backgrounds, motivations and probable other crimes.
Fred and Rose West became Britain's most notorious killer couple, this true crime film tells the story of their victims and raises the question of how many more lives may have been lost to these most evil and deranged serial killer couple.
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TVTranscript
00:00:00For 27 years, it had all gone away, and all of a sudden, they're searching a cafe in Gloucester.
00:00:20We always knew there would be more bodies, more victims, but it's just the matter of
00:00:25finding them. It's horrendous to think that there are families out there whose daughters
00:00:37could be lying in a field anywhere. I don't know from this day what possessed her to get
00:00:50in that van. She knew it was wrong. She could have had such a lovely life, and they took
00:01:03it away from her.
00:01:20Builder Frederick West has now been charged with a total of nine murders. What happened
00:01:25to these girls? How did they die? What was done to them in the cellar? She was screaming,
00:01:30stop it, daddy, stop it, daddy. For now, it seems as if the world's camera lens is
00:01:34focused on the street in Gloucester. It just got bigger and bigger and more horrendous
00:01:39when the numbers went up and up. Already, it's one of the most infamous addresses in
00:01:44Britain. People here can't begin to properly take in what has happened. How can you just
00:01:50take somebody off the street and just wipe them out? Why is no one reported them missing?
00:01:54Why aren't they missed?
00:01:55You're trying to make out that I just went out and blatantly killed someone. No, nobody
00:02:01went through that.
00:02:03Sudden nastiness came out in him, you know? He would be quite normal and placid, and all
00:02:08of a sudden, he's just going to a rage.
00:02:11We were people with souls who were dealing with the soul less.
00:02:17Body number 11, another chapter in this extraordinary murder investigation.
00:02:22All of us who were involved are affected to the grave.
00:02:29All I was going to do was grab her and shake her.
00:02:32Enjoyment turned to disaster.
00:02:34Where's his mind?
00:02:52The horrors of Fred West are once again haunting Gloucester. A white tent outside, while inside
00:03:11the building, police prepare to search for a body buried beneath.
00:03:17One of the wicked and sinister things about the West case is that there's so much information
00:03:22that's not known, and that troubling feeling that there's more that needs to be discovered.
00:03:31Fred West killed 12 times, the majority with his wife, Rose. It's now possible the grim
00:03:37murder total may be about to rise.
00:03:41I don't think this is the final piece of the jigsaw. There could be remains of other victims.
00:03:46I don't think we'll ever know the true extent of Fred and Rose West's crimes.
00:03:51Nearly three decades on, I never thought I'd be sat here talking again about what happened
00:03:58in Cromwell Street.
00:04:01There are so many questions still unanswered.
00:04:05We need to go back to how it all started and that first knock on the door.
00:04:17DETECTIVES BELIEVE THE SOLUTION TO AN EIGHT-YEAR MYSTERY MAY BE BURIED IN THE BACK GARDEN OF
00:04:27THIS TERRORIST HOUSE IN GLOUCESTER. IT BELONGS TO A COUPLE WHOSE DAUGHTER VANISHED IN 1986,
00:04:32BUT NO ONE EVER REPORTED THAT HEATHER WEST HAD DISAPPEARED, AND THIS IS PROVING AN OBSTACLE
00:04:37TO THE INVESTIGATION.
00:04:39We know that she was either 16 or 17 when she went missing, but apart from that we've
00:04:43got very little information. Details about her are very sketchy.
00:04:55I became aware that one of the West family who lived at 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester,
00:05:02one of the daughters had gone missing and there was no trace of her.
00:05:07Despite efforts to try and locate her, I decided that we would execute the search warrant,
00:05:12which we did on that Thursday the 24th, and I led a team of officers to the address,
00:05:18including a search team that were immediately going to take on searching the rear garden of the house.
00:05:27I had a phone call from the head of the CID. He said, what are you doing tomorrow?
00:05:31My answer was, well, hopefully relaxing. He said, well, actually you won't be.
00:05:35He said, we require your services. We were required to attend an address in Gloucester,
00:05:41which was Cromwell Street.
00:05:45Well, I carried a pager, as everybody did in those days, and it just said a message,
00:05:51and it said, Cromwell Street, number 25, police looking for bodies.
00:05:58And I thought, wow.
00:06:05I was Fred West's solicitor during the whole of the murder investigation.
00:06:36Rose rang me at work in the middle of the day and said the police were digging the garden up,
00:06:42and I went down to the police station. I mean, I had nothing but bloody eyes.
00:06:50Fred comes into the category of those which you couldn't really advise,
00:06:57in the sense that they couldn't, to use the vernacular, shut the fuck up.
00:07:04Heather's alive and well. Right? She's possibly at this moment in Bahrain.
00:07:11She works for a drugs cartel. Now, whether you believe it or not, that's entirely up to you.
00:07:18Fred talked about Heather being involved in illegal drugs activities.
00:07:24No explanation as to how that could possibly come about.
00:07:29Quite frankly, all that did was increase the level of suspicion as to what was the truth.
00:07:38I had a couple of reporters. I was sending them out round to the Cromwell Street to knock on doors,
00:07:44try and find out more about the people who lived there.
00:07:48Went to his next-door neighbour to have a chat with him, to find out what he thought was going on.
00:07:55As far as he was concerned, Fred wouldn't arm a fly.
00:07:59He was the nicest man you could ever meet.
00:08:02In fact, it began to dawn on me, actually.
00:08:05Yes, I did know the names of Fred and Rose West, because they'd been in court.
00:08:30In the summer of 1992, I got a call in the morning to say that a woman had been detained
00:08:38on suspicion of child abuse and could I attend.
00:08:42The specific allegation at that time was that my client, Rose West,
00:08:46had assisted Red in the serious sexual abuse of one of their daughters, a 13-year-old girl.
00:08:53Because of that, Frederick and Rose West were both arrested and were due to appear in court in 1993.
00:09:00However, the main witnesses in the case were members of the West household
00:09:04and when the case came to court, they declined to give evidence.
00:09:11And for that reason, the trial collapsed on its first day.
00:09:15Fred, he didn't have any reaction. We're not talking about a man who burst into tears with relief
00:09:21after all his anxiety. Throughout the proceedings, he was calm and collected.
00:09:29It was one of those bizarre features for both Fred and Rose, actually,
00:09:35that here's this life-changing situation where their children are being taken
00:09:39and they seemed resigned to that. In fact, Fred seemed disinterested.
00:09:43The fact that the criminal case did not proceed wasn't at the end of matters
00:09:50in the sense that there were the care proceedings.
00:09:53The nub of the care proceedings was that everyday life at Cromwell Street
00:10:00was inappropriate for children to be brought up and that they were best removed.
00:10:11But apparently whilst the children had been in foster care,
00:10:14they'd talked about the family joking about Heather being buried in the garden.
00:10:21It was quite evident within a short time that there was no trace of Heather whatsoever.
00:10:29As soon as the kids started mentioning Heather being in the ground,
00:10:34that's when they must have been twitching, thinking,
00:10:38oh my God, how are we going to get away with this now?
00:10:42The big question mark was Heather under the patio or not?
00:10:50It was a big question mark.
00:11:03I mean, you're not going to sit there and say, your sister's under the patio.
00:11:07I mean, I don't think they're packing away, we're talking rubbish.
00:11:13You would have dug that up for nothing, but you put me patio back there.
00:11:17One of the concerns of the defence criminal lawyer is the mouthpiece of his client.
00:11:27Fred was always changing his instructions.
00:11:31He would chop and change in order perhaps to test people out, to cause confusion.
00:11:48The following day, the officers went to 25 Cromwell Street.
00:11:52Fred was there at that stage.
00:11:54He took them to one side and then admitted out of Rose's earshot that he had killed Heather.
00:12:08We were dealing with an account,
00:12:11the like of which none of us had ever heard or dealt with before professionally.
00:12:19And then I brought the two hands up and grabbed her around the neck.
00:12:22But I mean, I didn't grab her around the neck to choke her or do nothing.
00:12:26All I was going to do was grab her around the neck and shake her.
00:12:28It's surprising how long somebody can hold you around the neck before you...
00:12:34To my way of thinking, that anybody who is suspected of killing their own daughter,
00:12:39it's a horrific crime.
00:12:41And to be doing it and admitting to it without any compassion whatsoever
00:12:47led me to believe that this is not just a straightforward murder case.
00:12:53But it was so chilling that we all just rose.
00:12:59So that was the lead detective and the defence lawyer
00:13:03and went out of the interview room to a little tiny cupboard which doubled as a tea room.
00:13:10And here we were, four complete strangers,
00:13:13and we actually had a silent group hug.
00:13:20Heather, I mean, his own daughter.
00:13:23Heather, I mean, his own daughter.
00:13:27How could you kill your own kids? I mean, you can't, can you?
00:13:32And going along in life as if nothing's wrong.
00:13:37You know, still having a conversation with the neighbour, still doing this, still doing that.
00:13:43Fred had admitted everything and said Rose had nothing to do with it.
00:13:47Things moved on very quickly over that weekend.
00:13:50Not so much for what Rose was saying,
00:13:53but because what was going on in the interview room where Fred West was.
00:14:20I never told any good.
00:14:25As a result of Fred's admission, we took him back to 25 Cromwell Street
00:14:30and he pointed out where Heather was buried.
00:14:34We found what we believed to be human remains.
00:14:38One image that I will never forget for the rest of my life
00:14:42was looking into what effectively is Heather's grave.
00:14:48Seeing the skeleton, it is gruesome.
00:14:53And it brings home the reality of what we're talking about and what we're dealing with.
00:15:02I thought it unusual that Fred had readily admitted to killing Heather.
00:15:09Why was he all of a sudden coming out with this explanation about Heather?
00:15:14Was there some ulterior motive?
00:15:19Further searching took place and actually two more femurs were found.
00:15:25So that led us to believe there was more than one person buried in the garden.
00:15:34The escalation from an inquiry in relation to murder of Heather
00:15:39to other victims as well was one of those really devastating moments
00:15:45of realisation that this whole situation is escalating into something quite dreadful.
00:15:52There was no way we could possibly have anticipated the way that the story was going to turn out.
00:15:57It just got bigger and bigger and more horrendous.
00:16:11I got a knock on the door from my neighbour.
00:16:16She said, oh, you come from Gloucester, don't you?
00:16:20I said, yeah, yeah, I do. I said, why?
00:16:23Do you need somebody passing something on there?
00:16:26No, no, she said, you need to watch the news.
00:16:29I said, why? She said, something really bad happened.
00:16:33Police in Gloucester searching 25 Cromwell Street
00:16:37last night discovered what we believe to be a further set of human remains.
00:16:42We've never had this sort of incident in Gloucestershire before,
00:16:45and so it's all coming to us fresh.
00:16:47Yesterday at Gloucester Magistrates, 52-year-old builder Frederick West
00:16:50was charged with the murder of his daughter Heather.
00:16:55And there was Heather's face.
00:16:57And I just thought, oh my goodness me.
00:17:00Definitely the same Heather, it's definitely the same dress.
00:17:02I then shut the TV off because I didn't want to listen to it anymore.
00:17:13HEARTBEAT
00:17:21I decided at the age of 16 to leave home.
00:17:26I was introduced by Anne-Marie to her parents, Fred and Rose West,
00:17:31who offered me the chance of a bedsitter at 25 Cromwell Street.
00:17:36I got on very well with Heather.
00:17:38We played silly games that were the old games, like hopscotch
00:17:41and little bits and pieces like that.
00:17:44Heather was quite a bonny little girl.
00:17:47Initially when I first moved in, the atmosphere was good,
00:17:50but as I'd been there a bit longer, I more and more saw that it wasn't
00:17:54as happy a family as I thought it was initially.
00:18:01I was up in my room one night and I could hear something
00:18:07and it sounded like a child, and I listened more closely
00:18:10and all I could hear was somebody shouting, stop it daddy, stop it daddy.
00:18:14And I thought, I'm sure that sounds like Heather,
00:18:16but maybe she's being naughty and getting chastised.
00:18:20So I didn't take any more notice of it.
00:18:24If I tell anybody, who's going to believe me?
00:18:26I'm 16, I've run away from home, and then I made the decision to leave
00:18:34and I believe that's what saved me.
00:18:36I was scared because what else could they do?
00:18:41And years later on I find out.
00:18:48I remember Heather because she looked very much like my daughter Helen.
00:18:53She was an unhappy teenager.
00:18:56The intimation was that she was frightened and afraid.
00:19:00You would get the impression that she dared not move without his permission.
00:19:06We always knew he was a bit of a tyrant
00:19:09and always had the impression that he was a very firm person.
00:19:15But then how could he do that, you know?
00:19:20Of course she was my kids' cousin, you know?
00:19:24My kids' cousin, you know?
00:19:27And they had played together.
00:19:30Your immediate thought is, well, could I have done anything to stop this happening?
00:19:36And at the end of the day the answer is no, because you couldn't see it coming.
00:19:55Although we suspected that the one victim was Heather,
00:20:00Fred and Rose West's daughter,
00:20:02we obviously didn't know who the other victim was.
00:20:06We were helped eventually by Fred West.
00:20:14Do you have any knowledge of this?
00:20:19No.
00:20:20Do you have any knowledge of this?
00:20:23No.
00:20:25Do you have any knowledge of this?
00:20:30No.
00:20:32Do you have any knowledge of this?
00:20:37We had no information.
00:20:38We had no details of somebody called Shirley Robinson going missing.
00:20:42We had a starting point because of her name,
00:20:45but extensive enquiries had to be made as to who was Shirley Robinson
00:20:50and what was her connections with 25 Cromwell Street.
00:21:03Shirley was there when I moved in.
00:21:05Directly underneath my bed was Shirley's room.
00:21:09We got to be very good friends.
00:21:12Very dear friends, actually.
00:21:16We shared silly little jokes, girly giggles, talked about make-up.
00:21:20We were like giggly sisters at times.
00:21:22I'd been there just a short time and I realised that Shirley was expecting.
00:21:26I didn't ask anything until one day and I said,
00:21:28Oh, Shirley, what are you going to do with no father?
00:21:31And she just very bluntly replied,
00:21:33Oh, Fred's a father, and it was left at that.
00:21:39The last time I saw Shirley was the day I was leaving and she wished me luck.
00:21:43I said, don't panic, we'll meet up for a coffee sometime.
00:21:45When I've had this one, I'll be free and we'll be able to do a few coffee trips.
00:21:51I went back a little while later with the pretense of seeing how the baby was.
00:22:00Rose told me that Shirley had moved on.
00:22:01She said, Oh, yeah, yeah, she's fine. She's moved on.
00:22:03She's got a little place of her own now.
00:22:05I kind of thought in my head, shall I ask where she is?
00:22:08And I thought, no, because Shirley will contact me.
00:22:11She knew I'd gone.
00:22:12So, yeah, I did believe her.
00:22:14The biggest fear that was in me was when I was messing with other women.
00:22:42He was making sure that he was the only one that was involved with their killings.
00:22:48And again, sort of re-emphasizing that Rose had no involvement.
00:22:54Rose was asked about Shirley Robinson, but denied knowing her,
00:22:59which wasn't helpful because Shirley Robinson lived at the house
00:23:05and was well known to other residents at the house.
00:23:10Her default position was to deny knowing anything
00:23:13and putting the blame fairly and squarely on Fred,
00:23:17who was fairly and squarely accepting the blame.
00:23:22It was a bright moonlit night.
00:23:24I remember that.
00:23:25I dug the middle of this pool out quietly.
00:23:29So I thought, well, gee, I can't get her down through there.
00:23:33And then I was looking at her body and I thought, well, gee, I've got to cut her up again.
00:23:40What was horrendous outside of her body were the remains of a fetus
00:23:58that was eight and a half months in terms of being born.
00:24:06That was a very killing aspect.
00:24:10The baby, I mean, that is nasty, isn't it?
00:24:15I mean, to abuse her and use her the way he did and then just to snuff her out.
00:24:22To know that they'd taken Shirley and the baby, it just devastated me.
00:24:28I think, why? Why?
00:24:31Shirley will forever live on in my memory.
00:24:33And I think about that unborn child.
00:24:35Neither of them, none of them, not one of those victims deserve what they went through.
00:24:55We were there one evening and the doorbell rang
00:25:00and Fred just looked at her and Rose got up, went out the room to answer the door.
00:25:06The room just inside the door, that was described as Rose's room
00:25:10and nobody but nobody goes in there.
00:25:14Not the kids, not anyone else, you know, that's Rose's room.
00:25:19And about 20 minutes, 25 minutes, half hour later,
00:25:22she wandered back in and just sat back down and nothing was said.
00:25:27The conversation just carried on.
00:25:31And that was when we both, the wife and I, we concluded that
00:25:36that was her room for business and he'd got her on the game.
00:25:44Sitting in the living room with them, watching the TV,
00:25:48seeing a red light go on the door, above the door when the doorbell rang
00:25:51and I jokingly said, oh, it's the red light district.
00:25:54When the red light was on, nobody was allowed to go near her room
00:25:57or pester her for anything.
00:25:59So I kind of then thought, oh, things aren't as good as I thought they were.
00:26:03It's not the family I thought they were.
00:26:06I distinctly had this feeling of a sexual perverseness with Fred anyways.
00:26:10He boasted about how he could get girls and, you know,
00:26:15I might not be good looking but I can pick these girls up and have sex with them.
00:26:25The police recovered a large number of videos from 25 Cromwell Street
00:26:32and a number of these were home videos made by Fred West.
00:26:38Fred filming Rose involved in sexual antics with clients.
00:26:47Those films were secretly filmed.
00:26:49It's understood Fred was probably hiding in a wardrobe with a cine camera.
00:26:54The parents were weird.
00:26:57Sex.
00:26:59Obsessed.
00:27:00I just got told by somebody else that knew Fred.
00:27:05He had all this tub of equipment and he used to do the films in the front room,
00:27:11send all the kids to bed and do it with bookers for them.
00:27:17I've got the advantage on you, I'm more of the underage.
00:27:28Rose wanted to do a scene with two blokes
00:27:33and he wanted her to say, come along with me and do that, you know.
00:27:37I said, no, no, no, I'm not interested.
00:27:40Oh, Fred will pay you.
00:27:42I said, no, no, no, I'm not interested.
00:27:44Oh, Fred will pay you.
00:27:46He said, I don't care.
00:27:48It's not my scene.
00:27:52I hurt her later on.
00:27:56One member of the family told me it was happening
00:27:59and it happened since she was seven years old.
00:28:03I thought that was unbelievably disgusting.
00:28:07I was just stunned.
00:28:09Another member of the family rebelled against it
00:28:13and she ended up dead.
00:28:18Heather.
00:28:23Turn it off.
00:28:40After Fred's admissions, he was charged and put before a court.
00:28:46Rose West was bailed to a safe house.
00:28:53It was always that suggestion, because they were a very close couple,
00:28:57how much would she have known about what was going on?
00:29:01See, mate, I told you, as you know well,
00:29:04I told you that I thought Fred was a very sick man.
00:29:07Yes, and it's come out, he is a very sick man.
00:29:10Of course not, I never could have dreamed that, but nobody could have known.
00:29:16She was very, very ill.
00:29:20She was very, very ill.
00:29:22She was very, very ill.
00:29:24She was very, very ill.
00:29:27She was vehemently criticising Fred,
00:29:33distancing herself from him,
00:29:36as though she had been the victim of some dreadful betrayal by Fred,
00:29:42an abomination that Fred could have done this to her daughter.
00:29:50I mean, look, if I don't know that,
00:29:53if I don't know that, I don't know what I'm talking about.
00:29:56I don't know what I'm talking about.
00:29:58I don't know what I'm talking about.
00:30:00I don't know what I'm talking about.
00:30:02I don't know what I'm talking about.
00:30:04I don't know what I'm talking about.
00:30:06I don't know what I'm talking about.
00:30:08I don't know what I'm talking about.
00:30:10I don't know what I'm talking about.
00:30:12I don't know what I'm talking about.
00:30:14I don't know what I'm talking about.
00:30:16I don't know what I'm talking about.
00:30:18I don't know what I'm talking about.
00:30:20MUSIC PLAYS
00:30:28Once we'd started to find the sets of remains in the garden,
00:30:32you automatically think, well, are there more?
00:30:35Where's this going to end?
00:30:37And by this time, I am realising that that is three...
00:30:42..two.
00:30:43That's two, not three.
00:30:45That was surely...
00:30:48Where is this going to stop?
00:30:51The search then started to develop in 25 Cromwell Street
00:30:55because the belief was that there could be more.
00:30:58With the pager, it just flashed up.
00:31:01Another body found.
00:31:03You think to yourself, how many more they're going to find?
00:31:12Digging will continue here into the night.
00:31:14Over the next few days, police may demolish an extension
00:31:17at the back of the house and then excavate underneath the cellar.
00:31:39One of the reasons why I was called a forensic dentist
00:31:43was because the sets of remains had been there a long time.
00:31:49There was really very little to identify them in terms of clothing
00:31:54or the usual things the police use.
00:31:58And so one of the obvious ways to try and do this was from the teeth.
00:32:06There is a massive amount of information in the teeth.
00:32:09It's not actually a fingerprint situation,
00:32:12but it's getting somewhere pretty near it.
00:32:14And I watched the image of the teeth coming in and out
00:32:21of the image of the face and seeing if there was a fit.
00:32:27And when it matches, it's almost like that.
00:32:31You know, you're pushing them backwards and forwards,
00:32:34they're out of focus, and then suddenly everything comes into focus
00:32:38and you say, that's a perfect fit.
00:32:43And that is actually how I initially identified all of these victims.
00:32:53Dr Whittaker was able to pinpoint that it was eventually Alison Chambers
00:32:58who had been missing from a children's home in Gloucester.
00:33:02The investigation showed that this was the type of category of young women
00:33:07that were going to 25 Cromwell Street.
00:33:10Fred was mainly interested in young women who were at a loose end,
00:33:17who didn't have strong family contacts,
00:33:21young women who may have been in care, may have been in trouble.
00:33:26Young girls were recruited or offered tea and sympathy and a place to stay.
00:33:35And for the first few weeks, it was wonderful.
00:33:37And for the first few weeks, it was wonderful.
00:33:39And then, of course, there was a tragic kind of scenario
00:33:44that was repeated many times.
00:33:49I can see why they got away with it, because living in the house
00:33:52and they were doing awful things while I was there,
00:33:56I didn't hear any of it, I didn't know it was going on.
00:33:59I was lucky I survived.
00:34:08The first time I saw Fred West was in court at Gloucester.
00:34:14He looked at me and winked.
00:34:16And I thought, gosh, he's a bit like me dad.
00:34:20You know, civil, you know.
00:34:24And how could he do something like this?
00:34:27You never know what makes them tick.
00:34:38MUSIC
00:34:57Fred West was from a farm labouring background.
00:35:04He described the family having a pig.
00:35:07In fact, I think one of his many jobs once he left home
00:35:11was working in a slaughterhouse, so he had an idea how to butcher animals.
00:35:18But as early as 1961, he'd stood trial at Hereford Assizes
00:35:25for incestuous rape of his young sister.
00:35:30He was actually acquitted of that
00:35:32because the sister refused to give evidence at court.
00:35:36Also, there was a suggestion
00:35:38that he had a rather primitive way of approaching women,
00:35:43which I think was encouraged by his father,
00:35:46that you grab a wench and take what you can get.
00:35:52Yeah, well, I wanted to be a woman.
00:35:55I wanted to be a woman.
00:35:57I wanted to be a woman.
00:35:59I wanted to be a woman.
00:36:01I wanted to be a woman.
00:36:04Yeah, well, I wanted to be that.
00:36:06I admired all he stood for.
00:36:08He was my godlike.
00:36:11Mother was very old-fashioned, you know, ways.
00:36:14I mean, like, if you had a girlfriend,
00:36:16girlfriends would stick strictly out till you were 21.
00:36:20You know, 16, like, 21, you had a girlfriend
00:36:23and thought of sex and things like that,
00:36:25where a dad was different altogether.
00:36:27You know, if it's on offer, take it, son.
00:36:34As years went on, you know, time went on,
00:36:38I saw him as an uncouth sort of person
00:36:43who had no respect for women, in my estimation,
00:36:48was foul-mouthed even around women
00:36:53and talked very obscenely about women
00:36:56and their different parts, you know.
00:36:59Which, to me, always made me uneasy.
00:37:02He was just boastful in general.
00:37:06I remember one time he boasted
00:37:08that he had hit somebody with a wheel brace
00:37:11because they were taking Mickey out of him
00:37:13and changing a lorry wheel
00:37:15and he'd buried him on the side of the road.
00:37:18But that, to me, it was too far-fetched
00:37:22to take any notice, you know.
00:37:26Behind the scenes, in terms of the investigation,
00:37:30there was more indication that there could be
00:37:33more bodies within the house.
00:37:36Fred knew the police weren't going to the scene.
00:37:39He knew they weren't going to the scene.
00:37:42He knew that the police weren't going to the scene.
00:37:45So he was very much looking out for the police.
00:37:49The police were looking out for the police.
00:37:52Fred knew the police weren't going to stop digging.
00:37:57They were going to go into the property and they were going to be in the cellar.
00:38:02He knew what there was to find.
00:38:04Fred was concerned to avert matters away from Rose.
00:38:10And that led to me producing what we describe as a prepared statement.
00:38:20I, Frederick West, authorise my solicitor, Howard Ogden,
00:38:24that I wish to admit to a further,
00:38:27brackets, approx, brackets,
00:38:30nine killings.
00:38:32Just blew the lid off everything.
00:38:34Because who are they?
00:38:35Who are the girls?
00:38:49One of the most major turning points in the inquiry was
00:38:59the significant statement that Fred made
00:39:05at 5.30pm in Gloucester Police Station on 4th March 1994.
00:39:12I wrote it, signed by Fred.
00:39:15I, Frederick West, authorise my solicitor, Howard Ogden,
00:39:20to advise Superintendent Bennett
00:39:23that I wish to admit to a further,
00:39:26brackets, approx, brackets,
00:39:29nine killings.
00:39:36Once Fred's note had been received,
00:39:39in some ways it was exhilaration
00:39:43because we got someone to admit to all these killings
00:39:47that he obviously carried out.
00:39:50But it was also quite chilling from the point of view of
00:39:53who were these other victims?
00:39:56Officers took him back to Cromwell Street.
00:39:58He was dressed in a boiler suit.
00:40:00It was late at night.
00:40:01There were no other, there were no media about at the time.
00:40:04We took him down to the cellar area
00:40:07and he pointed out where he had buried
00:40:10the various victims that he had referred to.
00:40:15When we were in the cellar and when he was assisting to
00:40:19pinpoint where specific bodies were,
00:40:23he would, on occasion, go a little weak at the knees,
00:40:27that he would start to feel a little faint,
00:40:30and that he talked about them swirling around him,
00:40:35which was slightly bizarre.
00:40:38It was a strange sort of experience to find somebody
00:40:42who was so dispassionate about what he had done
00:40:45and how he had buried these individuals
00:40:49within the house itself.
00:40:52We were told that Fred was taken to the cellar and...
00:41:02..at that stage, you just think,
00:41:04what sort of cellar is it?
00:41:09HE EXHALES
00:41:14I'd been home the washing night in the garden
00:41:16and Fred had wandered out, humbled out, as he did,
00:41:19and he said,
00:41:20I've just been doing some painting in the cellar,
00:41:22making it a lovely playroom for the children.
00:41:24Do you want to come and have a look at it?
00:41:26And I got in there and I thought, OK.
00:41:29I suggest lovely painting.
00:41:31He said, look, there's a lovely little corner
00:41:33if they want to have a bit of a relax.
00:41:35There's all this little thing with toys in.
00:41:37He said, what do you think?
00:41:39I went, very nice, but I need to go back out
00:41:41because I'm claustrophobic.
00:41:43It was dark, it was dank.
00:41:45Dark, dank, still.
00:41:49Just a horrible atmosphere.
00:41:51Just not very nice.
00:41:56The cellar was as big as the living room upstairs.
00:42:01You go down and you go down and so you're under the house
00:42:04and you're then to the house.
00:42:06It was storage.
00:42:08Just mattresses everywhere.
00:42:10Mattresses.
00:42:12I went down in the cellar.
00:42:14You could hear in the living room.
00:42:18If they were sitting in the front room,
00:42:20they would be able to hear that it echoed into the room.
00:42:25I know nothing of what they were doing.
00:42:27This is...
00:42:29It must have all been going on while he was there,
00:42:31but I never knew anything about it.
00:42:34I remember Fred relaying the concrete.
00:42:38He said, you can't go down there tonight
00:42:41and make the concrete to go up.
00:42:43I redone the floor.
00:42:45I didn't think anything different of it.
00:42:47But it was just...
00:42:49He's a builder.
00:42:51He was doing the work.
00:42:53And I tell you what, I freaked out when I found out
00:42:56that's where their bodies were buried.
00:42:59That gave me nightmares for ages.
00:43:03After many years, I sat and thought about the cellar incident.
00:43:09When I found out what they'd done to all those poor young people,
00:43:14it all clicked into a ball.
00:43:16You were next.
00:43:18You got out, but you left your friend behind
00:43:20and she became the next victim.
00:43:33When the police continued to excavate,
00:43:36all the remains had been decapitated, dismembered,
00:43:41both the arms and legs.
00:43:44At that point, there were five sets of human remains in the cellar
00:43:48and then there was another set by the ground-floor bathroom.
00:43:52So it was quite natural for the search teams,
00:43:55once they'd found the remains, to actually step back,
00:43:59but at the same time, stand there with their heads bowed
00:44:02and a mark of respect.
00:44:06Because it's quite an emotional moment to, I think,
00:44:10to find what you thought you were looking for,
00:44:12then to find it and then to realise they were human remains.
00:44:15So, you know, at all times, the search teams showed
00:44:18the greatest amount of respect for their victims.
00:44:24As this unfolded, it was...
00:44:26You had to sort of pinch yourself
00:44:28and to do a check on the reality of the situation.
00:44:34For now, it seems as if the world's camera lens
00:44:36is focused on a street in Gloucester
00:44:38and until the focus of attention shifts
00:44:40and the last remains have been unearthed,
00:44:43people here can't begin to properly take in what has happened.
00:44:50I did think to myself, is this really true?
00:44:52Is it really going on?
00:44:54Have they found this many bodies?
00:44:56And they're still finding bodies.
00:45:00And this guy who seems so normal could have done this.
00:45:08It must be very harrowing, though, for your officers,
00:45:10because this is the sort of thing that none of them
00:45:12could have ever really envisaged encountering in their careers.
00:45:16You've got to remember that Gloucestershire is a very quiet,
00:45:18rural county and things like this just don't go on.
00:45:21It was absolutely astonishing.
00:45:23We thought we were dealing with one murder,
00:45:25where possibly someone had been buried in the garden.
00:45:27Suddenly it becomes two, three, four,
00:45:29and the numbers went up and up.
00:45:31There was no way we could possibly have anticipated
00:45:33the way that the story was going to turn out.
00:45:35It just got bigger and bigger and more horrendous.
00:45:39We knew details of all these people from what Fred had told us,
00:45:44but the difficulty was, who were they?
00:45:47And that's when the missing persons files
00:45:50and that complex side of the inquiry was stepped up.
00:45:56In 1968, a girl called Mary Bastome disappeared in Gloucester.
00:46:01She was at a bus stop and disappeared from there.
00:46:05Fred was about in Gloucester at various times at about that period.
00:46:10Mary Bastome, her name came up.
00:46:13We started digging deeper into what happened to her.
00:46:16I personally believe that perhaps, yeah,
00:46:19she must have had something to do with her death.
00:46:23The missing persons helpline has had hundreds of calls
00:46:26from the families of missing persons
00:46:28concerned that their relatives may be involved.
00:46:30Volunteers have been trying to trace at least one person
00:46:33with a link to the Gloucester finds.
00:46:36It's awful hearing that these poor women were being found,
00:46:42but I never entered my head, not one little bit,
00:46:47that one of them would be my best friend.
00:46:52It was round about 1964 when we first met at junior school
00:46:58and our friendship didn't take long
00:47:01before we become best friends and inseparable.
00:47:05We just did everything together,
00:47:08from walking on stilts, we used to do that at school,
00:47:14skipping, and as we got a little bit older,
00:47:19we started going roller skating.
00:47:21She was beautiful inside and out.
00:47:24She really was.
00:47:27She had these really big, high cheekbones
00:47:30and it made... She was so pretty.
00:47:33She could turn the boys' heads cos how pretty she was.
00:47:37She had her long, dark hair.
00:47:40She was, like, just coming up to 18 on her birthday.
00:47:44Around March the 8th is when she just said she was running away.
00:47:50She had difficulties, but I think it was just the teenage...
00:47:55teenage thing.
00:47:59And that was the last I wanted to know.
00:48:10But, to me, it was like yesterday.
00:48:14They got on to Salvation Army, see if they could find her,
00:48:19but there was no... no luck.
00:48:22She always said to me,
00:48:24if I ever run away, I'm going to go to America to find my dad.
00:48:28Because all she ever wanted was a dad.
00:48:31And I really believe that.
00:48:33I really believe that she'd gone, somehow, to America.
00:48:38But as time was going on and on,
00:48:41and the searching, there was no...
00:48:44no luck with the searching for her, trying so hard to find out.
00:48:50But all the talks then started coming out with Cromwell Street.
00:48:56But every night I went to bed
00:48:59and I used to put my hand out and pray I could see her,
00:49:03just one last time.
00:49:08MUSIC FADES
00:49:24There is one more girl in there,
00:49:27and I just cannot pinpoint exactly where she is.
00:49:30It's not the Dutch girl, I know that,
00:49:32but, I mean, it could have been any of the other girls.
00:49:36Fred was quite vague, for example, on some of them,
00:49:39such as the Dutch girl.
00:49:41Well, how did we find out who this Dutch girl was
00:49:44that was, so to say, one of the victims that he buried there?
00:49:51I knew Theresa Singer-Taller.
00:49:55She came to my house, did some babysitting for my two sons,
00:50:01and she also was my friend.
00:50:03And I was, I believe, the last person to see her alive.
00:50:08She was very keen to study.
00:50:10She felt strongly about human rights, so she had this side to her.
00:50:14But I think she could be funny as well.
00:50:17Just before Easter, she told me she wanted to go to Ireland.
00:50:21She told me that she was going to Hitchhike,
00:50:24outside London, all the way to Holyhead.
00:50:30I had this very, very bad feeling about that trip.
00:50:35You know, very dark feeling.
00:50:38And she left the house, she closed the door.
00:50:43And I suddenly, I got out of the house, and I ran after her.
00:50:47I ran, and I grabbed her.
00:50:49I grabbed her, and I said,
00:50:52Theresa, don't do it.
00:50:55She said, oh, come on, I've done martial arts,
00:50:58I'm okay, you know.
00:51:00And I said, look, I give you the money for the train,
00:51:03but just promise me you're not going to Hitchhike.
00:51:07And she said, yes.
00:51:10So I let her go.
00:51:14Obviously, she took the train, but what she did, really,
00:51:18is get off the train and start hitchhiking.
00:51:23And then she did not come back.
00:51:29And we waited.
00:51:33And we waited.
00:51:35There was no call.
00:51:37There was nothing.
00:51:41One of these sets of remains struck me
00:51:44as being somewhat different to the others.
00:51:47It was, I think, a late teenage girl.
00:51:51And when I looked at her teeth,
00:51:54I came to the conclusion
00:51:56that there was something a bit unusual about the dentistry.
00:51:59And we did some analysis of the materials and things,
00:52:03and I was fairly convinced
00:52:06that it was probably European,
00:52:09and possibly sort of Austria-Switzerland,
00:52:13that sort of area.
00:52:15They did eventually find a dentist in Switzerland
00:52:19who I sent detailed photographs,
00:52:22and she said, yeah, I recognise it.
00:52:25And that's how we identified this Swiss girl
00:52:29as Teresa Siegenthaler.
00:52:36I had spent a year in the war in the former Yugoslavia,
00:52:40so I'd seen many things.
00:52:42And I came back here.
00:52:44I was in London for a while,
00:52:46and it's when I heard
00:52:48that they had found these bodies
00:52:50underneath the patio of some builder
00:52:54in the cluster.
00:52:58And then I thought,
00:53:01could Teresa be there?
00:53:04Could it have been there all along?
00:53:19The repeated finds of bodies in Gloucester
00:53:22have brought back memories of a 26-year-old hunt
00:53:25for a missing 15-year-old.
00:53:27Mary Bastholm disappeared from a bus stop in Gloucester in 1968.
00:53:31She became a missing person statistic.
00:53:36When the bodies were starting to be found,
00:53:39we had a phone call in the newsroom from a guy called Pete,
00:53:43and Pete said that his sister had vanished...
00:53:50..a long time ago,
00:53:52and that he thinks that she may be one of the victims in there.
00:53:57And he was hoping and praying it actually was her in Cromwell Street.
00:54:03I would like to see it all over and done with now.
00:54:07It's been going on for 26 years now.
00:54:10And I certainly wouldn't like it to go on for another 26 years.
00:54:22Mary Bastholm was a young teenager, 15 years old,
00:54:26came from a loving, cohesive Gloucester family.
00:54:30She was at school, but she had a part-time job at the Popping Cafe.
00:54:37I think she took a lift from someone she knew.
00:54:42This could have been someone that perhaps came into the cafe.
00:54:48In 1994, when the police investigated the Wests,
00:54:52they were aware that Fred West frequented that cafe.
00:54:56Given the sort of chap Fred West was,
00:54:59it's highly likely he noticed her and may have made overtures.
00:55:04But Mary Bastholm had a boyfriend and was leading her life.
00:55:11Are you still hopeful that Mary will turn up?
00:55:14Oh, yes, yes.
00:55:16Well, I don't know. I just hope.
00:55:26So, in 1994, the police obviously reviewed the evidence file
00:55:30on Mary Bastholm.
00:55:32She fitted the profile of one of Fred's victims
00:55:35because he liked young, impressionable women.
00:55:40And he was known to cruise around in his car, ogling,
00:55:45and then he would try and stop and insist these young women
00:55:49got into his car.
00:55:51The police interviewed Fred West,
00:55:53but Fred West denied knowing anything about it.
00:55:57I'm surprised that if he had been involved that he didn't admit to it,
00:56:01but that is one unanswered question that I've got.
00:56:05Once the digging had stopped at 25 Cornwall Street,
00:56:10it was found that none of the victims were Mary.
00:56:15And I think Pete could not believe
00:56:19that he still hadn't found his sister.
00:56:24And there was no new evidence to link Fred West
00:56:27directly to Mary Bastholm's disappearance.
00:56:31But there was always this doubt with Fred West,
00:56:34whether he was being genuinely honest
00:56:36or whether he was setting up false paths and false trails all the time
00:56:40for the police to follow.
00:56:45The police did have a lot of questions.
00:56:48What they wanted to know was what happened to these girls.
00:56:53How did they die?
00:56:55What was done to them in the cellar?
00:56:58Once we'd found the remains, we pulled back the search teams,
00:57:02but later I became aware that there were items found,
00:57:05either with the remains or on the remains,
00:57:07which enabled the investigation team
00:57:10to potentially determine how those victims met their fate.
00:57:13Information was coming out about bindings.
00:57:18Then there was mention of use of tape.
00:57:21That's when the reality of the horror rang home for me.
00:57:29Every floor of this anonymous terrorist house
00:57:33held tales of fear, of violence, of murder.
00:57:38The bedrooms where victims were tied up and abused.
00:57:42The cellar where others died and were buried.
00:57:59My reaction to findings of the victims in the basement
00:58:05was one of deep concern
00:58:08that the deaths of the victims were quite horrific.
00:58:14It was really shocking, really shocking.
00:58:19I remember looking at the photographs in my office
00:58:23and disbelief, really.
00:58:26Clearly they did tell a story.
00:58:29I remember one particular grave.
00:58:33It was a skull that was wrapped around with masking tape
00:58:40and coming out of the nostrils of the skull
00:58:44were two little pipes
00:58:50that enabled the victim to breathe.
00:58:54So that was an example of someone who had been treated in that way
00:59:02and would have had digits and so on removed
00:59:06and would have been in agony and would have been asking to die.
00:59:10And in Fred's warped mind, he's done her a favour.
00:59:15He's done her a favour.
00:59:20You're trying to make out I just went out and blatantly killed somebody.
00:59:24No, nobody went through hell.
00:59:27Fred would go into his fantasy mode
00:59:32and come up with whatever story suited him.
00:59:36Enjoyment turned to disaster.
00:59:38That's what happened with all of it, or most of it anyway.
00:59:42The excavation of the cellar had tangible, real evidence
00:59:46of the fate of those victims.
00:59:49Beans had holes drilled through them,
00:59:52which was consistent with them being suspended in the cellar
00:59:57for use and abuse by Fred.
01:00:00They knew there were bondage suits
01:00:02and they were consistent with bindings and tape
01:00:05and some of the remains, the skulls that were covered,
01:00:09had bindings around the skulls.
01:00:12So there was a picture emerging,
01:00:15sadistic sexual abuse and resulting in their lives ending,
01:00:22whether deliberately through stabbing or strangulation
01:00:28or through just total abuse and neglect
01:00:33and expiring whilst they were, for example,
01:00:37strung up in the cellar.
01:00:39That must have been traumatic for those officers.
01:00:46Bindings and other items found with the victims,
01:00:49that sticks in my mind still.
01:00:51We all sort of looked at each other and...
01:00:54What?
01:00:56I can't believe it, almost.
01:01:00Because it was quite horrific and almost unbelievable
01:01:04that they had been used on these poor women.
01:01:10It was quite disturbing to think
01:01:12that that sort of activity was going on anywhere,
01:01:16let alone Gloucester,
01:01:18so it was really quite a sad and distressing moment.
01:01:22The sexual activities that had taken place by Fred and Rose West
01:01:28in relation to their victims
01:01:30showed what we believed to be their typical characters.
01:01:45All the signs and information were present
01:01:49in the videos and paraphernalia recovered from 25 Cromwell Street
01:01:54as early as August 1992.
01:01:58They also had pornography videos
01:02:01that clearly had themes of sadomasochism
01:02:04that went to very great extremes of women,
01:02:08young women being tied up,
01:02:10the bondage and the beatings of those young women.
01:02:15There was some rumour that there had been a snuff movie.
01:02:19I never saw evidence of that,
01:02:21but the implication in some of those movies
01:02:24was that death could easily be the end result
01:02:28of what was happening to young women.
01:02:50I heard the name on the radio
01:02:53and it was unbelievable, unbelievable.
01:02:57I thought I'd not heard it properly.
01:03:00It was an illusion.
01:03:04But no, it was true.
01:03:09That was it, wasn't it?
01:03:15She never got to Holyhead.
01:03:18Maybe Mr Fred West picked her up in his little van
01:03:24and said, you can't go to Holyhead all the way,
01:03:27stay overnight with us, we have spare rooms.
01:03:33My friend could have been a brilliant advocate for human rights,
01:03:39could have been maybe a diplomat.
01:03:43For what?
01:03:45I could not understand.
01:03:51My husband said,
01:03:54they found one in his body at Cromwell Street.
01:03:58I just literally, literally had a breakdown.
01:04:02I mean, I was dosed up in the day on Valium
01:04:06and sleeping tablets at night
01:04:08and I wasn't really on this planet.
01:04:10I just couldn't accept it.
01:04:12She knew not to get in people's cars, she knew that.
01:04:16And I don't know from this day what possessed her to get in that van.
01:04:22And that cripples me, because she knew it was wrong.
01:04:27And she would still be alive now if she hadn't got in that van.
01:04:31And I miss her so much.
01:04:33And I miss her so much.
01:04:37She was the bestest friend I ever had, the only bestest friend I had.
01:04:45She could have had such a lovely life
01:04:48and they took it away from her.
01:04:57I've always been told,
01:04:59why don't you take it?
01:05:05All the explanations he was giving about Rose was not there
01:05:08when these took place, it was almost unbelievable
01:05:11because she must have known about what was going on.
01:05:14We've heard about the torture, we've heard that they were beaten
01:05:19and there's no way that those girls
01:05:25would have got in that camper van or car, whatever,
01:05:28if Fred was on his own.
01:05:33She's the one.
01:05:39I have not, and still not, told you the whole truth
01:05:45about these matters.
01:05:47Superintendent Bennett said to me that to be in no doubt
01:05:51that in his mind Fred and Rose were as close as the paint work was
01:05:55to the plaster on the wall.
01:05:57Frederick West, minutes away from a reunion with his wife Rosemary
01:06:00is driven into Gloucester Magistrates' Court.
01:06:03She blanked him in the dock.
01:06:06That had a massive impact.
01:06:08Fred West did a complete U-turn and said it was all down to Rose West.
01:06:13I know how they were killed.
01:06:15I've seen Rose do that to a girl once.
01:06:17She did so much damage to her that she had to fucking kill them.
01:06:21I couldn't understand how she could do the things she's done.
01:06:27You'll never get the concession I'm in.
01:06:29It's not that I don't fucking know.
01:06:31I mean, if anything, I've got a problem with it
01:06:33and the best thing they can do is put me in a cell
01:06:35and fucking kill the kid.
01:06:37Because I shall always protect my fucking innocence.
01:06:48The search for the victims continues tomorrow night at nine.
01:06:52And if you or someone you know has been affected by anything
01:06:55you've seen in tonight's programme, head for channel5.com
01:06:58slash helplines for information and support.
01:07:02Next this evening on Channel 5, Casualty 24-7.
01:07:05Every second counts.