When police dug up the remains of Heather West from her parents’ garden in southwest England, and her father Fred West took responsibility for putting them there, authorities thought they had a chilling tragedy on their hands.
Yet it turned out they had a serial killer in their midst.
Over the course of two months in 1994, detectives ultimately found the bones of 12 victims they linked to Fred and his wife of 22 years, Rose West, as detailed in the Netflix docuseries Fred and Rose West: A British Horror Story.
Three victims, including Heather, were buried under the paving stones in the couple’s yard at 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucestershire. Six more were dug up out of the cellar, two were pulled from a nearby field and the 12th was found under the kitchen foundation at the Wests’ former address.
He couldn’t recall the names of all his victims, but Fred confessed to 11 murders—as heard in police interview tapes played in the three-part series—and in disturbingly banal fashion he personally pointed out where all 12 were buried, moments also captured on video by authorities.
Meanwhile, Rose maintained her ignorance of her husband’s crimes, and says to this day that she is innocent.
“I thought Dad was a very sick man…and the worst liar I ever could have dreamed of!” she told her children during their stay at a police safe house after Fred’s arrest, as heard in tapes from listening devices the cops planted at the location. “But nobody could have known!”
Nevertheless, she was found guilty of 10 counts of murder in 1995 and sentenced to life in prison for each one. She unsuccessfully appealed her conviction in 1996 and, according to BBC News, dropped another appeal attempt in 2001.
Fred also repeatedly told police that Rose had no idea about what he had done. Until, that is, their first joint court appearance, when—according to witnesses who described the fateful moment in the Netflix series— it became apparent to him that Rose was not planning to stand by her man.
“Why should I take the rap?” Fred told police, per interview recordings. “Rose broke every promise she made to me. But I did none of it on my own.”
He took his own life in jail before the case went to trial.
Authorities alleged that Rose not only knew what Fred was doing, but also participated in abducting girls and young women with him and—in the case of Fred’s daughter Charmaine West from a previous relationship—did the killing herself.
Here is the chilling true story of Fred and Rose West, the heartbreaking tip that led to police cracking the case and what investigators found once they really started digging:
Who are Fred West and Rose West?
Frederick West was 27 when he met 15-year-old Rosemary Letts while she was working in a cake shop in Cheltenham. He told police, per audio recordings heard in Netflix’s Fred and Rose West: A British Horror Story, that he took Rose out for a date on her 16th birthday and, a month later, she was pregnant.
Daughter Heather West was born Oct. 17, 1970, and the couple married on Jan. 29, 1972. The bride was 18.
Fred also had two young daughters—Anna Marie West and Charmaine West—from his previous marriage to Catherine “Rena” Costello.
How many children did Fred West and Rose West have?
Rose was pregnant with her and Fred’s second child when they moved from their flat on Midland Road to 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester. Daughter Mae June West was born June 1, 1972, and son Stephen West arrived in 1973.
All told, as detailed by Gloucester Police Detective Constable Russell Williams in the Netflix series, “Fred and Rose had 10 children, some together, some other relationships.” By 1994, he continued, their younger kids had been placed in care (meaning they were no longer under the couple’s roof). In addition to Anna Marie, Charmaine, Heather, Mae and Stephen, there was son Barry West and daughters Tara, Louise, Rosemary Jr. and Lucyanna.
And while Rose was “bringing up a family,” her former attorney Leo Goatley said in the series, “at the same time Fred was sending her out with other men.”
Fred told police, “I trained Rose to what I wanted. That is why our marriage worked out so well, for a simple reason… [Rose] had no wild life, she just blended into my way of living.”
Rose is also heard on tape talking about doing sex work at her husband’s behest.
What happened to Heather West?
Heather was last seen alive in June 1987, according to authorities. Talking to police in February 1994, Fred acknowledged never reporting that his 16-year-old daughter was missing.
When he admitted to killing her—his lawyer Howard Ogden recalled in A British Horror Story that he found out while he was driving to the police station that Fred had already confessed—he said he “never intended to hurt Heather at all.”
“All I wanted to do was persuade Heather to stay at home and if she wouldn’t, let her go,” Fred said, per interview recordings. “But by this time I had no control over my thoughts at all.”
He recalled taking a piece of electrical cable (“electric flex, 13 amp”) and tying it around her neck to ensure she was dead, after which he went to the cupboard “to try and find something to cut her up with.”
Fred then used a breadknife to dismember his daughter and buried her in the yard outside 25 Cromwell Street.
How did police find out Heather West had been murdered?
Gloucester Police DC Williams, a 12-year veteran of the force in 1994, said in the Netflix series that Fred and Rose got on authorities’ radar because their children were telling people at school that “if they misbehaved, they’d end up under the patio like their sister Heather.”
Fred came in voluntarily on Feb. 24, 1994, in response to the police’s inquiry into Heather’s whereabouts, Williams continued. As heard on police tapes, Fred initially called the notion that Heather was under the patio “rubbish” and said, “If you find her, I’ll be happy.”
Police started digging up the Wests’ yard but, not finding anything that night, sent Fred home.
The following day, when investigators came to the house, Fred told them in his own living room—as remembered by Detective Assistant Darren Law in archival footage—“I did kill Heather, but you’re digging in the wrong place.”
Fred was arrested and taken back into custody. When he met Fred at the station, lawyer Ogden said in the Netflix series, “We were subsequently to have an interview that was chilling and affected everybody who was present for the rest of their lives.”
The attorney said that everyone who listened to Fred detail how he killed Heather—“not with tears and distress…simply a black and white set of facts”—got up afterward and shared a silent group hug in the tea area.
On Feb. 26, Fred led detectives to where he buried Heather’s remains seven years prior.
“He was more upset about the state of his garden,” Janet Leach, who got the call to be Fred’s appropriate adult (someone to safeguard his rights during interaction with police) when he was arrested, said in archival interview footage. He “kept looking at me and winking, like it was some sort of game.”
What happened to Rose West after Heather was found buried in the yard?
Rose was also arrested on suspicion of murder, her former solicitor Goatleyrecalled in A British Horror Story. When she was told Fred had confessed, he said, that “evoked a shriek from her,” and she insisted, “’If Fred’s done anything, it’s not Fred West!’”
Fred told police that Rose, whom he called “a perfect mother,” did not know what he did to Heather, that she’d been away from the house when he disposed of her.
“If she’d have known,” Fred said, “she’d have been the first to report me.”
Rose was released on bail, according to Goatley, and was moved into a police safehouse with her children.
Meanwhile, she pointed to the sex work she did as the reason she never knew what was going on in her own house, saying, per police recordings from the bugged safehouse, “I had to go out with this bloke and this bloke…make love all night and come home in the morning.”
When did Fred West admit to more killings?
“This was meant to be finding Heather, end of story,” Ogden said in the series. “It turned out, tragically, that it was only the beginning.”
When authorities realized they had unearthed three female thigh bones from the Wests’ yard, they realized they had at least one more victim.
At first, when a detective asked if there was anyone else buried in the yard, Fred called it a “peculiar question.”
But when told there was another bone, he said, per the interview tapes, “Yeah, Shirley Robinson, the girl who caused the problem.”
Fred and Rose rented out rooms in their home to lodgers, and Shirley had been staying there when she disappeared in 1978. She was 18 and eight months’ pregnant with Fred’s baby (which Fred admitted to Ogden, the lawyer said in the series).
Fred told police that he “smacked her across the jaw, got a piece of flex and tied it round her neck,” and he “probably” dismembered her as he did Heather.
“I’m realizing that is three,” Fred said. “Two. Sorry, that’s two, not three.”
Pressed on his slip-up, Fred admitted there were “Heather, Shirley and the other girl I don’t know…I don’t recall her name at all… Shirley’s mate.”
Who were Fred West and Rose West’s 12 victims?
In addition to Heather, Shirley and her mate, who turned out to be 16-year-old Alison Chambers—remembered by her sister in the series as a rebellious girl whose family last heard from her in 1979—authorities ultimately found nine more sets of remains. They attributed 11 of the killings to Fred, with Rose having knowledge of or participation in at least 10, and another killing to Rose alone while Fred was in jail for theft.
Shirley and Alison’s remains were under the pavers in the Wests’ yard. Fred was charged with their murders on Feb. 28, 1994.
Scott Canavan, a legal clerk brought in by Ogden to assist him on Fred’s case, recalled in an archival interview asking Fred if there were more bodies.
“And his words were,” Canavan said, “’There’s a f–king load more.’”
Investigators started digging in the cellar of 25 Cromwell Street, where they found the remains of Lucy Partington, 21, who vanished on her way home from visiting a friend in 1973; Lynda Gough, 19, who left home in 1973 and had stayed with the Wests; Carole Ann Cooper, 15, who ran away from a children’s home in 1973; Thérèse Siegenthaler, a 21-year-old Swiss student who disappeared hitchhiking; Shirley Hubbard, who had been living with foster parents when she went missing; and Juanita Mott, 18, who disappeared in 1975.
At the same time, DC Williams recalled in the Netflix series, “We knew other members of [Fred’s] family were missing and unaccounted for.”
Fred led authorities to Kempley Fields in Much Marcle, where he admitted to burying his first wife Rena in 1971 and Ann McFall, a Scottish teenager who’d worked for them as a nanny, in 1967.
Then Fred led police to his former home at 25 Midland Road, where they found the remains of his and Rena’s 8-year-old daughter Charmaine under the kitchen foundation. But he didn’t admit to killing the child.
“Just glad they found her, is all,” he said. Asked point blank if he killed her, he said, “No comment.”
Investigators ultimately narrowed down the timeframe during which Charmaine died in 1971—and they determined it was while Fred was serving a six-month jail sentence for stealing car tires and the child was living with her sister Anna Marie, half-sister Heather and Rose.
How did police connect Rose West to the murders?
As the grim discoveries were made, Fred told police he acted alone, saying, per recordings, “This was all done behind Rose’s back. I kept her pregnant, I kept her with other men, everything out of my way, when I did things.”
But police soon found Caroline Owens, who said she had worked as a nanny for Rose and Fred in 1972. She said in an archival interview that she left the job after getting the impression that the couple wanted her to join in their extramarital sex affairs.
She was hitchhiking on the night of Dec. 6, 1972, when the Wests’ car pulled up, Caroline said in the archival footage. She got in the car because she didn’t think they were actually going to hurt her, she said, but then Fred hit her and, when she came to, her hands were tied behind her back. (Fred told police Caroline’s account was “absolute rubbish.”)
Fred told her, Caroline said, “‘We’re going to take you back home, clean you up, calm you down, give you a cup of tea, and take you back home.’” Instead, she alleged, she was taken down to the basement, where there was a mattress on the floor, and “the sexual assault started.”
“She managed to escape,” DC Williams said in the series, and she reported Fred and Rose to police. They were both charged in 1973 with rape, assault, and inflicting bodily harm, but Caroline, who died in 2016, withdrew her testimony. Rose and Fred ended up pleading guilty to indecent assault and causing actual bodily harm. They were fined £50 apiece.
Williams called it a “missed opportunity to raise the profile of Fred and Rose as possible sex offenders who carried out abductions, kidnapping and imprisonment,” noting the couple “did get off lightly with it.”
In 1994, however, Caroline’s account convinced authorities that Rose had willingly helped Fred find victims, her presence in the car making female hitchhikers feel safer accepting a ride. And Fred, faced with the possibility of Rose not standing by her man, eventually told police that he did none of it on his own.
And while she didn’t do it 20 years prior, Caroline didtestify during Rose’s murder trial.
She harbored regret about her earlier decision, however, telling the BBC in 2004, “I still think about it, the fact that I didn’t push a rape charge, some of these girls could have lived.”
What happened to Fred West?
Fred and Rose’s son Stephen said in archival footage that he and his siblings were regularly beaten by their mother, but they never told anybody because they didn’t want to be split up.
They were “happier at school, where we felt safe,” he said, “better place to be than at home.”
The couple’s daughter Mae told police, per a recording of Detective Constable Hazel Savage reading the child’s statement, that Fred started sexually abusing her and Heather in 1985 and the sisters had been determined to not let him get away with it.
When the detective confronted Fred with Mae’s statement, he replied, “No comment.”
Stephen said in the archival interview that he hated his father for what he did, but did ask permission to visit him in jail.
“He told me that he would never tell anybody the whole truth, that it was worse than I could imagine,” Stephen said. “He promised me he would die with them never knowing the full extent of what he did.”
Fred was found dead by suicide in his jail cell on Jan. 1, 1995. He had been charged with 12 murders.
What happened to Rose West?
Rose was charged with 10 counts of murder, for daughter Heather and stepdaughter Charmaine, as well as Lynda, Carole Ann, Lucy, Therese, Shirley Hubbard, Shirley Robinson, Juanita and Alison.
She pleaded not guilty—and has not budged from her assertion of innocence—but was convicted of all 10 and sentenced in November 1995 to life in prison for each victim.
“If attention is paid to what I think,” Winchester Crown Court Justice Charles Mantell told Rose at her sentencing, “you will never be released.”
Rose’s first appeal of her sentence, in which she argued that she was coerced by her husband and wasn’t culpable in the murders, was rejected in 1996. She abandoned another appeal in 2001.
She expected to spend the rest of her life in prison, Rose said in a statement at the time, per the Independent, and while she maintained her innocence, she would rather seek reconciliation with her children than continue to fight.
Rose, now 71, remains incarcerated at HM Prison Hall in West Yorkshire, England.
Where are Rose West and Fred West’s surviving children?
Barry West died of a painkiller overdose in 2020, according to testimony given during a 2021 inquest into his death, per the Daily Mail. He was 40 and had been living at a Maidstone halfway house after being released from a mental health facility in Canterbury. His death was attributed to “misadventure” (a.k.a. ruled accidental).
Otherwise, three of the surviving West siblings still live in Gloucester, according to the Mail Online, while the other four moved elsewhere in the U.K. to start new lives, away from the scene of their notorious parents’ crimes.
Mae is a wife and mom who published the 2018 memoir Love As Always, Mum xxx, about coming to terms with her family history.
At the time she wrote that she saw Tara and Louise regularly and occasionally texted with Stephen, though she may be out of touch with her brother now.
“We don’t have anything to do with each other,” Stephen, now 42, told the Mail Online in May ahead of the premiere of Netflix’s Fred and Rose West: A British House of Horrors. “I don’t speak to my siblings and there are no large happy family get-togethers. Too much has gone on. It’s probably too painful for us.”
“I have my own family and children now and, for me, it’s all about protecting them,” Stephen said. “My kids don’t know about the family history…My only concern is my own children. We have gone in different directions and are getting on with our lives.”
Fred and Rena’s daughter Anna Marie, 60, was the only one who testified at Rose’s trial about the abuse the kids suffered.
“It’s the siblings who live with the misery and pain of what went on in that house and the trauma is probably too much for them to have any contact,” her husband Philip told the Mail Online. “Even though some of them live near each other, they don’t speak or see each other because that only opens up old wounds for them.”
Of the Netflix series, he added, “Every few years the case is back in the media, like now with this new documentary, and the public gets interested again but it’s the children who live with the pain of what happened on a daily basis.”
