Killer Couples Documentary - Fred & Rose West： The Couple That Killed 12 Kids

0:00This week at Vons and Albertsons, USDA Choice Tri-Tip Rost untrimmed are 599 per pound, limit 4 roasts with membership wear applicable, and medium-ripe Hassovicados are 99 cents each, with membership wear applicable. Plus Kellogg cereals 8.8 to 16.1 ounces, selected varieties, or peppered farm goldfish, 5.9 to 8 ounces, are 190.9 each when you buy three. Limit 3 offers with membership wear applicable. Visit VonsorAlbertsons.com for more deals and ways to save. It was on a scale that was really unprecedented.

1:06Children are their things to play with. They are disposable. They're things that are to be used and abused. I've never for one moment doubted that Frederick West was a truly evil man, but he found in Rose the perfect source was apprentice. This is the story of how Fred and Rose West became two of the world's most evil killers. Fred and Rose West are one of the most notorious couples in British history. For two decades they sexually abused tortured and murdered nine women, including their own daughter in their house of horrors, and between them were responsible for another three victims buried around Gloucestershire.

2:10When the news broke in February 1994, the media were only scratching the surface of the couple's terrifying life behind the closed door of 25 Cromwell Street. Five days and nights into their excavation and forensic teams have now unearthed three sets of human remains. All buried in separate places five feet under the garden patio of this Gloucester home. It's horrible to think that there are dead bodies in a garden just down the road. It's just totally disgusting. It's horrifying to think. It's totally shocking, especially around Gloucester. I mean, it's been expected to happen. But Fred and Rose's horrifying story began many years before. In 1969, 28-year-old Fred West was married to his wife, Reena, with a young family of his own. But he had his eye on a 15-year-old girl named Rosemary Letts. Rosened her family had recently moved to the Gloucestershire area, whereas Fred was born and raised in the local village of much Markle.

3:12Well, Fred was the eldest boy in the family, and he was very much the target for quite a lot of abuse at the hands of his mother. So his mother sexually abused him, essentially, and he lost his virginity to her. And the family was a very self-contained one. Rose's childhood was similar to Fred's in many ways, in that it was completely dysfunctional and anti-social and abnormal. So she was abused by her father who started raping her from a very young age. So what she took to be normal, what she took to be acceptable in terms of behaviour within a family really was anything but. Fred pursued Rose. He was used to getting what he wanted, when the couple met, there was instant attraction. Rose lived in the same village that Fred had a caravan. They met at the bus station in Cheltenham. She said that he could charm the birds off the trees, even though his appearance was shabby. They had not very clean teeth.

4:16Well, these were two incredibly damaged people. They'd both come from abnormal families. And I think when they met, what they saw in each other was something familiar. So they both would have realised that the childhoods that they had were far from normal. But with one another, they felt that familiarity. Maybe it was something that Rose gave off implicitly. But something in Fred connected with what had happened to Rose, and the way she was, and the way she'd been treated by her father. And it was like a union of two souls. I think it was the perfect storm. The chances of these two people meeting must have been a million to one, but unfortunately they did. By 1970, just a year after meeting, they were living together in Gloucester with Fred's stepdaughter, Charmaine. His wife, Reno, was nowhere to be seen. Rose was pregnant with the couple's first daughter, Heather. I think in the early days, perhaps the more dominant partner was Fred. He was older. He was more experienced. He'd seen more than Rose had.

5:22She'd come from this incredibly contained family. But I think as their relationship developed, she started to find her feet and find her confidence. And I don't think that Fred ever really trusted her. For Rose and Fred, it was all about sex from the very, very beginning. Fred was the originator, but he found the perfect source of the apprentice, the perfect partner, someone who shared his lust, and someone who understood him and wanted to perform for him. I think we have a lot of trouble making sense of Fred and Rose's relationship. And the reason for that is because we are people with emotions and normal feelings and ideas of what acceptable and unacceptable boundaries are around relationships. So I don't think I'd describe their relationship as a loving one. Fred and Rose's traumatic childhoods had a lasting effect on the couple and their twisted approach to family life together.

6:22It's always a very complicated question to answer how many children Fred and Rose actually had. Because if you count Fred's daughter, Charmaine, along with Fred and Rose's eight, it's nine. But then you've got to add Rose's three mixed race children, all of whom were fathered not by Fred. All I would say is that all of them were deeply hurt, almost ruined by the parents. I think Rose's early experiences within the family of being abused by her father wrote the script for what would later play out. So what she took to be normal, what she took as boundaries and rules really weren't going to work in the wider world. So what she was learning about in those early years, would set her up to be somebody who didn't quite fit in. And it was, to some extent, what Fred then adopted as a family habit. It was, if you like, a West tradition. I don't mean to say that that wasn't disgraceful, but it is nevertheless part of the family history and helps to explain something of West's behaviour.

7:38Two decades later, it's 1992 and Gloucestershire Police are searching for Heather West. In 1987, age just 16, Fred and Rose's eldest child vanished from the family home. Fred had claimed Heather had run away, but she was never reported as missing. But after receiving allegations of child abuse at 25 Cromwell Street, detectives began to look into Heather's word about. Sheve Constable Tony Butler was in charge of Gloucestershire Police. One of the children told a friend at school about what was happening to her. That friend talked to a patrolling police officer, in fact, about what her friend had told her. The police officer then took that back and it initiated a child protection process which led to the evidence being added. Five of the West children were placed into care and the police began their investigations. They were interviewed about the darker side of their lives at 25 Cromwell Street.

8:38What it brought to light was a family joke and the family joke was a simple one. You better watch out because if you don't shut up and stop causing your dad or your mum any trouble, you'll end up like Heather, two down and three across in the patio. Fred had laid a patio behind Cromwell Street, which was in squares, which rather like a crossword. The family joke was the buried Heather at two down and three across. This issue, this Heather's under the patio, continued to be raised and so we started to take this point seriously. We knew Heather had disappeared, let her left the home so we tried to trace her and despite massive amount of inquiry to try to find out she just literally disappeared off the face of the earth. In February 1994, the police decided to find out if the family joke was more serious than the children realised. Armed with a warrant, they began to dig under the patio of 25 Cromwell Street.

9:39When they arrived with the warrant, Fred rose her at the house and they went into the back garden and the officers started digging the garden. Sensing the end was Nye, Fred asked to be interviewed by police. Fred asked the officer if they could go down to the police station and so they left. Fred said that Heather's remains were in the garden but the police were looking in the wrong place. Later that day, he returned with the officers and indicated where he thought Heather was buried. The frame day, the officers digging in that area, recovered a femur and that's taken, for example, by the forensic pathologist who confirmed it was human remains. And that turned out to be one of Heather's remains. Rose was being questioned at Cheltenham Police Station when the news reached her and her solicitor Leo Godley. When Rose was told that Heather's remains had been found, she gasped loudly and was very distraught.

10:45How do you interpret that? Was that a mother's shock and distress or was it a murderer's distress being found out? At that time, I believe that she was shocked and distressed and that she didn't know the extent of Fred's activities and of course at that stage, it wasn't about serial killing, it was about Heather. But of course the thing unraveled pretty quickly with the excavation. The police found more than they bargained for under the patio at 25 Cromwell Street. This week at Vons and Albertsons, USDA Choice Tri-Tip Rose untrimmed are 599 per pound. Limit 4 roasts with membership were applicable and medium ripe hassovacados are 99 cents each with membership were applicable. Plus Kellogg's Serials 8.8 to 16.1 ounces, selected varieties or peppered farm goldfish 5.98 ounces are 1.99 each when you buy three. Limit 3 offers with membership were applicable.

11:45Visit Vons or Albertsons.com for more deals and ways to save. When they found remains, they found not just two legs or two thigh bones but three. The interrogating detective said to West, well unless Heather had three legs, there's another body. Oh yes Fred says without drawing breath or hesitating, that must be the other girl that would be Shirley. The police were about to unearth all the secrets that Fred and Rose West had been hiding at 25 Cromwell Street for over two decades. Secrets that would shock the entire nation. Fred told the investigating officers the other body was of his former lover Shirley Robinson. Shirley hadn't been seen since 1978 when she disappeared she was heavily pregnant with Fred's child. West also admitted that police would find a third body in the garden who he claimed was a friend of Shirley's.

12:45Throughout the questioning he insisted on one thing that his wife Rose knew nothing about any of the bodies. I think when Fred was protesting Rose's innocence and taking the blame completely upon himself, I think yes, at that point the power had changed in in their relationship. From him being the dominant one in the early years to her really putting the strings in those later years. I think he really didn't trust her at this point in time. He was really quite afraid of what she might do. So I think that was definitely something that had flipped in this relationship. Well I found him quite a creepy bloke. He would always be trying to endear himself to people in a rather smarmy way a little bit. A little kind of giggle, making light of things. But he was very unconvincing doing that. And he would very quickly realise if he weren't impressed by him and then he would withdraw and I would sense there was a, this other sight in that,

13:50there would scowl and be probably quite nasty. Whatever his sort of murky machinations within his mind were, once he realised he was probably better able to actually charm women than blokes. It's possible that you know with a little smile and some sort of soft talk he was able to persuade some young women that he was safe to be around. To make things more complicated, Fred's story kept changing. He alternated between admitting and denying the killings and told detectives that all the deaths were accidental. He wanted to get charged with manslaughter and not murder. It would be a hard job for pathologists to prove otherwise. It's very difficult when somebody's been buried for years to look at them in detail as a pathologist. You haven't got the skin, you haven't got the muscles, you haven't got the organs, the things that you'd see injury or disease in. So you really have to comment on what may not be there. It makes the pathologist's job a lot harder.

14:57Finding the course of death was difficult and so was identifying the third victim buried under the patio. There were approximately 10,000 missing women recorded at the time. By using dental records experts identified the third victim as Alison Chambers who was just 16 when she went missing in 1979, meaning she cannot have been a friend of Shirley Robinson as Fred suggested. Marks found on her body proved beyond doubt she'd been tortured. Someone's behaviour is more in the realm of psychology than pathology but quite clearly there's potentially the aspect of torture there, potentially of sexual violence. And when pathologists see findings like that, we're looking away from manslaughter or more into some sort of active cruelty. This prove that West hadn't accidentally killed these young women, he tortured sexually assaulted and intentionally murdered them.

15:59But was Fred doing this without Rose knowing the police weren't convinced? The most important thing of course was that his bodies were recovered in the house that she shared with Fred and it would appear inconceivable that she wouldn't have had knowledge of this. The house itself was very, very small. It would have been inconceivable that you could have kept a young woman or women in that house without every occupant knowing that something was going on. No matter how much tape you would have put over their mouths, no matter how much they'd been concealed in the cellar, you would know it would have been impossible not to know. The police began to look into missing persons' files to try and find any more potential victims but with about 10,000 missing women in the country, it was a seemingly endless search. Throughout that time, we were trying to trace people from children's homes to make sure they were safe. We were dealing with forensic materials, massive amounts of forensic material, searching. It was on a scale that was really unprecedented.

17:06Two of the missing people stood out, Lucy Partington, a 21-year-old student last seen at a bus stop in Gloucester in 1973, and Linda Goff, a 19-year-old who went missing in the same year. Her last known address, 25 Cromwell Street. Fred and Rose adopted a sort of motorcycle and I. They would identify young women on the run, if you like. Run away from home, run away from children's home, run away from their parents, they were vulnerable, they would offer them a home. And time after time, Fred would pick up with Rose, often at bus stops, young women who looked a little lost. So there would always choose people who would be in that position of vulnerability. And the fact that they were a couple, I think it was quite helpful to them in luring victims in because the women that they targeted would be more likely to trust a couple. So when they would pick somebody up who was hitchhiking, that played to that idea of, well, there's a woman there, so I'm going to be safe.

18:12Rose already knew the language of grooming. She was quite used to it, and when you hear the victims talk about how she spoke to them in this sort of quite soft, pleasing voice, you knew that again that was something she'd learnt. Linda Goff was never officially reported as missing, but her family searched for her at the time of her disappearance. Linda Goff's mother, she'd been round to the house, knocked on the door and it'd been answered by Rose West. And she asked where Linda was and she was told she'd gone away, I think, to Western Supermaye. She was struck by the fact that there was Rose standing there with her Linda slippers, wearing Linda slippers. And she also noticed on the clothesline there were articles of Linda's clothing. Linda's mother believed Rose when she said her daughter had moved on from Cromwell Street, but as the press coverage began to reflect the sheer enormity of the unfolding story, other women who'd encountered the West came forward.

19:17The police got a break when Caroline Roberts contacted them to offer her help in the investigation. She'd seen the investigation on the news and revealed to police she'd been sexually assaulted by both Fred Andrews in 1972. She'd known them for a while after they picked her up while she was hitchhiking and even worked for them as a nanny for a short time. It was one horrifying incident that caused her to lodge a complaint against them. They invited her back to the house and when she got to the house having been assaulted in the car by Fred and Rose, she got back to the house and she was then bound and subject to some rather aggressive sexual activity. She managed to escape subsequently and reported it to her mum who then told the police both Fred and Rose were arrested for rape and other sexual offenses. At the time she was scared to face them at a trial and ashamed at what had happened.

20:20The West were charged with indecent exposure instead of rape. They were found £100. But with the information Caroline gave to the police, they could link Rose to the crimes and bodies at Cromwell Street. So we had that evidence that there was a aggressive sexual nature to her personality. The details of sexual activity that had taken place had a number of similarities, particularly talking about bindings and gags and so on, that were very similar, if not identical to the material that was recovered in association with the victims when they were discovered. This case was much more about the accounts of people and what the survivors were saying than what the pathology can tell you. There are things that they could say that the bodies were no longer able to speak to and that was a bigger element of this case than maybe the physical findings by the pathologist.

21:20On March the 4th, 1994, police moved their search inside the house. They had a feeling that down in the dark cellar they may uncover even more bodies. On the same day when newsreets Fred West had glossed to police station, he made a stunning admission in a handwritten note given to detectives. It read, I, Fredric West authorised my solicitor Howard Ogden to advise Superintendent Bennett that I wish to admit to a further, approach nine killings, expressly Charmaine, Reena, Linda Goff and others to be identified, signed F West. Can you imagine the scene? It almostifies belief. They weren't sitting across the table from a monster, man, huge man with bare hands and able to kill him. Little insignificant chap who nevertheless confesses to nine murders. It's at that point the police realise I think probably for the first time that they are dealing with someone truly evil.

22:23Fredric was again taken back to the house and he indicated where some of the bodies had been buried and particularly the area of the cellar. And so what happened then was that we undertook a methodical search of the whole property. Fred maintained a position that Rose was not involved in these cases. You know, that's the inference that he was trying to keep her out of it. Fred took the rap for it. They had an agreement that she would stand by him and visit him and he'd hoped to be out in so many years. But the minute Rose heard that he'd actually admitted to the murders and she dropped him. That was he was gone and she never spoke to him again. She absolutely refused to have any contact with him. This week at Vons and Albertsons, USDA Choice Tri-Tip Rose untrimmed our 599 per pound. Limit 4 Rose with membership were applicable and medium-ripe Hassovacados are 99 cents each with membership were applicable.

23:23Plus Kellogg cereals 8.8 to 16.1 ounces, selected varieties or peppered farm goldfish 5.98 ounces are 190.9 each when you buy 3. Limit 3 offers with membership were applicable. Visit Vons or Albertsons.com for more deals and ways to save. On March the 5th, 1994, the world's media had descended upon the home of Fred and Rose West in Gloucester. Police had exhumed three bodies from their back garden, their daughter Heather, Fred's pregnant lover Shirley Robinson and missing teenager Alison Chambers. Now detectives were moving their search inside the property and began excavating the cellar at 25 Cromwell Street. We started the excavations in the cellar. It was a difficult place to do excavations and we had to be very careful about recovering the bodies. And on the first day we did find two sets of human remains. One turned out to be Teresa Seganhala and the second remains were Shirley Hubbard.

24:28It was clear to pathologists that much had been done to try and hide the identity of all the murdered girls. With Fred and Rose victims, one of their hallmarks as it were was that the fingers and toes were removed. I think we can hypothesise that there may be different reasons for that simple cruelty would be won. But obviously most people know that fingerprints are a very good way to identify somebody. So removing them particularly in the 60s, 70s, 80s before DNA technology was really recognised would be a way to limit the chances of that person being identified. And that was one of our difficulties when we were doing the investigation, trying to identify the human remains and in particular Teresa's remains. There was no evidence she had been named when she had lost her ship. But we were able to in liaison with the Metropolitan Police and the missing persons to come down to a sort of a short list of people that he could be.

25:29And then through using forensic techniques we were able to be satisfied that we had identified her remains. As the cellar excavation continued, officers escorted Fred to a field near his home at much marker. He told them if they dug there they'd find the body of his first wife, Reena, not seen since 1971, a year after Fred and Rose had moved in together. Reena and Fred had been married for nine years but she was never reported missing. So he was taken out to the fields and he pointed out in one field fairly close to a hedge line where he said that he'd buried Reena Costello. There were now six victims and back in the cellar at Cromwell Street even more bodies were being exhumed. When he to Marta formed a larger at the house missing since 1975. And Carol Cooper last seen walking home from the cinema in 1973.

26:29Plus two familiar names the police had been looking out for, Lucy Partington and buried under the family bathroom Linda Goff. This was a tragedy for these young women. I mean all murders are tragic for the victims and their families but it was the scale of this I think that taught the media's attention. I mean it's almost incomprehensible that two people could abduct young women or lure them to the house and subsequently sexually abuse them and then kill them. I mean it is on a scale that's almost incomprehensible. By the 8th of March 1994 less than two weeks after beginning their search at Cromwell Street police had found ten victims. Most of them had been buried two decades ago when Fred and Rose were at their most prolific. Aside from the sexual element to the murders they were becoming I'd say maybe closer in a way but I don't know where the closer is the best word to use to describe that.

27:32I think they were becoming more cut off from the rest of the world. This was something that only the two of them understood. It was something that we refer to as a folio d'art, a madness shed by two. So I think it was kind of cementing their relationship. They were to him no more than sexual implements. A kind of dull if you like. I know it's a horrifying thought but they had no more humanity for him than that. He was a man capable of absolutely no conscience and absolutely no remorse and everything he did was with Rose's help and the thought of having some young woman hung up in the cell are literally by her hands. And our hook for Fred and Rose to abuse when they wanted to over a period of days almost devised belief it is that horrifying. Nine bodies had been exhumed from Cromwell Street and one more that of Reno West Fred's first wife in a field near much more.

28:33But Fred wasn't finished. Although he didn't admit to killing her he told police he had a feeling that Reno's friend Ann McFaul might be buried in a neighboring field. She's believed to be Fred's first victim killed in 1967 when she was six months pregnant. As he did with all his killings he dismembered the bodies before he buried them. So he didn't bury them in a skeleton. He buried them in a tube if you like. In which the body was compressed the torso, head separated, arms and legs separated and shoved into a smaller hole. It made the search for those bodies a very complicated affair. The problem with Ann McFaul's body was that the whole land had been re-landscaped and so there was this topsoil that had been put on there. Now when you're looking for a human remains you can't just bring a big digger in and shove it all out. You are literally doing it by spade falls and sivving every spade fall.

29:33And we actually excavated a hole the size of Olympic size swimming pool. We were almost giving up hope that we were going to find the body and we said a deadline for ourselves that if we didn't find them by date X then we would stop. But fortunately couple of days before that deadline came in we found some bones and then subsequently recovered the body. During the two months of digging for Ann McFaul's remains the police had arrested and charged Rose West with murder. For each victim she claimed I'm innocent. The police's evidence was circumstantial and defense lawyers felt there wasn't enough to connect her to the murders. Rose West said I had nothing to do with this and the Crown are saying well we've got a statement from so and so who says that you were involved in an abduction and sexual abuse. Well to a point you say well so what what's that got to do with murder. Fred had said in his interviews he fully admitted them and said Rose had nothing to do with them.

30:34So the first point is to say well what is the strength of the case against Rose she's denying it where's the proof that she was involved. While police continued their search at Cromwell Street they also turned their attention to a second address 25 Midland Road Fred and Rose is first home together in Gloucester. Investigators believe that somewhere in the House or Garden they might find the body of Charmaine West Fred stepped out from his marriage to Reena and extensive search began. At the time of Charmaine's death she was living at 25 Midland Road a house that subsequently Fred and Rose had left but we went to the house and again excavating under the floor of the kitchen we found Charmaine's body. Charmaine hadn't been seen since she was eight years old in 1971 and hadn't been reported as missing. In the same year Fred was in jail for nine months for motoring offenses and stealing fence panels from his then employer.

31:46The police were convinced they'd finally got a breakthrough. They were confident Charmaine must have been murdered by Rose while Fred was serving time. Rose was jealous of Charmaine. Charmaine was a very bright little girl and I think Rose could see that she was getting the upper hand of her and she didn't like it. The younger sister knew to keep quiet it was best not to antagonise Rose and Charmaine was quite a feisty little girl. There were slight differences in the murder of Sopporandai. Certainly with the others you can imagine Fred going about his work with a sort of builder's precision and routine severing the limbs and the head digging a hole in the ground and placing them in it. Charmaine was different nevertheless Fred was charged with Charmaine even though there were from the outset issues about whether Fred was present or whether he was in prison.

32:51So there was always that slightly nebulous issue about how old Psyty Charmaine was and the dates when she died. With the high profile trials imminent the police had to somehow prove that Rose West was just as guilty as her husband fresh but before they got a chance there was a major setback in their case. In December 1994 10 months after police had begun to search 25 Cromwell Street for Heather West the bodies of 12 young women had been unearthed across Gloucester. Fred West was thought to be responsible for all of the deaths and police were desperately trying to find some evidence to prove that his wife Rose was implicit in 10 of the murders. Both had been arrested charged and were awaiting trial but on January 1st 1995 Fred West took his secrets to the grave. Fred was in custody a Winsgreet prison in Birmingham and on the 1st of January 1995 he was found dead in his cell he died from hanging and it was subsequently determined that he committed suicide.

33:59Fred West was always a cunning man. He planned his suicide as carefully as he concealed his bodies. He groomed the prison officers into thinking that he was an absolutely safe harmless little man who could do no wrong and was very happy to collaborate with anything they wanted. Indeed he volunteered. He said, I'll mend shirts. Don't worry, give me something to do. Past time for me while I'm waiting for my trial. Painstakingly over a period of weeks he stitched together a rope partly from bits of the blanket on his bed, partly from pieces of shirt, very carefully because he had decided that he was not going to trial and that he was not ever going to confess the true extent of what was going to be a trial. His crimes amounted to. There was a total loss of control by Fred over Rose. I've no doubt about that. She made it abundantly clear she wanted absolutely nothing else to do with him and she blanked him in the dock.

35:11Independent of his relationship with Rose. He lacked empathy with people. People were objects to be used and abused. The fact that he knew the game was up. He had made the admissions. The remains have been found. The terrible story of those victims unfolded. For those who knew the West family this is just another macabre twist in a story that first came to light ten months ago. In the words of one neighbour, if Fredric West really did kill himself then it seems almost appropriate that a man accused of taking so many people's lives should end up taking his own. Fred's suicide was a huge problem for the police. It put the entire case in jeopardy. With the death of Fred we were concerned that the press might feel well the case against Fred is now finished and therefore we can disclose information because the case is as close. That would have been a disaster for us because it would have then compromised the trial of Rose West.

36:12The police were desperate. While Fred had confessed to eleven of the killings Rose had always claimed her innocence. Without any solid evidence there was a real chance that Rose West was going to get away with murder. I think it's the crown that need to review their case and decide where they want to take it from here. I would hope that they will drop the case. I thought it was possible the case might have been dropped. There were a lot of eminent observers suggesting that would be the case. The DPP had a different view though and in fact the case got worse against Rose. They added on the murder of Charmaine which prior had been a soul charge in relation to Fred. I thought that was very curious. Rose thought the case was going to go away as well but it didn't. Prosecutors needed proof that Rose alone was responsible for the death of her stepdaughter Charmaine.

37:15They turned to forensic odontologist Professor David Whitaker. The police brilliantly discovered on a home that a certain newspaper, National Newspepper had acquired a set of negatives. They were large professional negatives and they showed incredible detail in some of the baby teeth, the deciduous teeth of Charmaine, which I was then able to match exactly using our facial superimposition technology. They showed that they matched exactly in terms of tilt and position and grooving and little rough ages were a perfect match. But the position of the teeth had moved so if we could calculate that movement and assess it of being able to determine within reasonable accuracy the time elapsed between the photograph being taken which the police had a date for was written on the negatives and the time of death.

38:27And if that fitted into the slot where Fred West was in jail then clearly Mrs West had a lot of questions to answer. On the 3rd of October 1995 the world's press flocked to Winchester Ground Court to report on one of the most sensational trials of modern times. Rose's trial attracted worldwide attention as you would expect. It's very rare for a woman to go on trial, let alone for 10 murders. I attended it from the first day to the last. It was an extraordinary event. As the trial began Rose West pleaded not guilty to all 10 counts of murder the nine girls found buried at Cromwell Street and Charmaine but the evidence against her was irrefutable. So in court in front of Rosebury West I had all the technology available to reproduce the imaging of Charmaine dreadful thing to have to do in court but the judge and the prosecution insisted.

39:31So Mrs West actually saw this imaging developing in front of her. I think it was back the only time she looked a little bit upset. She marched into the witness box like a very angry traffic warden, plain shoes, weighty woman, angry demeanor. This is all an outrage. It was all Fred. I had nothing to do with it. I knew nothing. It was completely inconceivable I could have done this. I couldn't have killed my own daughter. A tissue of lies. We think of Rose West as this woman in the courtroom in her forties. Great big glasses that she wore quite a frumpy housewife looking. Those murders had happened a long time before then. She was actually very young when she committed the murder. She was in fact a teenage serial killer because she committed three murders before she was 20. And most of the murders were over by the time she was 26.

40:32The evidence provided by Professor Whitaker convinced the jury that Rose-Marie West was guilty of all ten murders. He was able to say, and the jury accepted this, that he could pinpoint within a few days when the child had been killed. And we had evidence that Fred was in jail during that time. So Fred could not have killed Charmaine at that time because he physically wasn't around. He was in jail. I didn't think the trial had gone well for Rose. And the jury took quite a long time. It wasn't a five minute decision. It was many hours. They thought about everything very carefully. They came back and it was pretty well unanimous on everything. I mean, she was totally defeated. When the first guilty verdicts came back, Rose did not flicker. Not a sign of emotion. She just simply stood there. There was no hysterionics, no shouting, no screaming. There was no sign of any emotion at all, really.

41:35And I was left with the overwhelming feeling that one had been in the presence of someone who had lost contact with humanity. Sentencing her that judge Mr. Justice Mantell recommended that Rose West should never be released. She was immediately returned to Holloway Prison. Rose has never confessed to me whether she's made any kind of confession to anybody else I don't know, which certainly hasn't to me. I would say that tacitly, she at various stages gave the impression to me with hindsight that she knew that under the floor in Cromwell Street there were a lot of secrets. That's slightly different to saying that she murdered people. But then the nature of the case, it was circumstantial. 300 miles from Gloucester, Rosemary West en route to the prison that will be home for a lifetime. Today, Rose West is serving life imprisonment at Low Newton Prison, Indira.

42:41In 1996, a year after 25 Cromwell Street had given up its grizzly secrets, it was demolished. In its places now, a public walkway, but nothing can erase the painful memories of Fred and Rose West and their house of horrors. This certainly was a unique case in my experience and I was involved in as a detective investigating murders right back in the 1960s. And this is on a scale that's completely different. And I think in terms of its complexity, I think again it probably stands out as unique in criminal history. They were all young women who had their lives in front of them and it was cut short for just brutal and selfish self gratification of Fred and Rose. I've never for one moment doubted that Fredric West was a truly evil man. I think he was born and bred. I think he only ever thought of himself. He was a psychopath and a sociopath. No concern for society. No concern for anybody but himself.

43:42But he found in Rose the perfect source was apprentice. Many of us reflect on serial killer couples and say well if they had never met one another, would they have gone on to kill. We know that Fred had already committed one murder before he met Rose. So I think he would have killed again. When we look at Rose, I think she would have certainly gone on to harm other people, whether that was emotionally, financially, a non-physical kind of harm. But I think having Fred in her life opened up the door to a different kind of harm, a different kind of abuse. I've never been in any doubt that Fred and Rose committed far more than 12 murders. I've always believed there are other victims and they were buried in other places or concealed in other places. But to be fair to Gloucester Police, they can't dig out Gloucestershire in the effort to find more victims. Speculation about other possible victims of Fred and Rose West will always remain. There's as a case whose shockwaves continue to reverberate around the world even today.

44:44The sheer depravity at the unimaginable terror of their victims is why we should remember them, not Fred and Rose, and their house of horror.