- [Narrator] Cromwell
Street, Gloucester, England, an ordinary house in an ordinary street. Number 25 was the home of a
local builder and his wife, bustling with children and topped up to the brim with lodgers. The only thing that distinguished
number 25 from the others was the amount of people
that came and went. Fred West liked company. He also liked to maim, molest, and murder. But it was this seemingly ordinary man driven to the slaughter of at
least 12 women and children, or was Fred West born to kill? (harrowing music) Fred West was described
by Richard Ferguson, prosecuting QC at the
trial of Rosemary West, as a man devoid of compassion, consumed with sexual
lust, a sadistic killer, and someone who had opted
out of the human race, the very epitome of evil. But who was Fred West? (pensive music) - If you passed Fred West in the street you wouldn't give him a second glance. He had a wife and had six children. - Fred West was a comedian. His neighbors would have told you that he was a very hard
working, likable, friendly chap. - On the face of it was a completely ordinary
builder, handy man. A very jovial fellow who got on well with everybody. - He did fit in with
the normal flow of life, even though he was profoundly abnormal. - Many people would be taken in by him because he was plausible and charming. Certainly the last thing in your mind is that he might actually
harbor terrible evil. - The great mystery of the whole thing is what drove them to do this? - You're talking about two people who literally plumb the
depths of human depravity. - Some people have the ambition to become a great politician, to succeed in the world of art. He had the ambition to succeed
in sadistic sexual homicide. - He could put on this
act an amiable rogue, but it was only to put
up some kind of disguise, and underneath that lurked this monster. - Someone may have evil
written all over his face, and yet people miss it. Fred West's evil would be
missed by very many people. (serene music) - [Narrator] Frederick Stephen West was born on the 29th of September, 1941, in the rural Hereford
village of Much Marcle. (serene music) A tiny agricultural community cut off from metropolitan life, this rural idle would be
where the young West grew up. The second of six siblings, Fred was a striking child with
a shock of curly blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. But how did this blue eyed boy turn into one of history's most vicious and heinous serial killers? - For Frederick West,
this kind of landscape, obviously you can see a sense of freedom, and he will have had a lot of freedom, more freedom than most
people would have had. But then again, this kind of
landscape is also very brutal. And what goes with it is the
kind of activities he had, such as clubbing to death rabbits, to watch his mother shotgunning rats, this kind of, like, physical and very kind of harsh environment. - [Narrator] It's widely
believed that Fred's father, Walter, was a child abuser and he seemed unashamed and
unrepentant about his behavior. Fred was very much the
apple of his mother's eye, and her love could be described
as more than overprotective. - Apparently, for years they'd been having sort of sexual games together, and the minute he was capable of doing anything more than
that, she initiated him. He was also abused by his father. It was a family in which incest was taken fairly much as normal. He was highly sexualized
from a very young age, and sex became very much
part of his motivation. He would talk constantly about sex. - [Narrator] Fred's school career was short and unproductive. He left school at 14, barely
able to read and write. His IQ was later measured at just 80. - The problem there obviously lies that lots and lots of
doors are then closed, and the doors that were open
to Fred and his industrious, possible attention deficit
hyperactive traits, would be channeled into
things like chasing girls, petty theft, and problematic behavior via little petty acts of violence and possibly other activities that we don't as yet know about. - This would have turned
him into a survivor, a lad that would live off the land. Crude, get by as I can, get what I can, that he would be like a fox, and he didn't need good
literacy skills to survive. He could survive on his wits. - [Narrator] Like many young boys, West became fascinated by motorbikes. He saved hard to buy his first machine, but his pride and joy was
soon to become a nightmare. On the evening of November the 28th, 1958, whilst West was riding along this road, he collided with a girl riding
in the opposite direction. The precise details of the
accident remain a mystery, but West suffered multiple injuries, including a serious head wound. He lay unconscious in
hospital for seven days. - Like many unfortunate children, Frederick West did inherit
certain brain abnormalities from his parents, who
had problems themselves. This reached a very much of a
crescendo on this very road, which not only caused
great damage to his body and the shortening of a leg, but delivered a massive
amount of damage to his head, and therefore to his brain. And the part of the brain
that gets the head-on particular damage is
the frontal cortex here, the frontal lobe, which contains the elements of
what makes us a moral person, that will give you a sense of revulsion if that is a particularly horrific act. Now, for Fred, these were damaged. So, someone who was already
a little bit psychopathic suddenly had the brakes
taken off completely and made him into a
real danger to society. - [Narrator] Fred's recovery
was slow and humiliating. His nose was broken, he walked with a pronounced limp, and now suffered from violent mood swings. - He did lose a lot of his good looks. There was damage to his nose
and other configurations. And from being quite a charmer, and a crudely good looking
lad in the village, he lost a lot of that edge. Fred compensated for the loss of his looks by taking a much more aggressive approach with the local girls. - If Fred wanted sex, he effectively would rape young girls in that community. - It would have been very much a kind of grab and grope situation, and he tended then,
obviously, to use girls for the only kind of comfort
that really ever existed for Fred his entire life, and that was sex and control. - [Narrator] One girl
Fred couldn't control was Catherine Costello, better known as Rena. She was a 16 year old prostitute who'd moved to Gloucester
from her native Glasgow. Fred married Rena, despite
her being five months pregnant with another man's child. - I think Fred saw in Rena
certain elements of his mother. It was a strong person
who would control him, and he was put in his place, if you like, for the first time probably
in his life by a female. But I don't think he was
ever comfortable with her. It was never really someone that he could see as a soulmate. She was really a mother substitute. - [Narrator] Charmaine West
was born in the March of 1963 and was soon followed by a
little sister, Anne Marie. Childhood for the two little
girls was far from traditional. - Rena and he had a very
on and off life together. Sometimes they were together, sometimes they weren't. Sometimes he had both the children, sometimes these children
were in foster care. Occasionally Rena took the children, mostly if they weren't in
care they were with Fred. Fred found a succession of
young women to look after them. It was a very up and down, strange life. - [Narrator] This turbulent relationship finally reached breaking point in 1965. Rena feared for her own safety
and fled back to Scotland. Fred had been happy to let
her go, but not the children, and he'd already recruited
16 year old Anna McFall to act as their nanny. - Anna McFall, and Fred always maintained, was the, in his words,
the love of his life. In fact, when he was in
prison awaiting trial before he committed suicide, he wrote a great big sort of cataloger of his relationship with Anna McFall, which he entitled, "I Loved an Angel." - [Narrator] But the
angel was soon to fall when she became pregnant
with West's child. - She became effectively
a problem to Fred, an obstruction who had to be removed. It sounds extraordinary callous, but Fred was a kind of man who, if a woman presented a problem, she effectively would be
removed from his life. - [Narrator] Anna McFall was
last seen in the July of 1967. - Fred West would have thought
that people were disposable because as far as he was concerned other people were instruments to be used, so there would be no ethical boundaries. - He decided that he'd had enough of her, and that she was surplus
to his requirements. And as cold-blooded as it may seem, he destroyed her and buried her. - [Narrator] 27 years later,
the remains of Anna McFall were discovered in this field on the outskirts of Fred's home village, Much Marcle, in Herefordshire. The body had been
decapitated and dismembered and was found with the
skeleton of her unborn child. - He would not have had
the same sense of revulsion that you and I would have had of stripping the body and
deciding how to dispose of it. He would be very industrious about this, and this would have set
him apart from many, many attempted killers and
attempted serial killers in that he was very energetic, very industrious about the
way he went about things. - [Narrator] Anna McFall had been the last of the victims to be recovered but she'd been the first to die. She'd signaled a turning point in the murderous career of Frederick West. (harrowing music) (harrowing music) Fred West was just 12 years old when in November, 1953,
a young girl was born who was destined to be his
partner in life and in death. The young Rosemary West's
childhood was tragically similar to that of Fred. Her mother, Daisy, suffered
from both severe depression and the attentions of a
violent schizophrenia husband. - Her father was very, very
abusive to his daughters, and the other daughters
wouldn't tolerate it and moved out. In fact, I think the mother
moved down at one stage. But from an early age he would
have been having sex with her and she would be accepting it. The relationship with her father continued after Fred and Rose got together. And, in fact, Rose's father
would turn up at Cromwell Street even after Rose had four
children to have sex with her, and then Fred would send her into the bedroom with Anne Marie. - When Fred met Rose, he recognized what one
might call a soulmate, and that's why he was attracted to her. They had a kind of interlocking
psychopathology background, so that they played off each other and their fantasies coincided probably. (clock gonging) - [Narrator] Fred and Rose
met in the quiet village of Bishops Cleeve,
Gloucestershire, England. Despite the age gap, they
soon started a relationship and it was not long before
seventeen-year-old Rose was living with Fred and his two children, Charmaine and Anne Marie, in their new home at 25
Midland Road, Gloucester. - That the two gelled sexually probably almost from the off really, probably saved Rose her
life to start off with. I think she could have
easily become another victim. She's using him for what
she wants, the little parks. She's driving around in his car, and she's feeling much older. She can tell her girlfriends
at school or wherever it is, "My boyfriend's older." All the time learning from Fred who was a willing teacher and enjoying every minute of it. This was the cocktail that was gonna start to put the bomb together
that would soon explode. - [Narrator] Rose was soon pregnant and gave birth to Heather
Anne in October, 1970. Motherhood didn't come naturally. - This was very, very new to Rose. She's very young. However, she did like children, but possibly not in the way that most adults would like children. For Rose, she'd always had a
kind of learning disability and a slight intellectual challenge, and she found it much easier to sort of deal with small children, and she didn't like the kind of conflict of being challenged, so therefore she would treat children more as kind of dolls, toys. They were kind of still objectified. - I remember asking her
whether she ever breastfed. And she said, "Oh, no. "Tits were for fucking, not for, "you know, breastfeeding children." So, you know, there was this thing that made me wonder about,
you know, a mother's milk. It was something alien to Rose. - Rose was a very, very
strict disciplinarian for all the West children. Their upbringing was
very, very regimented. They were taken off to school. They were never, ever
encouraged to make friends in the community. Rose ruled the West
children with an iron rod. - [Narrator] Tragically, the
child that suffered the most was eight-year-old Charmaine. Sometime in the June of 1971, while Fred West was coming to the end of a nine month prison sentence for theft, Charmaine disappeared. - Once Rose had killed Charmaine, then she's, of course, equally guilty. So, she could not claim just
to be an unwilling accomplice once she's done that, she has to continue. - This was, as it were,
a shared experience. It is incredibly bonding. But in this case, bonding in morality, because having disposed of a
problematic, challenging child, which might have
disrupted the relationship between Fred and Rose then, as it were, nothing could be ruled out in terms of eliminating other factors that could threatened their relationship. One of these factors was
Charmaine's real mother, Rena. - She came looking for her child, and that, I'm afraid, sealed her fate, because she could not... Charmaine was not there. Charmaine was dead. The only solution was to murder Rena. - [Narrator] Rena was last seen
alive in the autumn of 1971. Her dismembered remains were found in Letterbox Field in Much Marcle. Anna McFall already lay nextdoor, degraded and discarded by West. - For Frederick West, this will have been his little playground. This would be an area he
was very familiar with, an area that he probably
played in as a child. And it's an area that he can find readily. It has practical reasons. It has a tree, it has a signpost, and it can be found easily. And he'd want that, because he'd want to be able
to control these corpses. Even though they were not
alive, he wants access. He wants to feel that he can
actually be part of this area, and they are part of this area. This is his private graveyard. - [Narrator] With Rena out of the way, Fred was free to marry, and he and Rose cemented
their murderous relationship in the January of 1972. They moved across the
park from Midland Road and into a street that was
set to become infamous. - 25 Cromwell Street became the most famous address in the world. It is bedsit land. It's inhabited by a moving population of sort of people who are drifting around, or they've left home for some reason, or they couldn't easily be traced. And that was one of the reasons why Fred remained undetected
for so many years. - [Narrator] This anonymous neighborhood provided the perfect cover
for the Wests' lustful and murderous nature. It was the ideal lair into which they trapped their prey. Fred and Rose now set
about spinning their web. - Fred on his own was a charmer, and he would try and chat with people upon the street corners, or
bus stops, or what have you, but having Rose around
and having a vehicle completely puts people at ease. And you can see that they
slowly but surely crafted this into a refined scavenging,
predatory, stalking family, a sort of a unit that could, as it were, take people off the streets
very, very efficiently. - [Narrator] In November, 1972,
17 year old Caroline Owens was hitchhiking from Tewksbury
to her home in Cinderford. She'd been on a regular
visit to see her boyfriend and was waiting for her usual lift from a friendly telephone engineer. It was then that a gray Ford car drew up and a young couple offered her a lift. - She seemed pretty cheerful. She said, "Where are you going to?" And I said, "Cinderford." And she said, "We're from
Gloucester, but don't worry, "we'll tell you all the way back." They started telling me about their family and asked me if I'd like to be a nanny, 'cause they said they had
three little girls at home, and I was really excited 'cause I'd always dreamt of
being a children's nanny. I love children. I thought, you know, everything seemed quite romantic and glamorous to me. I was gonna escape my home and go live with this lovely family, and it was like a big fairytale. Within a week of meeting them I moved in. - [Narrator] But Caroline's fairytale began to turn into a nightmare when Fred let slip a shocking revelation. - One day, he turned around and he said that Anne Marie had lost her virginity. And, I mean, she was a
little girl of eight, and I didn't think that
was a funny thing to say. And I just said to him, quite accusingly, "What do you mean? "Why are you saying
she's lost her virginity? "What's happened to her?" And he said, "Well, she had
an accident on her push bike, "and the saddle came off
and it penetrated her, "and she was damaged by that." I became a bit wary then. You know, I'd been sexually
abused as a child myself, so it was almost like
I could now recognize that her behavior was
probably being beaten up by her stepmother and being
abused maybe by her father. - [Narrator] Events got out of hand when Fred propositioned Caroline. - He said, "Well, you know,
we've got a sex circle, "me and Rose and a few other men. "We'd like you to join it." And I started getting quite angry, 'cause by this time I got a bit fed up of all the things he
used to come out with. And I said, "I don't know
what you're on about. "Don't want nothing to do with it." - [Narrator] A disgusted
Caroline fled the house, vowing never to return. A couple of months later she was standing in her
usual hitchhiking spot when she noticed a familiar car. - My first instinct was
to run away, but I didn't. And when they pulled up besides me Rose was, like, apologizing. "I'm sorry that you left "and the children are really missing you. "Can we give you a lift home?" And as much as I didn't want to, I felt like I couldn't be nasty to them, so I got in the car. Everything was fine. We went just through Gloucester. Most of it was, like, the
children had missed me and that kind of conversation. As soon as we got out of Gloucester going more towards where I live, Fred said to me, "Have you
had sex tonight, Caroline?" And I went, "No." And I was kinda like going, "Oh, don't start that kind
of conversation off again." And he said, "Oh, go
and have a feel, Rose. "See if she's wet." And with that she just, like,
grabbed around my crotch. We started fighting about two
miles outside of Gloucester, past the roundabout. Fred pulled his car up on the side and helped Rose by turning
around in his seat, and punched me in the side of the head until I was unconscious. When I came round Fred out the door open, he was on his knees. He'd already tied my hands
behind my back with my scarf and he was wrapping, like,
parcel tape all the way round, and round, and round my face as a gag. And they turned the car around and they went back around the roundabout and took me to Cromwell Street. - [Narrator] They eventually
arrived at the house. Caroline, still bound and
gagged, was taken into a bedroom. - For the next 12 hours I was beaten. Both of them were like medical examining. It was almost... They were talking about my genitalia and all that as if they
were doctors, you know? "This is a bit strange," or, "That's so-and-so." I thought they were gonna get a knife and just start cutting at me, so I was absolutely terrified, but he got his belt off his
jeans and he'd folded it over and was whipping me between
the leg with his belt. Then she started doing
something else sexual towards me while he watched, and then she invited him to join in. And she was doing something to me and he was having sex with her
from behind at the same time. To be quite honest, at that time I would have been happier off dead. - [Narrator] After a
night of harrowing abuse, a terrified Caroline was
eventually left alone with Fred. - I thought he was just gonna
take me down to the cellar, but you obviously had second thoughts. He just raped me, and then he started crying. He said to me, "You know if you promise "that you won't tell I've touched you," he said, "and you'll
come back here to live," he said, "I'll let you go." And of course, you know, considering I thought I was
on my way down to the cellar, I was just so relieved. And I said, "Yeah, okay, I'll do that." - [Narrator] Caroline
had a remarkable escape and went straight to the police. But for Fred and Rose, this
signaled a significant change in the balance of their relationship. - I think the escape of Caroline Owens owed a lot to the fact that Fred and Rose were still experimenting with sexuality. Now, Fred had already picked up, or at least imposed on the relationship, something that he carried
forward from his mother, the idea that it was
okay to engage in things if mother approved, but
outside of what mother approved it was grab and try and get
away with it as best you could and make sure she didn't find out. The same applied to Rose exactly. Rose dictated what went on as far as Fred's sexual
adventures were concerned, and hence most of his actual activities, sexual activities, with other
people were hidden from Rose. - [Narrator] The Wests
pleaded guilty to the kidnap and sexual assault of Caroline. With their victim too
scared to give evidence, Fred and Rose were
never charged with rape. Fined 25 Pounds each, they
were allowed to go free. - I think the 25 Pound fines
sent a very clear message that even if you do slip
up and you make a mistake, that you're really not
going to carry the can fully for what you've done. So it sent the signal that providing you make sure that you tidy up, you probably will never get caught, and that just basically sealed
the fate of future victims. - By then they're hooked on this. Becomes like a drug, you know? And then the more you
have, the more you need. They have to make a cold-blooded decision. If we do this again, we can't
allow somebody to go away because they'll go to the police and they'll come back again. We have to dispose of the bodies. And Fred already knew
about disposing of bodies because he'd done it before. - [Narrator] Some, but
not all future victims, would conveniently come
from society's margins. - Fred West would have realized that there are plenty of people around who will not be missed. They use the same technique, actually, as certain religious groups that go around finding vulnerable people. - They were very good at beginning to spot the kind of girl who
would fall into a category that we kind of use the
phrase "less than dead." In other words, someone, if
they were killed, disappeared, they would probably be
less missed, less noticed, and a lot less police force
than the average person, such as prostitutes, runaways, girls of very sort of mixed repute who did not have very strong family ties. - [Narrator] Once Fred and
Rose had selected their prey, they would take them
back to Cromwell Street and down into the cellar. - The events in the
cellar, in the, as it were, the chamber of horrors, can
be only really speculated on, but by bits and pieces that were left over clearly a certain amount of sexual torture and abuse had progressed. These victims may have
been stripped, and hung, and left for long periods
of time in extreme pain. You have to remember that Fred at least had very little restraint
when it came to the revulsion of what his physical acts were. So, you know, to actually
inflict almost intolerable, continuous, and protracted
pain and injury on a person would not have created the same revulsion that it does in you or I. - Fred fitted a beam across
and there were hooks on it. He talked about girls
being hung there for days and bodies mummifying. We don't know exactly what happens. We do know that in the course of the time that they were
there they were killed, their bodies were dismembered,
and they were buried. And then, when he had filled
the cellar with girls, he concreted over the floor and then turn the cellar into
the bedroom for his children. - [Narrator] Fred and Rose West had now perfected their mode of operation, and over the next 14
years would kidnap, rape, torture and murder almost at will. But each murder would require
them to push the boundaries of sado-sexual behavior
further and further. - She had to be abusive. She had to be in control of the situation. And for Fred there had to be, as it were, bizarre episodes of sadism,
and bondage, et cetera. - They always wanted something more. They want to scream a little bit more, they want to cut a bit deeper. They know what causes more
pain than something else. And to be bound, and gagged,
and poked, and stabbed, and cut, and beaten, sexually abused, probably just not even seeing what was going on half the time with these two monsters
cackling and laughing, it was the most terrifying experience. It's beyond human comprehension. - [Narrator] Fred and
Rose were now sinking to such depths of depravity that it was entirely
possible that one of them could end up as the next victim. - I think there must have
been an absolute element of competition between them that grew up in terms of the other person may kill me, therefore I am at risk, therefore I must show myself
to be as tough, as sadistic, as hard, and as progressively homicidal as the other person. Otherwise, you know, I
might be the next victim, as it were, rather than
the next perpetrator. (seagulls squawking) - [Narrator] By June of 1987, Fred and Rose's eldest daughter, Heather, was 16. She'd suffered both
physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her parents all her life, and now this teenage go
was becoming a problem. - She was murdered one day when the other children gone to school. There's no evidence or belief
that she was sexually abused. She was simply murdered
and her body was got rid of in the classic Fred West way, and buried under what
subsequently became a patio. - I don't think for one moment he would have even shed a tear. I think that's how
cold-blooded this man was. He was disposing again of something that he had no further use for. - If Heather had been able
to survive and continue, she may have brought the whole facade down one way or another, and
that could not be allowed. So, to some degree, they
committed, as it were, a very risky murder,
a murder that was done to show that they were in control to the rest of their children, and unfortunately that
probably led to their undoing. - [Narrator] Heather lay
undiscovered under the patio in the garden of Cromwell
Street for eight years, yet the Wests became careless and her disappearance had become
the subject of a sick joke. - Fred and Rose would tell
the children, you know, to behave themselves, otherwise it end up under
the patio like Heather, which was a macabre joke, you know, obviously looking at the
reality of the situation. - [Narrator] The persistent
rumors about Heather eventually reached the ears
of a local policewoman. - Detective Constable Hazel
Savage had always been aware that there were these rumors
and persuaded her bosses that that patio was going
to have to be dug up. - [Narrator] On the morning
of the 24th of February, 1994, a police search team knocked at the door of 25 Cromwell Street and set in motion an investigation that
would stun the world. The murderous career of Fred West was about to come to an end. (harrowing music) (harrowing music) As the police started
digging in the back garden of 25 Cromwell Street, they could have no idea of
what they were about to find. Fred and Rose West's daughter, Heather, had been missing since 1987 and she was the focus of their search. When they unearthed a female thigh bone they were confident they'd found
what they were looking for. But it fell to pathologist Bernard Knight to break the news to Detective
Superintendent John Bennett that there may be more than
one body under the patio. - I still remember John Bennett's face when I got down this hole in the garden and looked up and said, "Either you've got more than
one, or she had three legs," because there were
another two thigh bones. I think gobsmacked would
fit John's face fairly well at that time, because, like I said, they expected to find Heather, and I think there were three
bodies in the backyard, and then was it six in the house? - [Narrator] Fred West was arrested. Despite the mounting evidence against him, he seemed remarkably unperturbed. - He's 54 year old man
and he's had a long run. He's got away with it all his life. His mindset is one of, you know, "I'm probably caught, but
who gives a damn now?" Believing it or not believing
it at the same time. Not really fully appreciating
the enormity of what happened. And it probably took a few
weeks before the penny dropped. - He probably, you know, went to pick up his coat a few times thinking he was probably on
his way home in a few days because, you know, well, they, you know, they found them now, and it's
not really that important, so therefore he was actually
entering quite a severe sort of state of delusion
where he actually didn't think, you know, that this was that important. - [Narrator] Despite West's
ambivalence to his crimes, he knew the game was up. He offered to show the
police where to dig. - He went back to the house and he did indicate certain places where the police might dig in the garden, but he never admitted that there were six other
bodies under the house. And there was speculation that Fred didn't want to point that out, because he was very proud of his house, and how he built it, and incorporated various
interesting features into it. He didn't think the police would go as far as knocking the house down
in order to find evidence - [Narrator] But the police
did knock the house down. And after recovering
a total of nine bodies from Cromwell Street, they switched their
interest to Midland Road, where the body of eight-year-old
Charmaine was discovered. A lengthier search of the
two fields at Much Marcle was to drag on for months, but they were to give up
the remains of Rena Costello and Anna McFall. The police now faced the harrowing task of identifying all the victims. Professor Bernard Knight
made the startling discovery that the skeletons were incomplete. - There was a lot of hand
and toe bones missing, but you actually rarely find every bone if you dig up a skeleton. One reason why there
may be a sinister aspect is that two babies, two fetuses present, and their tiny little bones
were there, most of them, even tiny rib bones the
size of a matchstick, and yet there were bigger
bones missing from the adults. There's one shoulder blade missing. That was a bit difficult to imagine how if you can get a tiny
fetal bone surviving, where's this big shoulder blade gone? Of course, the sensational
aspect or explanation would be that they were taken off as a some form of fetish, and even cannibalism was mentioned. But, I mean, I think
that's pure speculation. But certainly a lot of bones missing. - He may have had some
bizarre paranoid ideation, so in the beginning perhaps
he was cutting up bodies to make them smaller, taking
away the fingers and toes in case they were identified. It could have been, you know, a paranoid state that was superstitious. He had to keep these various
little objects close to him so that he knew that he was safe, that he had some control
over these dead victims. It may have become a very habitual thing. - It is known for psychopathic killers to keep trophies of their victims. He may have kept one or two
bones as kind of mementos in order to be able to
keep his work with him. - [Narrator] On June the 30th, 1994, Fred and Rose West appeared at
Gloucester Magistrate's Court jointly charged with nine murders. It was four months since the
police had started digging. Their victims had now been
identified as Lynda Gough, Lucy Partington, Carol
Cooper, Juanita Mott, Shirley Hubbard, Therese Siegenthaler, Alison Chambers, Shirley Anne
Robinson, and Heather West. Fred was also charged with
a further two murders, that of his first wife,
Catherine Costello, and his step-daughter, Charmaine West. Anna McFall, Fred's first
victim, was yet to be identified. This was the first time Fred
and Rose had seen each other since their arrest. Fred was devastated when
Rose rejected him in court. - He would have been distraught. The confidence would have gone. His face would have sagged. He would have lost that
confident, jovial demeanor. And he had very little
else left to live for. - [Narrator] Six months later,
on New Year's Day, 1995, whilst waiting to stand trial at Winston Green Prison in Birmingham, Fred West hanged himself. - When they told me he killed himself, and they were saying, "Oh,
that's justice, isn't it?" And I said, "No, it's not really." And I was absolutely gutted. I wanted him to pay the proper price, and he just, like, took his own way out and had his own way about
what happened to him. He was in control right to the end. - [Narrator] Rose was now left alone to face trial for 10 murders. - She was in probably in a bit of a state of shock, actually, I would say. And this blanket denial came down, and that was pretty well on
the whole the way it remained. - Rose at that point is only really protecting one person, herself, and that would be her only interest. So, she would then progressively try to look as though she was a
useful member of society, potentially okay, that
it wasn't really her, even if the evidence was against her, and that she wasn't that
complicit in what went on. - [Narrator] But the
Court thought otherwise, and she was convicted of 10 murders and sentenced to life imprisonment. The investigation was now closed, but had the police found all the victims? Rumors persist of many more bodies. - We have to regard the kind
of dark matter of Fred's life and his kind of killing
career, if you like. That there are lots of black spots which I'm sure may be
filled with with other poor unfortunates who have disappeared and not been registered, and not been connected with the Wests. - There was a young child
supposedly killed accidentally when Fred was driving an
ice cream lorry in Glasgow. There was a young boy who
supposedly committed suicide not far from Gloucester, but really if that had been
more carefully investigated I think they would've been
interested to talk to Fred. - It is possible, as we know, with personality disordered individuals that their characteristics,
both Fred and Rose, would have eased off, and
perhaps their interest in this would have slowed a little
as they approach middle age. And as it were, they were going into sort of homicidal retirement. But the chances are there
would be other victims. But unfortunately, due to the logistics, we will probably never know. - [Narrator] 25 Cromwell
Street was demolished in an attempt to erase the
memory of West's atrocities. For Caroline Owens, forgetting her ordeal will not be so easy. - They've took it all down now and turned it into this walkway. Some people wanted a
garden of remembrance, but others thought it
wouldn't be respected as such, so they decided to turn it into a walkway. And now I'm actually
walking where the ice was, and some of the girls
would have been buried under this area here, and some in the patio over in that area, and brings back quite a few sad feelings, bad feelings for me. I don't like being here. I just see it as a
grave for all the girls, and I'm just glad it's all over and they're all out of here. It's almost like you can
hear him having his laugh. You can hear him laughing. It's almost... Him laughing and joking
about the patio and stuff. It feels like he's still here. I don't think they took
enough of this place away. - [Narrator] Fred West
committed some of the most evil and heinous crimes in history, a gruesome and disturbing legacy, but was he really born to kill? - Given his basic biological
background at birth, this chap was not going
to escape the genetics, the psychopathy, which probably affected
his brother as well. He was not going to escape
the family environment, which was going to reaffirm
these characteristics that were already in the parents. You have to look back and say, basically, that his crimes to some
degree were inevitable. The degree and the frequent
nature of the crimes may have been adjusted
by aspects of his life, but indeed Fred was born
with the characteristics that would make it reasonably easy for him to turn into a killer. (pensive music) (harrowing music)
