16

DETECTIVE SAVAGE

Walter West’s last years were mostly spent in bed in his room at Moorcourt Cottage, Much Marcle. He could look out over the farm land of Herefordshire, seeing as far as May Hill, while surrounded by the bric-à-brac of his life. Walter had been a formidable man in his prime, but he had not really been well since the tractor accident which left him with only one good lung. The rugged farm labourer who had done so much to shape Fred’s mind was now a feeble invalid, too unsteady to collect his own pension or visit the Wallwyn Arms for a pint of beer.

In the spring of 1992 the old man’s health worsened, and he was taken into hospital. Doug and his brother John, who was working as a dustman, told Fred that he should see his father before it was too late, but Fred did not come. Walter died on 28 March, aged seventy-seven. The funeral was held at St Bartholomew’s, where the Wests had been christened, married and buried for generations. Walter was laid to rest next to Daisy on the shale side of the graveyard, a patch of stony ground near the fence that he had reserved after Daisy’s funeral in 1968.

There was bad feeling between the brothers that Fred had not visited his father in hospital, and also squabbles over who would keep Walter’s few valuables. Partly because of these problems, the family did not immediately pay for a headstone, as they had for Daisy. The grave would only be identified by a metal marker.

Walter’s death was a milestone in Fred’s life. It was thirty years since he had left home; he had murdered at least twelve young women in that time and still his freedom was not threatened. Yet, strangely, it was at this point – while he engaged in a petty disagreement with his family over Walter’s belongings, and years after the majority of his and Rose’s crimes had been committed – that their secret life began to unravel.

It started simply enough. One of the many young girls who had found themselves in the clutches of Fred and Rose decided to tell a friend about what was going on at Cromwell Street. The girl was thirteen years old.^* She told her best friend at school that she had been abused by the Wests, claiming that Fred had raped her while Rose encouraged him. She was terribly upset by what had happened and shared this secret with her friend because she had nowhere else to turn. Her confidante, another thirteen-year-old girl, went home and thought about what she had been told. She did not want to go to the police, but there seemed to be no alternative.

There was a beat police constable in the area where the girl lived, and she told this officer what she believed the Wests had done to her friend. A police investigation was launched, in tandem with Gloucestershire social services. Unfortunately for the Wests, one of the most tenacious female police officers in Gloucester was assigned to the case.

Hazel Norma Savage is a talented and industrious police officer who has enjoyed a distinguished career. She first entered the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in 1968. It was rare in the 1960s to find a woman officer in plain clothes, and for Hazel to become a Detective Constable was a considerable achievement. Because of her energy, and obvious ability, it was thought that she might be promoted further, but she stayed as a Detective Constable and still held that rank twenty-four years later, when the West case began in 1992. By then, Hazel was a veteran of several major inquiries, particularly those involving women and children. She had become a trusted old hand, well-liked within the constabulary for her robust sense of humour and her professionalism.

Hazel’s hair is cut short, and she normally wears a pair of large, tortoiseshell-framed spectacles. She does not smoke and hardly drinks alcohol. Hazel has been divorced for some years, and colleagues say that the job is her life. But, after twenty-eight years in the force, she would soon be due for retirement. This is normal in the police service, even though Hazel was not yet fifty.

When she opened the file, she remembered: it had been a few weeks before Christmas 1966 when she first heard the name Fred West. Hazel was then a WPC, and had been sent to Glasgow to collect and bring back to Gloucester a young woman named Rena West, who was due to stand trial for a number of burglaries.

As they flew south, Rena had confided in Hazel about her life. She spoke about her violent, feckless husband, Fred, with whom she had a child. Fred was sexually depraved, she said, probably quite mad, and had moved another girl into the caravan where he lived. Rena was worried about her children, who were with her husband. She said that she had committed the burglaries to spite him and the other woman, who had been her friend.

Hazel first saw Mr West in the flesh two weeks later, when he appeared as a witness at Rena’s trial. He was a rather strange-looking young labourer, shabbily dressed, with bushy dark hair, blue eyes and unusually simian features. It was not a face that one quickly forgot.

Twenty-six years later, the file in Hazel’s hands showed that Fred was living in Gloucester, not far from headquarters. He had a large number of children and was married to a woman named Rosemary. The allegations against them were extremely serious. As she read the notes, Hazel must have wondered what had ever happened to Rena.

A routine check was made to see if Fred and Rose had any criminal history, and it was discovered that, most notably, they had been jointly convicted of assaulting a young woman in 1973. Fred had numerous other convictions, but they were minor matters. He appeared to be a persistent thief who handled stolen goods and did not bother to keep his car taxed. His record showed that he had been sent to prison when these offences had accumulated, and when he had offended whilst on parole. Mrs West, on the other hand, appeared to have led a blameless life for the past nineteen years: apart from the 1973 assault, she did not have a single conviction against her name.

On the morning of Thursday 6 August 1992, police arrived at 25 Cromwell Street with a warrant to search for evidence of child abuse, including pornography. Fred and Rose, together with Rose’s youngest children – Tara, Louise, Barry, Rosemary Junior and Lucyanna – were all in the house at the time. Fred decided to go to work as police conducted their search. While he was out, they seized an extraordinary array of pornographic material and devices, including five dildos, a box of dildo heads, rubber underwear, a rice flail, a whip, various buckles and straps, and ninety-nine pornographic videos (both home-made and commercial).

At 9:05 A.M. Rose was arrested for aiding and abetting the rape of a young girl and for obstructing the police.

Fred was working full-time for a small building company named Carson Contractors. One of the company’s contracts was to carry out general repairs at a home for autistic people, the Stroud Court Community Trust, near the village of Nailsworth. Fred was on-call to perform routine maintenance there, retained his own set of keys and often worked unsupervised late into the night.

At 2:15 P.M. on 6 August, Fred was back at Carson’s yard near Stroud. He was arrested and taken into custody, where he was questioned about sex abuse at Cromwell Street, pornography, and the rape and buggery of the thirteen-year-old girl.

The next day Hazel Savage began to interview friends and family of the Wests. One of the first addresses she went to was a council house on Gloucester’s White City estate. This was the home of Anna Marie, who was separated from her husband, Chris Davis, and living with her two daughters. When Hazel asked if Anna Marie knew of anything improper happening at 25 Cromwell Street, Anna Marie’s horrific story emerged.

In what became the first of a series of long and emotional interviews, Anna Marie told Hazel of the ‘physical, mental and sexual abuse’ she had suffered at the hands of Fred and Rose from a young age. She described how her father had raped her and how Fred and Rose had forced her into having intercourse with other men. They had tied her up and subjected her to all types of sadistic treatment. It was an astonishing interview, made even more poignant when Anna Marie said she still loved her father and Rose, as a surrogate mother, and had never understood why they had treated her in this way.

Anna Marie also talked about her half-sister, Charmaine, and her natural mother, Rena, whom Hazel remembered from 1966. ‘I have been trying to trace her for years,’ said Anna Marie.

Hazel then went to see Chris Davis, who suggested that she find and interview Heather. She would know more than anybody, he said, but she had disappeared. He and Anna Marie had tried to track her down, but to no avail. Other members of the family were questioned, but most of the older children were too frightened to talk candidly to Hazel. ‘We were threatened [and told] to keep our mouth shut about anything we saw,’ explains Steve West. ‘They said, “Don’t you dare say anything about anything you see in this house.” We knew what the consequences were. We knew we would get the worst beating of our lives.’

Not only had Hazel found strong evidence of child abuse in the home, but it now seemed that at least three members of the family were missing.

Fred was kept in custody, but Rose was allowed to go home. All five of her youngest children were being taken into care by social services, and 25 Cromwell Street was eerily quiet. Her sister-in-law, Barbara Letts, arrived to comfort Rose, and the women put together clothes for the children to take. As they sorted through the bedrooms, putting tops and trousers into a bag, Rose broke down and cried.

The following day Fred appeared briefly in court. He was charged and remanded to Gloucester Prison, where he had been held in 1969.

After talking to members of the family, Hazel Savage had begun to appreciate the importance of interviewing Heather. But nobody knew where she was, so Hazel attempted to trace Heather using her National Insurance number and the official records of both the Department of Social Security and the Inland Revenue. If Heather had worked, paid income tax, claimed state benefit or used any branch of the National Health Service since leaving school, it would be on file somewhere.

She had also gathered enough evidence to arrest Rose for the indecent assault of the young girl, which she duly did at 8:30 A.M. on Tuesday 11 August. Rose telephoned her solicitor, a heavy-set local man named Leo Goatley, and prepared herself for the gruelling interviews that followed.

The questions put by Hazel Savage were mainly concerned with the child abuse allegations, but she also asked repeatedly where Heather was. Rose replied that Heather had finished school when she was aged sixteen and had then left home; she had not seen her since. Beyond that, her answers were vague and unhelpful. For example:

POLICE: Where is she [Heather] now?

ROSE WEST: Don’t know.

POLICE: Have you had any contact?

ROSE WEST: None.

POLICE: In what circumstances did she leave?

ROSE WEST: I went out shopping and [when I got back] she had gone.

POLICE: You obviously reported her as a missing person?

ROSE WEST: I’m not sure of that one.

And later on:

POLICE: Would Fred have reported Heather missing?

ROSE WEST: I don’t know.

Hazel suggested that losing contact with her first-born child must have been distressing, to which Rose glibly replied, ‘It’s been awful.’ Then Hazel revealed the results of her checks using Heather’s National Insurance number and the records of the DSS and tax office. She said there had been no trace of Heather whatsoever for four years, which meant that she had not taken a regular job, claimed any sort of state benefit or even visited a doctor in that time. This was almost impossible unless Heather had completely changed her identity, left the country, or was dead.

Rose replied that the police must ‘believe what they want’. Heather had apparently told her mother that she intended to leave home, and Rose claimed she had said to her daughter: ‘Please don’t do so – we’ve got more to talk over.’ Rose maintained that she had then gone out shopping for approximately two hours ‘as per usual’, and that when she came back, Heather was gone.

POLICE: Did she [Heather] have any money when she left?

ROSE WEST: I don’t know.

Hazel then told Rose that her attitude made the situation an alarming and frightening one, but Rose just said that she hoped Heather was ‘happy in her life’ wherever she was.

After lunch the police tried again. This time Rose said she believed Heather had left home in a Mini driven by another woman. This had apparently happened while Rose was out shopping. It was suggested to Rose that she did not know whether her daughter was alive or dead. ‘Is there any reason why she shouldn’t be alive, apart from having accidents and stuff?’ she retorted. ‘If my child don’t want to know, what can I do about it?’

She volunteered a bizarre explanation for why she had not bothered to look for her. This was the exchange that took place at 5:22 P.M.:

ROSE WEST: I can remember now why I didn’t pursue Heather – because things pointed to Heather being a lesbian.

POLICE: A what?

ROSE WEST: Lesbian, and wanted left on her own.

POLICE: Are you a lesbian?

ROSE WEST: No.

POLICE: Have you ever been a lesbian?

ROSE WEST: No.

Rose added that she did not want her other children being exposed to Heather’s sexuality, and had given her £600 to help her on her way, completely contradicting what she had earlier told police about not knowing if Heather had had any money when she left. Rose then said that Heather telephoned occasionally to say that she was well, indicating that this was a secret between mother and daughter, because Fred and Heather did not get on and she did not want the rest of the family to find out that they were in touch.

At another point in the interviews, Charmaine’s whereabouts were discussed. Rose explained the child’s disappearance in this way: ‘She went with her mother and stayed with her mum … because it’s what she requested.’ Hazel appeared to accept this explanation, for now at least, and said that she could not understand why Rose had simply not told them that before. The police then returned to the main charges concerning the thirteen-year-old girl, but as they continued to talk, Rose must have realised she had told two fundamental lies about Heather and Charmaine. If their remains were ever found, those lies could incriminate her.

Rose was kept in police custody overnight, and appeared before Gloucester magistrates in the morning. She was charged with child abuse and granted bail on condition that she did not communicate with her younger children, her stepdaughter, Anna Marie, or Fred.

It was bad enough going back to an empty house, but life without Fred seemed impossible. Rose was depressed, and started drinking. She found some pills and swallowed them in a fumbling attempt to end her life. Steve found his mother collapsed on the floor. At 1:50 A.M. on Thursday 13 August, Rose was taken to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital where her stomach was successfully pumped.

Fred was kept on remand in Gloucester gaol, where he was a ‘Rule 43’ prisoner (the system whereby sex offenders are kept apart from the general prison population, who often try to harm them). He was frightened of the other inmates, and it seemed to his visitors that he had shrunk in stature and confidence. Fred cried when his older children came to see him, and, speaking in a timid voice, made this cryptic confession to his son, Steve: ‘I have done something really bad. I have done it at night when you were asleep.’ No further explanation was offered, for the time being.

At Cromwell Street, Rose had to face up to the practical problems of surviving on her own. The Wests had always been careful with money, but although Fred worked hard, he had never been well paid. There was a mortgage on the house and the little they had saved over the years had largely been spent on recent home improvements. Because of this, Rose was forced to take a cleaning job at the Gloucestershire College of Art and Technology, and relied more heavily on the small amount of money she earned from prostitution.

She missed Fred, and was unusually affectionate when he telephoned from prison. Rose called him ‘sweetheart’ and ‘darling’, words she had seldom been heard to use aloud before. Rose also wrote to her husband, including a letter which assured him that, if they were caught, they would go together. Fred treasured the letter.

Rose bought a tank of tropical fish and obtained two mongrel dogs from a local rescue centre for company. One dog was a small wire-haired terrier type which she named Benji, the other a white-haired animal she named Oscar. Rose attempted to train the dogs, disciplining them in a typically brutal way: if one barked, she grabbed the animal by the collar and beat it until it howled. Benji and Oscar did learn to fear their mistress, but they were never house-trained and frequently snatched food from the kitchen table.

Rose comforted herself with eating. Using a pram as her shopping trolley, and wearing white schoolgirl socks, she was a familiar eccentric customer at Marks & Spencer in the city centre. When she came back home, Rose took off all her clothes and sat in front of the television, gorging on M&S chocolate eclairs whilst watching children’s videos like Hook and Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She particularly enjoyed the cartoon short Road Runner, shrieking with delight each time Wile E. Coyote was battered.

In September, after spending one month in Gloucester Prison on remand, Fred was moved to the Carpenter House Bail Hostel in Birmingham. He was visited there by Steve, Mae, and Mae’s boyfriend, Rob. Fred was depressed. He cried with self-pity, and gave his visitors the impression that the child abuse allegations were a prelude to greater horrors. ‘I’ve been a bad boy,’ he said. ‘It’s about time you went to the papers and made yourselves some money.’ He also spoke about Heather in a dream-like way, telling his visitors she had been to see him there in Birmingham. He said she was a prostitute now, making lots of money from selling her body and dealing drugs. He spoke about this lifestyle as if Heather had become a successful and important person. Fred also said she had told him she would intervene in the case and help effect his release. When Rose discovered what Fred had been saying about the children going to the newspapers, she told them to pay no attention.

Both Fred and Rose were interviewed by a psychologist at this time, because of the impending court case, and a detailed profile of their relationship was drawn up. It shows them to be a loving couple who had no secrets from each other, with a marriage described as ‘close and caring … they are well able to communicate and rarely argue … they discuss everything together [and] all decisions regarding their marriage and relationship are jointly made’. A love letter from Rose to Fred at this time bears this out:

To my darling,

Well, you really tired me out on Saturday, but it was a wonderful day … Remember I will love you always and everything will be alright.

Goodnight sweetheart

Lots of love,

Rose

The letter was decorated with a large heart with an arrow through it, and in the middle of the heart were the words ‘Fred and Rose’.

In the autumn of 1992, one of the West children in care told a social worker that Fred had threatened them with violence if they ever talked about what went on in the house – Fred said they would be killed and buried under the patio, just like their sister, Heather. This extraordinary story about Heather being under the patio was not a new one, and several of the Wests seemed to have already heard it, although no one seemed to know where it had started. It had also been blurted out during a family row between Steve, Mae and Anna Marie. The social worker who heard this rumour did not pass it on to the police at this time, however, and it is unclear whether the police (who sat in on interviews with the children) were aware of the story.

The suggestion that Heather was lying under the patio slabs became a macabre joke at Cromwell Street. Rob Williams remembers asking Steve which stone he thought his sister was under. ‘I used to say, “It’s three up and nine across.”’ But it was no joke to Rose, who looked out on that patio every evening as she washed up at the sink and every morning as she got up, knowing full well that her daughter’s remains were indeed buried under those candy-coloured slabs.

In March 1993 Fred was transferred to another bail hostel in Birmingham, Welford House, and from there to an unsupervised hostel in Holly Road, where there was an 11 P.M. to 6 A.M. curfew. Although Rose was forbidden to see Fred under the conditions of her bail, she started to travel up from Gloucester by train, taking sandwiches and a two-man tent carried in a rucksack. Fred and Rose pitched the tent near the hostel and had intense, sexually-charged reunions. At first Rose’s illicit visits were only at weekends, but they became as frequent as every other day, and Fred even managed to sneak back to the house in Cromwell Street. As long as he was at the hostel for the morning head count, nobody appeared to know that he was missing.

Fred later claimed that he murdered a woman in Birmingham during this period of his life. There is no evidence to support this, but it is clear that he had an urgent need for violent sexual satisfaction and it is highly unlikely that he simply stopped killing after Heather’s death in 1987. The pressures of life in Birmingham, away from Rose, and the freedom he was allowed there may well have led him to claim another life.

Each time they met, Fred presented Rose with ‘gifts’ – which were, in fact, no more than pieces of rubbish he found in the street. They included a child’s dummy, crisp packets, an old photograph frame, spent phone cards, Kinder egg toys, half a twenty-pound note and pieces of small change. But Rose cherished all these items, displaying them in a glass cabinet at Cromwell Street as if they were priceless china.

On Sunday 6 June 1993, Fred left Birmingham for his trial. He was so agitated that he forgot to take his personal belongings with him. Fred and Rose met the next day in the dock of Gloucester Crown Court, where he was charged with three counts of rape, and one count of buggery and cruelty to a child. Rose was charged with encouraging and inciting him to have sex with the same thirteen-year-old girl, and with cruelty. Video-link monitors had been set up in the court, so that child witnesses could give evidence for the prosecution from a separate room.

But before the jury were sworn in, the prosecution counsel informed the judge that two important witnesses were not prepared to testify against the Wests. One of these was the young girl.

‘Without that evidence there is no case,’ said Peter Thomas for the prosecution. ‘We take the view that we cannot proceed, and accordingly we offer no evidence against these defendants.’ Judge Gabriel Hutton entered formal not guilty verdicts in respect of all the charges, and Fred and Rose hugged each other in the dock. They left the court and went home to Cromwell Street, where they sat together on the sofa holding hands. A few days later, on 28 June, Rose signed an authorisation for the police to destroy the ninety-nine pornographic videos, and other materials, seized from her home. (Because of this action, it will never be known whether the torture or murder of any of the Wests’ victims was recorded on film.)

The case may have collapsed, but it had at least brought to light the mystery of Heather West’s disappearance – and there was one determined police officer who was not ready to close the file on the West family just yet.

^*The child involved in these allegations cannot be named for legal reasons.