20

ALONE

On a blazing July afternoon in 1994, Steve West married his girlfriend, Andrea Davis, at St George’s Church in the village of Brockworth. It was a pretty service on a perfect summer’s day, and both Fred and Rose sent their best wishes from their respective prison cells. Fred signed his good-luck card ‘Dad’, as was his habit. Rose gave the couple a cushion she had made.

There was a flurry of excitement in August when Fred parted company with his solicitor, Howard Ogden. It emerged that Mr Ogden was planning to sell his account of the case: an agent had prepared a three-page synopsis listing what was on offer. The material included tape recordings of Fred’s prison interviews, his confession statement, details of the 1992 child abuse case, psychological reports of Fred and Rose, and footage from their home-made pornographic videos. Howard Ogden said that he had written permission to do this, but Fred was granted a High Court injunction stopping him. The matter was brought before the Law Society and Howard Ogden later returned all the tapes.

In September a Gloucestershire police report revealed that the murder inquiry had cost £1.3 million, and was still running at the rate of approximately £2,000 per week as John Bennett’s team prepared for the trial, a date for which had still not been scheduled. Overtime alone had accounted for £309,000; a further £78,000 had been spent on demolition and excavation work. It was an enormous financial burden for the force, and the Home Office was asked for a contribution. The request was turned down.

Fred spent his fifty-third birthday, 29 September 1994, behind bars in Birmingham’s Winson Green prison, where he had been since April. With the bulk of the police investigation over, and the long wait for the trial ahead, he seldom found himself troubled by visits from detectives, who had tape-recorded 108 hours of interviews with Fred. He had never spoken to them about the sexual torture of the victims, or the masks, or why so many body parts were missing. It had also been realised that the video tapes seized from Cromwell Street in 1992, some of which may have featured evidence of this torture, had been destroyed because the Wests had not wanted them back. (Only four videos were taken in 1994, including graphic film of Rose pleasuring herself intimately, but none were of any use to the police.)

Some of Fred’s time was occupied with drawing, for which he had a fair aptitude, and with making an attempt to improve his literacy – Fred hoped he would be able to understand his legal papers. His children Steve and Mae were almost his only visitors. Steve remembers his father’s low spirits: ‘He said he loved Rose and missed her. He wished she felt the same, but she didn’t.’

Fred confided that he had begun to write his autobiography. Each chapter would be dedicated to one of the women in his life. Chapter One had already been written, and was all about Anna McFall. Fred had entitled it ‘I Was Loved By An Angel’.

If Steve missed a prison visit, his father became agitated and angry that he had been embarrassed in front of the guards. Fred was allowed telephone cards, and used them regularly, chatting with Steve about his marriage and the impending birth of twins to Steve’s new wife. He also wrote crudely-spelled letters offering advice for the future, some of which were reprinted in the News of the World newspaper, which made corrections to the excerpts for the sake of clarity. ‘Always know what’s going on in your home please son,’ he wrote. ‘Always spend as much time with your wife and children as you can and love your wife and children.’ In another, Fred wrote that he now regretted working so hard day and night and cautioned his son not to do the same, in case he, too, came to a bad end. He also advised him not to have too many children because ‘babies cost money, lots of money’. Expressing himself curiously in the past tense, Fred wrote ‘I loved you all’ and said he was sorry for what had happened. He urged the family to sell 25 Cromwell Street and start a new life together. Seemingly in despair, he wrote in another letter that ‘my case is a mess’, and accused Rose of trying to break up the family.

But he could easily snap out of this gloom. One day Fred asked the prison warders for his clothes, convinced that he was about to go home.

Fred and Rose met again at another remand appearance at Gloucester Magistrates Court in December. By now they were jointly charged with nine murders, and Fred faced a further three murder charges, making a total of twelve. He appeared tired, and looked all of his fifty-three years. His hair, which had always been bushy, was cropped short, and a hearing-aid had recently been fitted because he was complaining of deafness. Two police women stood between Fred and Rose. He had been warned beforehand that Rose did not wish to talk to him. Rose glanced at her husband just once, giving no sign of the affection he craved.

When the New Year’s honours list was published on 31 December, Hazel Savage was at last recognised for her tenacity. She was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire, and her Chief Constable, Tony Butler, paid tribute to ‘an exceptional police career’.

On New Year’s morning, 1995, Fred rose as usual in his cell on the third floor of D-wing at Her Majesty’s Prison Winson Green. His was an old cell, painted cream, with a sink, toilet, and table and chair. The solid door had a spy-hole with a cover that flipped up so the warders could see in. As a remand prisoner, as yet convicted of no crime, Fred was allowed some home comforts. He had his own bed quilt, pillowcase and stereo music system. He had even put curtains up over the tiny, barred window that looked out on to the prison wall. Fred did not share the cell.

Prisoner WN 3617 dressed in issue clothing of brown jeans and a blue and white shirt. It was a cold day, with flurries of snow, so Fred also pulled on a warm sweatshirt and a brown prison-issue jacket. He had lost weight recently, and the clothes hung on him a little. After a breakfast of cereal and eggs, Fred went into the exercise area, where he was told he could choose a special New Year lunch. When he had made his decision, Fred went back to his cell to listen to compact discs on his portable stereo and write a note to Rose. It read:

To Rose West,

Happy new year darling. All my love, Fred West. All my love for ever and ever.

Despite the modest comforts he enjoyed, which are not unusual for remand prisoners, Fred was a desperately unhappy man, heartbroken that Rose had rejected him. Each time one of his children visited, Fred entreated them to tell Rose that he loved her, yet Rose sent no message back. He had not received one encouraging word from her since the day he was arrested – Rose had turned against Fred completely. At the end of their long relationship, it was she who had proved to be the stronger of the two, she who was fighting her case while Fred had given in and co-operated with police. (She had said nothing to them during a total of forty-six interviews between 23 April and 1 June, apart from asserting her innocence. In Fred’s case, on the other hand, the police had 6,189 pages of transcribed interviews – enough evidence to put him behind bars for life.) Because of this he was overwhelmed with depression, and often wept.

Fred was also worried that other prisoners wanted to harm him. The inmates in Winson Green had an ambivalent attitude towards Fred. On one hand they found him amusing, awarding him the macabre nickname ‘Digger’ and yelling out ‘Build us a patio, Fred!’ when he went by. But as a child-abuser and child-killer, he was detested in the same way as the sex offenders on the landing directly beneath him. He was relatively safe as long as he was segregated, but there were still times when Fred came into contact with other prisoners, and on these occasions he appeared to be aggressive, fixing a demented grin and warning anybody who came near to go away. This was only an act: in reality Fred was terrified. His fear had increased since November, when the American mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer had been battered to death by a fellow inmate in his Wisconsin gaol.

When Fred arrived at Winson Green there had been concern that he might take his own life. He was categorised as a ‘vulnerable prisoner’ because of his unstable mind, and was placed on suicide watch where a warder checked his cell every fifteen minutes. There were also random searches for implements he might use to try and kill himself. Fred gave the warders good reason to think he might attempt suicide, yelling out ‘I’m going to do it!’ when he was first brought in.

But Fred settled down after a few weeks. He even made the warders laugh by calling out cheery greetings to them in his rustic accent. ‘He would say, “Good morning, guv’nor,” like he was Farmer Giles leaning over a gate back in Gloucestershire,’ said one fellow inmate. Fred became so amenable, and cheerful, that he was soon put on a more relaxed regime.

At 11:30 on New Year’s morning Fred was allowed to collect his chosen meal of soup and pork chops, returning to his cell at twelve noon. When the door was locked behind him, Fred knew he would be left alone for one hour to eat. He listened to the warder walk away, and then turned from his food and pulled a sheet from his bed.

He tore the cotton sheet into strips and plaited these strips together until he had formed a strong ligature. Standing on a chair, Fred reached up and threaded one end of the ligature through the barred opening of the ventilation shaft above the door of his cell, tying it securely. He fashioned the other end into a noose, which he slipped over his head. Fred then kicked the chair from beneath him.

His neck did not break, so he did not die straight away. Instead he slowly strangled himself, suffering considerable pain.

Fifty-five minutes later, a prison officer returned to let Fred out to wash his plate, but the warder could not open the cell door. Fred’s body was holding it shut. Another officer quickly arrived on the landing and together they forced the heavy door open. They took Fred down and laid him on the bed. His body was still warm and they made strenuous attempts to revive him, trying both mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and heart massage. A nurse also rushed to help, but it was too late. By the time the doctor arrived, all that was left to do was to confirm that Fred West was dead.

Word of the suicide spread quickly through the echoing halls of the Victorian prison to the door of the deputy Governor. John Bennett was one of the first people he called.

The Detective Superintendent was spending the day at home with his family. He was feeling content with himself, having managed to catch up on his reading work, and was looking forward to a relaxing afternoon. The telephone call was a considerable surprise. John Bennett had feared that Fred might meet a violent end in prison, but not this. ‘We didn’t think he would top himself, but people thought it would be better if he was bumped off,’ he said. Ever mindful of the victims, John Bennett ordered his staff to get to Bearland and telephone all Fred’s relations and the families of all the victims. He said this had to be done before the press told them.

Rose received the news in Pucklechurch Prison in an official telephone call from the Home Office. Her solicitor, Leo Goatley, left a family party and drove straight to see his client. When he arrived, Rose was smoking heavily, but was composed and had not shed any tears. She had made no secret of her expressed hatred for Fred in recent months, and had assumed the air of a victim, crocheting baby clothes for her new grandchildren and making toy teddy bears in the prison workshop. She had also struck up a friendship with a 73-year-old nun named Sister Mary Paul, who visited Rose regularly to hear how Mrs West had been betrayed by her ‘rascal husband’. On this fateful day, Sister Mary was at her station and came to Rose’s cell. She suggested that they pray together.

Whatever Fred’s crimes, he was still a brother and father, and most of his relations were sorry for his death. Anna Marie said, ‘He was my dad and I loved him. No matter what people do you cannot turn away from your own parents.’ Hours later she was taken to hospital, where she was treated for an apparent overdose. Mae was driving to Oxford when she heard the news on the car radio; she turned onto a lay-by and cried. Steve, spending the day at the home of his parents-in-law, was so befuddled by tears that he could not make his fingers dial the correct number of the prison. Out at Much Marcle, Doug West shook his head in bewilderment, and said he could not believe Freddie had killed himself. He had gathered his thoughts by the morning, when he offered a considered apology to the families of Fred’s victims. ‘I would like to say how sorry I am to all those who have suffered as a result of what my brother did,’ he said.

There was little sympathy from the families of the victims. Alison Chambers’ mother, Joan Owen, said that, although she thought of herself as a Christian and would have liked to have seen Fred stand trial, she was glad that he was dead.

Fred’s death was front-page news in every national newspaper and led the television and radio bulletins. There was criticism in the press and from politicians of the prison service, and, ultimately, of the Home Secretary Michael Howard, for allowing Britain’s most notorious remand prisoner to take his own life and deprive the public, and the families of his victims, of a trial. Fred’s solicitors, Bobbetts Mackan, issued a statement describing their extreme surprise that such an event could have happened. Inquiries were launched by both West Midlands Police and the prison service. But the truth remains that if a prisoner is determined to take his own life, then there is little anybody can do to stop them.

A week after Fred’s death it was revealed that Hazel Savage had been speaking with a literary agent about writing her memoirs, including her account of the murder case. The Sunday Express newspaper suggested that a figure of £1 million was being asked. The news came after similar stories about Fred’s former solicitor, Howard Ogden, and one of Mr Ogden’s clerks. An inquiry was launched by the Police Complaints Authority, and Hazel was moved off the case to other duties – a humiliation for the woman who had done so much to bring the whole affair into the open.

Rose had been put on suicide watch in case she tried to follow Fred’s example, although she showed no signs of doing so. She was transferred to a special suite of rooms within the hospital wing of Pucklechurch Prison, where warders sat at her door watching her twenty-four hours a day. There was also concern that she was a target for other inmates, and additional security precautions were taken after threats were made. Rose’s meals were individually prepared and brought to her in sealed containers to prevent razor blades or ground glass being slipped into her food.

Her solicitor, Leo Goatley, suggested that Rose could not stand trial after Fred’s death. He said the case had always been flimsy and press reports had now made a fair trial impossible. He also claimed that Fred had exonerated his wife in interviews with detectives. The Crown Prosecution Service considered these points and decided that a pre-trial committal hearing would be held to test the prosecution’s evidence. At the same time it was announced that Rose was additionally charged with the murder of her stepdaughter, Charmaine, bringing the total of murder charges against her to ten.

The first of the funerals of Fred and Rose’s victims was held on 24 January, when Juanita Mott was buried. Family and friends gathered at St Oswald’s Church in Coney Hill, Gloucester, to sing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’, and remember a girl nobody had seen in nearly twenty years.

The committal hearing began the following Monday. A disused court-house at Dursley had been opened and decorated especially; over one hundred journalists arrived to cover the event. There were far too many reporters to fit into the courtroom, and most had to be content to sit in an annexe, where the proceedings were relayed through speakers. A few local people, mainly school children, lined up outside behind crowd barriers to jeer Rose’s arrival.

The case would be heard by the country’s most senior magistrate, 63-year-old former naval officer Peter Badge, a distinguished white-haired gentleman who peered at Rose through half-moon spectacles. Rose stood alone in the dock, wearing her customary large-framed spectacles and a voluminous white blouse. Ten charges of murder and two of rape were read out (the only murders she was not charged with were those of Rena Costello and Anna McFall, crimes for which there was not enough evidence to prove she had been involved). She pleaded not guilty to all charges. It was announced that the Crown would not continue with the charge of assault against an eight-year-old boy. Rose murmured that she understood and smiled as she was given leave to sit.

Rose’s defence team was represented by a petite junior barrister named Sasha Wass. (The leading defence counsel, Richard Ferguson QC, would only appear at any eventual trial.) Her case was that Rose ‘knew nothing of the victims, how they were killed and the bodies concealed’. The defence strategy was to try and have the proceedings stopped on the grounds of adverse publicity, an unreasonable delay in bringing the case to court, and insufficient evidence. Her legal argument continued for the rest of the day. As Rose’s van left the court at around 5 P.M., it was pelted with eggs; school children, grinning at their naughtiness, shouted: ‘Burn her!’

At the start of the second day, Peter Badge announced that he was not prepared to stay the proceedings. He did not agree with the defence’s claims and signalled for the Crown’s evidence to be heard.

The evidence against Rose was contained in over twenty-five lever-arch files and boxes of papers that were stacked chest-high in the gangways of the courtroom. The Crown’s prosecutor, Neil Butterfield QC, began by outlining the case against Rose, describing 25 Cromwell Street as ‘a charnel-house, a graveyard’ and the victims to have been the sexual playthings of Fred and Rose. He readily admitted that the prosecution had to rely upon circumstantial evidence, but said he was confident that it could prove that Rose had a strong, aberrant sexual appetite, and, with her husband, took pleasure from tying up and abusing young girls – and that this abuse ended in murder, either because of what they had done, or because they could not allow their victims to walk free.

Mr Butterfield then handed over to his junior, Andrew Chubb, who set about reading out the dozens of witness statements that would form the committal evidence against Rose. This process took up the next few days. Rose dabbed at her eyes during the most powerful passages of evidence, as if she were crying, but her demure performance was undermined when, on the fifth day of the hearing, tape recordings of Rose’s police interviews were played to the court. In marked contrast to the homely, unprepossessing woman in the dock, the court listened to a belligerent, foul-mouthed creature who spoke about Charmaine, Heather and Anna Marie in crude language entirely without love. When Rose was taken down to her cell, she ranted and raved about the evidence against her, cursing everybody in sight for the mess she considered herself to be in.

A rainstorm pounded the court-house roof on Monday morning as Neil Butterfield summed up for the prosecution. Sasha Wass for the defence said there was no evidence that Rose had murdered anybody. She said that Rose’s unusual sex life did not mean she was a killer: ‘The lesbian activities of Mrs West, and the hideous and yet unknown activities of Mr West, when the girls were killed and chopped up, are separate. There is no evidence at all that Mrs West was involved in that.’

On Tuesday morning Peter Badge informed Rose that there was enough evidence for the case to go to court, and that he was committing her for trial. In a surprise move, she was also charged with two new rape offences on two young girls in the 1970s. These offences were committed jointly with Fred, it was alleged. She was also charged with two counts of indecent assault.^* At the same time, joint charges of rape against her and two other Gloucester men were dropped.

Rose left the dock, her face betraying no emotion.

Shortly after the hearing, Rose was transferred from Pucklechurch to a maximum-security wing at Durham Prison, where it was felt she would be more secure. She became one of forty-eight prisoners of the gaol’s refurbished maximum-security H-block, and found herself alongside convicted terrorists and other hardened criminals. Soon after her arrival she was joined by Britain’s other most infamous female prisoner, the Moors murderess Myra Hindley, who had been moved to Durham after serving many years at Cookham Wood in Kent, where she had recently been refused parole. The women could not help meeting each other and struck up something of a friendship when they did, cooking together and watching television. They were particularly amused by the Australian series Prisoner: Cell Block H.

Fred’s corpse remained refrigerated in the Birmingham city morgue, although the coroner was ready to release it. Fred had apparently held very particular ideas about his final resting place. He had told Anna Marie that, in the event of his death, he wanted to be buried in the family plot at St Bartholomew’s, Much Marcle; he hoped that she, too, would be buried next to him when her time came. Steve claimed that his father had asked for an arched marble headstone, inscribed ‘Dad’. Fred stressed that he wanted to be buried because he was terrified of the idea of cremation.

In the end, Fred’s funeral was as wretched as his whole life had been. Anna Marie and Doug West were furious when they learned that undertakers employed by Steve and Mae had secretly removed Fred’s body from the morgue. The funeral took place two days later on Wednesday 29 March 1995, at Canley Crematorium near Coventry. Several other crematoria had refused to accept the body. Fred’s simple casket, made of pale wood, bore a plaque inscribed ‘F. W. West’. The only mourners were Steve, his wife Andrea, and sisters Mae and Tara. They were matched in number by representatives of the Sun newspaper, on hand to record the event for the next day’s edition.

The hurried ceremony lasted just a few minutes. There were no hymns. The Reverend Robert Simpson read from the 23rd Psalm, and added, ‘We should have a quiet moment of reflection for the life of Fred West and pray for his family. We must also remember in our prayers everyone else who has suffered because of these tragic events.’

Fred’s casket then rolled behind the screen and was consumed by the flames he had so feared. It is ironic that, on the very day Fred was cremated, Hazel Savage was officially charged by Gloucestershire police with discreditable conduct for trying to sell her memoirs of the case. The news would no doubt have given him satisfaction.

Rose let it be known that she had taken no part in the arrangements for the funeral, and was not interested in the outcome. But as she sat in her cell in the echoing vastness of Durham Prison, with Myra Hindley a few doors away, it is hard to believe that she did not reflect on what the future held for her without Fred. She alone would now stand trial for their crimes; she alone would suffer the retribution. Perhaps that is what Fred intended for her when he wrote this apparent suicide note^** which was later found in his cell:

To Rose West, Steve and Mae,

Well Rose it’s your birthday on 29 November 1994 and you will be 41 and still beautiful and still lovely and I love you. We will always be in love.

The most wonderful thing in my life was when I met you … our love is special to us. So, love, keep your promises to me. You know what they are. Where we are put together for ever and ever is up to you. We loved Heather, both of us. I would love Charmaine to be with Heather and Rena.

You will always be Mrs West, all over the world. That is important to me and to you.

I haven’t got you a present. All I have is my life. I will give it to you, my darling. When you are ready, come to me. I will be waiting for you.

Underneath was a drawing of a gravestone. Fred had written this inscription:

In loving memory

FRED WEST ROSE WEST

Rest in peace where

no shadow falls

In perfect peace he

waits for Rose, his wife

^*The girls involved in these charges cannot be named for legal reasons.

^**Corrections have been made to spelling and grammar.