RedHanded - Episode 27 - The Wests & the Cellar at Number 25 Cromwell Street - Part 1

Episode Date: January 4, 2018

Incest, rape, murder and torture dungeons; in a harrowing part 1 the girls take on one of Britain's most notorious serial killer couples - Fred and Rose West. Over a span of 25 years this pair of sexual sadists carried out unspeakable evil in their cellar at the now infamous 25 Cromwell St, and when the truth was finally revealed it shocked the world.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, the Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi Red Handers, Happy New Year. And because this is our first episode of 2018, we've switched up the order a little bit, but don't panic. All of our thank yous will be at the end. So just hang on. Let's get on with it yeah see you even got the killing wrong you're trying to make it i just went out

and blatantly killed somebody, nobody went to hell. Enjoyment turned to disaster. That's what happened to all of them. Or most of them anyway. It's surprising how long somebody can hold you in the neck before you really have to do something. I mean, I can undo three quarter nuts without a spanner. Just lock them on and turn them on and undo them. Yeah, but there was this great thing that she was on about in the van, she was going to sound rape through and everything helped. And the whole fear,

and this is something that we've got to go into, was the biggest fear that was in me was, well, and for the rest of the other women. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And this is Red Handed. And today, due to popular demand, we're going to be covering the case of Fred and Rose West. Hannah's choice, first and foremost. Hannah won.

Yes. And I feel like I was rather cavalier when we decided to do this. I'll be like, oh, I'll do the research. research that's fine I got this one. Oh my god I've had quite a troublesome couple of days but let's jump straight in. Number 25 Cromwell Street is one of the most infamous addresses in England and it's where a very ordinary looking couple Fred and Rose West lived with their 11 children and it was just your N Terrace house in Gloucester. It even shared a wall with a church. But it was the site of one of the most horrific crimes in Britain, and home to two of the most prolific serial killers in history. I did know this case, but before I looked into it in this much detail, I didn't have an idea of just how depraved it really was.

And today's case is absolute true crime bingo. Rape, murder, torture, dungeons, kidnapping, incest, even fucking ghosts. This is truly one of the worst cases that I've ever come across. And I have to say, if anyone wants to lose a little bit of weight after the holidays, I can definitely recommend the Fred and Rosemary West diet because I may never eat again after spending the last few days with these monsters. So if you're eating, stop it. Stop it right now and carry on eating after we've finished or never again. Never ever again. No eating for you. I think this case is particularly interesting because it's quite often when we research something, we're like, oh yeah, I kind of know that one, but I'm not really sure. And then you look into it and you're like, yeah, that's exactly what I thought it was.

Not the case. No, definitely not. Right. I hope you've put down your knife and fork. The pair really were just your bog standard couple. He was a builder in his 50s and she was in her late 30s. And they've been together for 22 years. And they had absolutely loads of kids.

Everything seemed pretty normal. sort of dull even. I do wonder, 11 is quite a lot of children, even for them. I know, but I think it was like he'd been married twice, they had collected these children in other ways, they weren't all Freda and Rosemary West's kids. Yeah, that's true. They were child collectors. But on the 24th of February, 1994, the two spent their last night together

as the truth about the depravity that had been taking place in that house was finally discovered. And before we get into what these two did, to really understand it, we need to start right at the beginning with the backstories of Frederick and Rosemary West. Fred was born in the village of Muchmarkle in Herefordshire. His family were farm labourers, so the rural poor, really. It's suspected that his parents, Walter and Daisy West,

couldn't even read or write. They had six children, of which Fred was the eldest, and he was Daisy's absolute favourite. His mother was aggressively protective of Fred, to the point of belligerence. She'd go to his school and scream at the teachers if they ever dared to discipline Fred. Can you imagine how embarrassed you would be if your mum, like, bowled into school, started shouting at everyone? I think he loved it. Oh no, he loved it, but I'm saying that like... Yeah, yeah, oh my god. It was always my fault, it was never the teacher's fault

when I was at school with my parents. This is where we're just going to start ticking things off the serial killer list, this is when we start the ball rolling. This overbearing, domineering woman absolutely shaped Fred's perception of women. Classic overbearing mother. And when you look at the majority of serial killers, they nearly always cite an overbearing mother as the start of their rage towards women. But what may have seemed like an idyllic countryside upbringing for Fred was anything but. And by Fred's own account, sexual abuse was rife in the family. He claimed that his father had sexually abused his daughters and encouraged Fred to even take part. Fred also admitted that he had often raped his sisters with his father, once even getting one of his sisters pregnant when he was a teenager. He also claimed

that his father had even taught him bestiality by showing him how to have sex with sheep. It was also suspected that his mother was sexually abusing him, even taking Fred's virginity when he was just 12. Now, the abuse Fred suffered and the abuse he doled out during his formative years really laid the foundation for what was to come. This sexual abuse throughout his whole life to such an unbelievable level, it's completely normalised for Fred because his parents are the one that's teaching him it. And I do think that the humiliation and lack of control that he would have experienced at this age

could have contributed to him wanting to humiliate and dominate others in his life. And he does do that, as we'll see. Fred left school at age 15, even though he was almost illiterate. And he got a job as a farmhand in Much Markle. Age 16, he actually started getting quite a bit of attentions from girls because he was relatively attractive then relative to what when he was a teenager he was like genuinely like relatively attractive but at age 17 he was in a serious motorcycle accident it left him in a coma for a week and led him to having a metal plate

placed in his head he also broke one of his legs so badly that it was permanently shorter than the other. It was in the 50s, so Fred was definitely not wearing a helmet and the crash had shattered his skull. And a force like that acting on the front of the head can absolutely damage the brain. And if there had been damage to the frontal cortex, it would have totally short-circuited the part of the brain responsible for impulse control and emotional decision making. The frontal cortex can even be described as where your conscience lives. And so it's totally unsurprising that damage through childhood head injuries affecting this part of the brain is super common in serial killers. Damage to the frontal cortex can be implicated in psychopathy. So it's the classic question, nature versus nurture.

Is a psychopath born or is psychopathy created? And I definitely think it's both, but let's discuss this after we look at Rose's backstory too. What's important to know now is that people definitely felt that the accident had changed Fred. He became much more aggressive and he developed a bad temper and started to have violent bursts of anger. And he was now outwardly starting to act inappropriately with girls. He was forceful, grabby and just constantly harassing young girls. Two years after the crash Fred hurt his head yet

again when, oh my god I can't even say it, when he stuck his hand up a girl's skirt and furious, rightly so, she pushed him down a fire escape and he fell 10 foot smashing onto a concrete floor he's then again unconscious for 24 hours and after this the change to his behavior and his appearance was even more pronounced experts in this field say we are not as in control of our behavior as we would like to think our behavior is totally biologically driven. I find that argument really interesting. It's a double-edged sword really, isn't it? Because like, you can just be like, oh well it's not my fault, it's all biology, but then it's like, do I actually

have any free will at all? The abusive behaviour continued, not bloody helped by his father, who had given Fred, as a child, just about the worst advice you could give a child with psychopathic leanings, let's say. He said to Fred when he was a child, do what you want to, just don't get caught. His advice on women, even better, if it's up for grabs, take it. And take it he did, even when it wasn't up for grabs. And when he was 19, he was convicted of raping and impregnating a 13-year-old girl in the village. His response when caught and confronted, I think, shocked everyone even more than what he had done. All he said was, I had no problem with it, everyone does it. And once again, just like he had his entire life, he escapes any kind of punishment,

as the trial in 1961 completely collapsed when the victim refused to testify. And with no sex offenders register at the time, he was just released with no one keeping tabs on him. And you see this time and time again with Fred, is that he rapes his sister. That kind of accusation falls apart because his sister won't testify against him. His father is telling him, do what you want, just don't get caught. His mother is defending him at every turn when anyone tries to even discipline him like teachers, which is desperately what young Fred needed, was discipline and not be

in this environment. He just escapes punishment time and time again, so there's never any consequences for his actions. And he's already got, like you said, psychopathic tendencies. This is just absolutely the worst environment to be or the best environment to be creating a little serial killer psychopath do you really think that he genuinely thought everyone goes around raping other people he wasn't a very smart person when he left school they said that he had like a reading writing and mental ability of like maybe a seven or eight year old. Maybe he was like somewhat mentally challenged and lacking that ability to empathise, not knowing what other people are thinking or what other people are doing. So not even seeing other people as sentient

beings who have their own thoughts, their own actions. So he may have been thinking, I behave like this, my family behave like this, so surely everyone behaves like this. And I almost think, is that on Fred? He's watching his dad have sex with underage girls, apparently, raping his own daughters. He's taking part in all of this. Why wouldn't you think that everybody behaves like that? Why is it a huge leap then as a teenager to go and rape a 13-year-old?

I can believe that he did genuinely think everyone was doing it. But what's fucked up is that he has no internal moral compass to know instinctively that that is wrong. Baffling, isn't it? But I completely agree with your argument. Like, if you have no other frame of reference, why would you believe any different? He has no other frame of reference and, dangerously, no sort of internal compass to tell him that this is also wrong.

He lacks that instinct and that empathy, as well as no sort of learned behaviour of what is right and what's wrong because his parents were so fucked up. But at this point, surprisingly, they decide that him raping this 13-year-old is a step too far, and even his own disgusting family disown him. I guess they just couldn't have a liability like him around maybe because what he can rape his sisters but don't go rape some random 13 year old. Maybe it was the whole do what you want but don't get caught and Fred had got caught and they couldn't deal with that.

I don't know that's the only reason I can think that they were annoyed by what he had done. So Fred now disowned sort of living a life on his own. And in 1962, age 18, he meets 16-year-old Rina Costello. And she was a kid from Glasgow, very much living on the fringes of society. She already had a record by this point, often turning to sex work to support herself. And she'd been sent to England for Borstal. Should we explain what Borstal is? Oh yeah, go for it. Borstal's a prison.

But it's like for kids, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, it's like a young offenders unit. Is Borstal like one place? Or is it like what they call all these young offenders institutes? I think it's one place but has become like the term. For young offenders institutes? Okay.

That's what it is. It's for kids, basically, that are reckless or whatever. And so these two get together. And unsurprisingly, they're both complete tearaways and on their own, and they fight constantly. And soon she leaves him and moves back to Scotland. But two years later, she comes back to Gloucester. And this time, she comes back pregnant, courtesy of a Pakistani bus driver that she'd been dating in Scotland. Now, Fred is so weirdly excited by her pregnancy, and he keeps telling her that he could perform an abortion and

we'll see this time and time again he's obsessed with the idea of performing abortions on women he can't even read how is he going to perform an abortion it's so strange i have no idea but she decides i don't know thankfully is even the right word considering what happens but she decides to keep it and they get married and they move to scotland together and they just tell everyone while reena is pregnant that the baby is f's. But when the baby, Charmaine, arrived in 1963, mixed race and obviously not Fred's, they just tell everyone that their baby had died so they'd adopted this little mixed race baby. Makes sense. Once in Glasgow, Fred learns that Rina was in fact a stripper and a sex worker. And that bus driver ex-boyfriend of hers,

father of Charmaine, was actually her pimp. A bus driving pimp. There you go. The plan was that Rina would teach Fred about the trade and he would be her driver when she worked. And where did she work? She worked at the fucking Barrowlands. Like that blew my mind. Genuinely, when I read that, my mouth dropped to the floor. Listen to our episode on Bible John, one of our earlier ones. So the Barrowlands is a club in Glasgow where the mystery serial killer Bible John hunted for his victims. And now it's also a favourite haunt of Fred West. What is wrong with that place? Anyway, eventually, Fred got Rena pregnant, and she had a baby girl, Anne-Marie West.

And tragically, Anne-Marie would go on to suffer all of Fred West's sexual depravity, but unlike her half-sister Charmaine, she would survive. But before we dive into that, in in 1964 Fred took a job driving an ice cream van and this is when he met his first his very first victim Anna McFall. An ice cream van are you serious like that is the most predatory thing I can possibly think of. Do you remember that ice cream van that used to drive past my old house and it played Strangers in the Night? What song would Fred West's ice cream van play? Strangers in the Night! Strangers in the Night. It was Fred West outside your house. Seriously, it's so creepy. You're right, predatory is the word. He even killed a child with his ice cream van. He hit a four-year-old

boy with it and got away with it. Again, it's another crime he gets away with. It's just ruled as an accident and he gets away with it. This man, he another crime he gets away with. It's just ruled as an accident and he gets away with it. This man, he never learns a lesson for his actions. Driving this van is how he comes across Anna McFall. And he said that when they met, he fell in love with her immediately because she was so beautiful. Anna was working as a sex worker when Fred met her. And he said he wanted to save her because she was an angel. It's all very romantic for a man like Fred West. He's so disgusting. Apparently, according to Fred, he finds Anna in a state.

She's crying and sobbing. So he takes her home and told Rina that Anna was going to work for them from now on, looking after Anne-Marie and Charmaine. So that's it now. He's just moved this other woman into their house? So now in this house that they're living in, it's Fred West, Anna McFall, Rena Costello, Charmaine, and Anne-Marie, the two children. What became really weird in the dynamic in this house was that Rena and Anna were total opposites, and Fred saw them as two very different

types of women. Anna was distraught by her situation having to engage in sex work. She was genuinely loved looking after the children and every day as soon as Fred came in from work she would tell him non-stop about what the girls had been up to all day. She genuinely loved them and she loved being the nanny. But Rina on the other hand would usually be out all night coming in at about three or four five in the morning after a night out working or partying, and she'd come home and just fall asleep or pass out drunk. Eventually, Rina, bored by Fred, leaves him and her children. That's what I find weird. Yes, leave him, but why are you leaving

your children with him? She leaves her children with him and heads back to Scotland. So Fred took the children and moved back to Much Markle, but social services soon intervened and took them away because no one was looking after kids while he was at work. So Anna McFall comes to the rescue and moves in with him so that she could look after the kids. And predictably,

her and Fred start a relationship. And once again, soon Anna McFall is also pregnant. I feel like he's got super sperm. Like, honestly. I just don't even want to think about it. He's such a gross man. So now all these kids, Fred, Anna, all living in this like caravan in Much Markle. And suddenly one day Rina turns up out of the blue to find Fred and Anna living

together with her children. Fred was really worried by this. And it is weird because he seems to genuinely worry about what the women in his life think maybe it was because reena was a domineering personality that fred was scared of being caught with now a heavily pregnant anna but i mean he doesn't seem like a submissive guy no but i think it comes back to his mother oh it always does doesn't it yeah i think in that house that his mother was domineering over his father. I think there was just this feeling of like not getting caught cheating on your woman. I think he was scared by domineering women.

He wasn't submissive. But we see this with Rina Costello. We see this to go on with Rose. And we see this all having started, I think, with his mum. So when he's living with Anna and with Rina and we've got this Madonna whore thing going on, surely he's sleeping with both of them at this point. We don't know. It doesn't seem like the relationship with Anna starts until Rina leaves.

Okay. But Fred always said that he was in love with Anna from the moment he saw her. So I don't know. But she doesn't get pregnant until Rina leaves. And the 1967 Gloucester Carnival. Carnival is not like Carnival like yeah no no no no it's like a country fair with like maybe like a rickety ferris wheel and you can throw balls at things and knock them off things to win like a Pikachu like it's that sort of situation so yeah Gloucester

Carnival was the last time anyone saw Anna McFall alive Fred would later tell police that Rina and her pimp Rolf had gone after Anna when they realised that she was pregnant, saying that Rina had stabbed Anna and put her in a suitcase. And heartbroken, he had buried her at their special place in a field in Much Markle, the fields he used to plough when he was a boy. I think this is bollocks. Why would he know that they put her in a suitcase? That's such a specific detail to know. Because he said that when... Because Rolf and Rina went to look for Anna when they found out she was pregnant, apparently,

and that Anna apparently lost her mind and stabbed her to death. And then Rolf came and found Fred and was like, oh my God, man, Rina's gone mad and killed Anna. We need to get rid of the body. And then he was there during the whole suitcase putting in situation. But he's basically saying, I had nothing to do with Anna's death. I just disposed of her body. This is awful.

When the police eventually found Anna's body, the foetus inside her had been cut out. And this is why I think it was Fred, because he was the one that was fucking obsessed with abortions. I mean, it's a sick way to undo a pregnancy, isn't it? But I feel like if you were Rina and you wanted her dead, you'd just kill her. It was Fred.

Fred cut it out. Maybe he didn't do the killing of Anna, but he definitely cut out the baby, I think. Whether Rina had anything to do with Anna's murder or not, she wasn't winning any prizes for Mother of the Year because she leaves again and once again leaves her two children in the hands of Fred West. And in the summer of 1969, Fred, now 28, finally met 16-year-old Rose Letts and it was your classic love story. Boy

meets girl, drastically too young for him, she gets pregnant, they get married and everything seems pretty normal, at least outwardly. Now Rose gives birth to baby Heather and while Fred took Heather as his own, there was a lot of speculation that Heather may have in fact been Rose's father's baby, which seems like the right place to jump into the question of who was Rose West? Now Rose West was born Rosemary Letts on the 29th of November 1953 in Devon. She was the fifth child of electrician Bill Letts and his wife Daisy Letts and the Letts home was an abusive one and mental illness was rife. Bill was a schizophrenic and Daisy had severe depression. She'd even undergone brutal electroshock convulsive therapy while she was eight months pregnant with Rose. And this was 1953.

Just imagine how horrific that would have been. I mean, I'm picturing something like from a horror film. But I think that's what it's like, though. I don't think it's that exaggerated when you see it in film. And I think definitely back then. And the fact that... You don't believe in ghosts? I get it.

Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained.

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surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. But they did it on her when she was eight months pregnant. That's enough to induce like labor. But given all of this, there was definitely a high chance that Rose inherited some form of mental illness.

Or at the very least was predisposed to something. And as a child, Rose was slower than most children, earning her the nickname Dozy Rosie. Daisy described Bill as a heller. He was an absolute monster of a man and a violent totalitarian who beat his wife and his children mercilessly. Curiously, however, he never hit Rose. I think we see a similarity here between their upbringings. Fred is like golden boy. Rose is never hit rose i think we see we see a similarity here between their upbringings as fred is like golden boy rose is never hit by her dad but being a favorite in this house or in fred's house being the favorite both of them didn't turn out that well yeah not ideal not the ideal situation to be in it's because for rose the beatings were substituted with regular sexual

abuse the abuse started at an early age with Rose and shockingly carried on well into her marriage with Fred. Hence why Rose could not be totally sure if Heather, her daughter, was her father's or whether it was Fred's. And apparently Fred had absolutely no problem with this at all because Fred didn't see incest as abnormal. And to quote him, her father was making love to her. She was more willing than he was. He wasn't sexually abusing her.

I caught them loads of times. And what does that say about him? He sees his father-in-law fucking his wife and he's like, yep, fine. This is completely fine. That's the thing. His whole childhood normalised incest and rape and sexual abuse that he didn't see them as problems.

By the time Fred and Rose met, Fred was already a killer. We know that he had, at least by this point, already killed Anna McFall. And now he had met someone with similar predilections. Rose hadn't killed anyone yet, but she would, because Fred took a victim of sexual abuse who had only ever known how to hurt others, be her, and see people be her, and shaped her into a serial killer. She was to be his protégé. And she was perfect. She had the genetic dice loaded against her from

birth. She already showed psychopathic tendencies like a lack of empathy and anger issues and the severe abuse of her formative years in that violent home. Of course, absolutely not all kids who are abused go on to be abusers. Most don't, but Rose did. And it's probably because of a psychological coping mechanism called identification with the aggressor. Basically, in her mind, it would have felt like, and I don't know how much of this would be a conscious decision, but really the idea of like, if you can't beat them, join them. She had the potential, and Fred opened the door and led her to become the cold, calculated sexual sadist she would end up becoming. And we're absolutely not taking any blame away from Rose at all. But she had an awful childhood, but so did Fred,

and so did almost every serial killer out there, and loads of people who aren't serial killers have shitty fucking childhood. It's not a guarantee, and it doesn't excuse it. What's very interesting with Rose is I think she's so different to Myra Hindley. I think you could argue with Myra... I mean, maybe I'll change my mind when we cover it, but I think with Myra, you could much more convincingly argue that she was coerced. By the end, Rose isn't needing any coercion at all.

She knows exactly what she's doing. We're sort of coming on to nature versus nurture now, aren't we? The age old debate, because genetically, both of them, in my opinion, have a huge predisposition to psychopathy. The environment in which they are raised is awful. And then it just takes the trigger, a knock to the head, a stressor, a trauma to fire that loaded gun and boom, that's it. We both spend a lot of time thinking about this. I think you can be predisposed to psychopathy, but more times than not, something needs to trigger it. Something needs to happen

absolutely i think you know you can have the so to speak the sort of genetic dice loaded against you can have the predisposition to psychopathy towards even other things they have that gene called the warrior gene which you know suppresses people's impulse control makes them more prone to violence and anger and not the and have no ability to control themselves but I genuinely think you need to have some sort of environmental factors something influencing in your formative years in your upbringing and some sort of like trigger to spark that to be seen in you and there's a really interesting TEDx that's delivered by a neuroscientist and if I can find it I'll post it I do think some of the things he's saying, he's a bit full of shit. Because basically, the story is that he was doing a study on serial

killers and psychopaths. And he didn't have enough scans for the sample brain scans, he just chucked a brain scan of himself in there and like some brain scans of his family or whatever. And then when the results came back, he was looking at this brain scan that was his didn't realize it was his because it was a blind sample. And he was like was like oh this goes in the psychopath pile because look at the parts of the brain that are inactive and he realized that it was him and he realized that he had the genetic predisposition and the sort of the warrior gene underlying in his genetic makeup but because he had he didn't have an abusive childhood he never had any triggers that had triggered this to activate he had never outwardly shown aggression or violence or anything like that no blunt force trauma to the head but we

see this like so many people if you look at the different populations of professions and how many psychopaths exist in those like with things like ceos lawyers surgeons there's a very high proportion of people who are it's like three times as much as the average population I think it's like one percent in the average population versus three percent within certain professions so not everybody who was a psychopath obviously goes on to be a killer but you take that psychopathic tendencies add in the abuse of sexual trauma all of that and then go and that's when we see someone like fred and rose west form but why rose is what's so interesting because she is not unique in a woman that faced

sexual abuse as a child what's interesting about rose like because people do ask us to cover more female killers and usually the cases just aren't that interesting like women tend to poison and it tends to be for money or revenge or something it's usually quite calculated and rose i do think is quite unique certainly in the uk of just being a sadist and it's so rare that you see that in women 100 i think that's the thing is that female killers isn't that rare but they they kill for revenge, they kill for money, they kill for things like that. It's much more rare that a woman kills for sexual gratification. And Rose being a sexual sadist is what makes her so much of an anomaly. She's completely horrifyingly fascinating.

And absolutely, it's a total myth that women are less destructive. It's more rare, of course, but in the right context, given the right circumstances, like with Rose, it can absolutely happen. And Fred totally made the most of it. So the two of them engage in their sexual perversions, all of this while these children are living in this house. And Rose was no caring stepmother to Charmaine and Anne-Marie. Now, when Rose was pregnant with Heather, Fred was sent to jail for a petty crime and she was left to look after the girls. And she beats them terribly. She even starts to sexually abuse the two young girls.

And this is the earliest sign we see of sexual sadism in Rose. And note, I think this is so, so important to note, Fred isn't around forcing her to do this. He's in prison. She is with these girls on her own and doing this totally because she her to do this. He's in prison. She is with these girls on her own and doing this totally because she wants to do this. I think that is so important. And this isn't towards the end. This is right at the start. She's not even been born yet. So one day she took these beatings too far and ends up killing eight-year-old Charmaine. And there's a lot of confusion over

exactly what happened on this day but there's no doubt in my mind that Fred knew. So they buried the child under the bathroom at their house 25 Midland Road. And the Wests simply tell everyone that Rina came back and took her daughter to Scotland and no one questioned it until August 1971 when Rina came back looking for Charmaine and this would be her undoing. They couldn't lie to Rina and she would surely go to the police so they killed her and they buried her in Much Markle in the next field over from where Anna McFall was buried and yet again they got away with it. It's mind-blowing because murder genuinely is solving their problems at this point. They're just picking people off, being like, oh, you're a bit inconvenient, next.

So they had absolutely no incentive to stop what they were doing. So they just keep going. And just months later, they moved into number 25 Cromwell Street. I don't think it's standing anymore. I think they knocked it down because people kept coming to look at it. They they've knocked it down it's just like a it's just like a walkway now and it's here they build almost a self-contained brothel on the top floor and fred started pimping rose out rose will have learned early on from her father that if you do things that people like sexually you don't get hurt as much.

And I'm sure she was of the mind that you do what you're told to do and you get used to it. I mean, she suffered an entire childhood of sexual abuse. Not even a childhood, apparently it carried on into her adult life. She will absolutely have totally disassociated, completely detached. I think she could probably just do whatever without even having to be there mentally. If she's disassociated from sex because of the abuse that she suffered, why is she actively seeking out to abuse other children? I think that, I think it is fair to say that in cases of sexual abuse, especially when it starts very young, because that abuse is the way you are exposed to sexuality, therefore your sexuality develops in a way that kind of mirrors it.

Not necessarily all the time. And I think you could say that Rose's sexuality has developed into what we would see as abusive because that is what happened to her. Yes, absolutely. And I think, of course, not all people that are sexually abused go on to behave this way. The reason she did is because she had the underlying tendencies already there towards psychopathy. And this is why. You take someone that is predisposed to psychopathy, you sexually abuse them, you fuse those things together, and going forward, there is a high, high chance that that person will turn into a sexual sadist. And it's just much more rare that we see that in women. But Rose West is an absolute living proof that you can see that in women. It's just shocking because it's so rare.

And number 25 Cromwell Street really will form the basis for much of this story. And as you said, they had to knock it down. Like, it's one of the most notorious places. Or it was one of the most notorious places, or it was one of the most notorious places in England because of what happened there. And while they lived there, it was an absolutely squalid house. It was full of pornography and sexual paraphernalia. They had all these rooms for Rose to go sleep with men with cameras and peepholes everywhere because Fred would record it all and he was obsessed with watching other men have sex with Rose. And this was the upstairs. And compared to what they were doing down in the cellar,

you can call it the respectable half of the house because the cellar was where the real depravity took place. I'd forgotten about the cellar. And we'll get on to that next episode. But now we're going to focus on the children. Aside from Anne-Marie and Heather, the West would go on to eventually have 11 children. But only four of them would be Fred's because the rest of them would be born to men Rose had slept with in the brothel. Fred

didn't care. These children were to serve their sexual needs. The two had plans to start what they called Our Family of Love, which just really reminds me of the Children of God cult. Have you seen Tony Robbins, like an American motivational speaker, someone who had grown up in the Children of God came to one of his seminars and she was like, I can't function after leaving this cult because I was told my whole life that I exist only for sex and that sex and love are the same thing. Really harrowing. This definitely, we're going to have to put a trigger warning here. We don't usually, and we certainly won't be going into the details of the child abuse, but we are going to be discussing it further, so just be prepared.

Anne-Marie and Heather would bear the brunt of their parents' sexual depravity. They were born and brought up to be broken in, which is just the most vile turn of phrase. Fred and Rose raped Anne-Marie constantly, Rose holding her down while Fred ravaged her. They tie her up and gag her. And as Fred would rape her, Rose would whisper soothingly into her ear to tell her to be grateful.

She would tell her that they were helping her because now she'd know how to please a man when she was older. After the abuse, they would gently bathe her and treat her to cream cakes. Even when she testified against them decades later, she would say they had been so kind, so kind afterwards. And that's conditioning, isn't it? It's positive reinforcement. Of course.

And for years, Anne-Marie was not only abused by her parents, but also by the clients who came to the basement room, the brothel in the cellar basically. And even by her uncle, John West, who killed himself while awaiting trial. And her father even made instruments of torture for Anne-Marie. Things like this were necessary for a sexual sadist and a monster like Fred West because the thrill of sexual sadism has diminishing returns. If you just keep doing the same thing, the fear will eventually drop in the victim and the fear is what gets you off. So you have to keep increasing the level of torture and the level of degradation that you are inflicting upon your victim to get the same kick for you. And still, even after her eventual escape, so she left when she was like 16, she escapes and she runs away.

But even then, she still sent Mother's Day cards and Father's Day cards home to these people because she didn't know any different. And a perfect example of what is going on here, psychologically speaking, is the experiment, for example, with the monkeys that they did. And if you take a baby monkey away from its mother and replace it with a toy, the baby will cling to the toy when it's scared or needing affection. Even if you cover the toy in sharp spikes, the monkey will still cling to it because the child loves its mother and Anne-Marie never complained because she didn't even know she was being abused. Finally though, in April 1992, social services and the police got involved when Fred was suspected of raping one of the girls

but she refused to give testimony so the case fell apart. However, this instance revealed that Heather West was missing. She hadn't been seen since 1987, and she would have been about 16. And it had been reported to them at the time, but the family had said she'd run off to work at Butlin's or some bollocks. Can you imagine? Like, that's the first thing you think of? Yeah, she's run off because she wants to go and be a red coat of butlins. Unbelievable. But now, with these fresh

suspicions, Heather's case was reopened. Heather was absent from many of the home videos that the Wests were obsessed with, which seems odd. Like, why would you be documenting? Well, I suppose if it's through the looking glass, isn't it? the same same as gypsy rose having these happy family videos you could say well how can anyone possibly say that we're being abusive when look at all of these videos everyone's so happy all the time i think this is the most famous part of this case it was the children who were now in care that revealed a little family joke that heather was dead and buried under the patio in the garden. It took another 18 months before they could get a warrant to dig up the garden at Cromwell Street and they dug for weeks,

not finding a single thing. That was until the home office pathologist made a discovery and on February 24th 1994 they found the thigh bone of a young woman, but there was so much more. And you can tell in the interview with him in this that he just loves to tell this story, because during the interviews in this documentary, he even says, I was stood waist deep in mud and sewage and pulled out another bone. And I turned mischievously to the detective and I said, well, there's another thigh bone. So either she had three legs, or I've got another body. That makes me feel uncomfortable. I know but you work with dead bodies maybe like as a pathologist.

Yeah. Just got a dark sense of humour. Yeah exactly. I think you'd probably need it in that job. Yeah. Yeah so we're gonna stop there because this is this is gonna be a two-parter. So next episode we're gonna be talking about the excavations at number 25 Cromwell Street. We're going to be going into the cellar at number 25 Cromwell Street, which is not a place that you want to hang out, but we will be going there. And we'll talk about the arrests and what happened afterwards. Yeah. Be sure to come back next week.

Well, because this one was so, so heavy, we felt like we needed to break it up. We're going to cheer ourselves up now by reading out our patreon supporters for this week we hope you all had a wonderful christmas and thank you so much to mary fewer another mary mary borsolino ryan holy naomi violet mary thatcher and marie s a lot of marys this week yeah loads of marys and five star review thank yous I feel better already. I know. I feel like very relieved. So firstly we have Cracking Happy who left us a

lovely five star review saying that the podcast is awesome, it's good research and recitation of the facts. No real silliness but you do chase the occasional rabbit but that's fine. If we didn't chase the occasional rabbit I don't know what we'd do. We've got to give ourselves something.

We've got to chase those rabbits. We're like the pathologists in Cromwell Street. We've got to crack the jokes or we'll just be crying. Also from Ruska3, who said, My favourite pod, myths are fun and sombre at the right times. Loves how we flow and loves the cases, most of which they've never heard of. And we've got Red Flavour, who spells flavour without a U, so I'm guessing you're from somewhere on the North American continent. And they say that we are meticulous true crime.

We craft definitive, understandable timelines and are not afraid to disagree, poking holes in stories and alibis. Apparently we're not robotic or rehearsed, which is nice. And they also say that we are a bi-weekly treat. I am confused by this because I have heard people from the United States say bi-weekly and mean once a week. Am I wrong in thinking that bi-weekly is twice a week and bi-monthly is twice a month? Yes, you're right. But we're not. On the dollop, they say we're a bi-monthly is twice a month. Yes, you're right. But we're not. On the dollop,

they say, we're a bi-weekly podcast. And that means this week I'm reading a story. And I'm like, well, what? Isn't it every other week? I don't understand. I mean, I don't understand some things they say. Like when they say I could give a shit. Don't you mean I couldn't give a shit? Yeah. I could care less. That's another one. I could care less where he is. Do you mean you couldn't care less where he is? Someone explain it to us. Because guys, that doesn't make any sense. Yeah, literally educate us.

You did us so solid with the Cajun accents in Gypsy Rose. So please let us know. Oh, also another one. Apparently in the States, when they say I'm quite good, they mean very good. And I feel like we mean not as good as good. Do you know what I mean? Quite like makes it less. But apparently in the States it makes it more.

How does that make it more? That doesn't make any sense. That doesn't make any sense. Right. Okay. You explain it to us please. And our social media moment of the week. We love this.

So we were thrilled to see Dina Marie who is the host of the fantastic Twisted Philly podcast tweet at us saying that she loved our podcast, which is amazing. And I love that she listened. She has realised no petrol station flowers for Hannah. Ever. Because Hannah's not having it. I mean, I said I would, but Hannah's not having it. And we thought that was hilarious

because she even found a picture that had the phrase on it. And also, Dina, we wanted to give you a massive congratulations because we also saw yesterday on the podcast we listen to Facebook group that you're engaged to Jeremy from podcasts we listen to. And that's so cute because they've met because of her podcast.

So Hannah, maybe there's hope for us yet. Maybe. Maybe. And Jeremy, don't buy her any flowers in the petrol station. Don't be doing it, Jeremy. Because Dina's very flowers in the petrol station. Don't be doing it Jeremy. Because Dean is very much in the same camp as Hannah. Treat that lady right.

Exactly. And also from last week's episode, the Gypsy Rose case, we had so many new people join the Facebook group which is so exciting to see. So if you still haven't done that, come on over. It's the closest we can get to meeting you guys right now. So come have a chat with us there. As always you can follow us on Twitter and on Instagram at Red Handed The Pod. And we will see

you next week for part two of Fred and Rose West. Bye. Bye. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than

two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes

ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life.

I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me. And it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding. And this time, if all goes to plan,

we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.