RedHanded - FROM THE VAULT - Fred & Rose West: Parts 1&2

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

With the release of a new Netflix documentary on the Wests, we dove into the archive (way way back to episodes 27 and 28) to get you up to date with our in-depth two-parter on one of the UK's most infamous cases.--Incest, rape, murder and torture dungeons; 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.The girls head into the infamous torture cellar to uncover the horrifying truth about the Wests’ years of depravity. As body after body was found, a haunted Fred confessed to it all – but Rose stayed silent. We hear the incredible survivor testimony that broke a nation’s heart and finally labelled Rosemary West as one of the most evil female serial killers in history.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee 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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When Luigi Mangione was arrested for allegedly shooting the CEO of United Health Care, he didn't just spark outrage. He ignited a cultural firestorm. Is the system working or is it time for a reckoning? I'm Jesse Weber. Listen to Law Yeah, see, you even got the killing wrong. You were trying to make it, I just went out and blatantly killed somebody. No, nobody went to hell. Enjoyment turns to disaster, that's what happened on the war host of it anyway. It's surprising how long something can hold you around the neck before you, you know, we have to do some eyes-moving. I mean I can undo three-quarter nuts without a spanner, I mean we just lock them on and turn them on and do it.

Yeah, but there was this great thing that she was talking about in the band, she was going to sound great through and everything else. And the whole fear, and this is something that we've got to go into, was the biggest fear that was in me was both, I never know, especially with other women. I'm Seruti. 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. 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 standard N. Terrace house in Gloucester.

It even shed 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 Muchmarcle 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 mom like bowled into schools shouting at everyone? I think he loved it. Oh no, he loved it but I'm saying like, 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 normalized 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 Muchmarcle. 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 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 ten foot, smashing onto a concrete floor. He's then again unconscious for 24 hours and after this, the change to his behaviour and his appearance was even more pronounced. Experts in this field say we are not as in control of our behaviour as we would like to think. Our behaviour 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 behavior 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 sets 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? Is 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. if you have no other frame of reference why would you believe that 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 co-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 Rena 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. Shall 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 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 if 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 Rena is pregnant that the baby is Fred's. But when the baby, Charmaine, arrived in 1963,race and obviously not Fred. 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 Rena 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 Rena 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 favorite 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 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 never learned a lesson for his actions. Driving this van is how he comes across Anna McFaul 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 Rena that Anna was gonna 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 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 a nanny But Rena 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 Rena 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 Muchmarcle. 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 Murchmarkle. And suddenly one day Rena 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 Rena 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 Rena Costello, we see this to go on with Rose

and we see this all having started I think with his mum. But, so when he's living with Anna and with Rena 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 Rena 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 Rena leaves. And the 1967 Gloucester Carnival. Carnival is not like carnival, like... No, 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 Rena and her pimp Rolf had gone after Anna when they realised that she was pregnant. Saying that Rena had stabbed Anna and put her in a suitcase and heartbroken he had buried her at their special place in a field in Muchmarcle, 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 Rena 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, Rena'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 fetus inside her had been cut out. And this is why I think it was Fred,

because he was the one that was fuckin' obsessed with abortions. I mean, it's a sick way to undo a pregnancy, isn't it? But I feel like if you were Rena 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 Rena 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 doctor's offices. Hi, I'm Mr. Bollin, the host of Mr. Bollin's Medical Mysteries.

And each week on my podcast, you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses no one can explain, miraculous recoveries that shouldn't have happened, and cases so baffling they stumped even the best doctors. So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror stories and mysteries, Mr. Bollin's Medical Mysteries should be your new go-to weekly show. Listen to Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Spotify or Apple podcasts. In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan. This assailant starts firing at him. And the suspect... He has been identified as Luigi Nicolass Mangione. ...became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history. I was meant to sow terror.

He's awoking the people to a true issue. Listen to Law and Crime's Luigi exclusively on Wondery+. And in the summer of 1969, Fred, now 28, finally met 16-year-old Rose Fletz. 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 they did it on her when she was 8 months pregnant. That's enough to induce like labour.

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 hella, 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 as Fred is like golden boy, Rose is never hit by her dad. But being a favourite in this house- Or in Fred's

house, being the favourite of both of them didn't turn out that well. Yeah, not ideal, not the ideal situation to be in, 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 protege 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. 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 and knocks 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 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 Ted X 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 realise it was his because it was a blind sample and he was like oh this goes in the psychopath pile because look at the parts of the brain that are inactive. And he realised that it was him. And he realised that he had the genetic predisposition and the sort of the warrior gene underlying in his genetic makeup. But because 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 1% in the average population versus 3% 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, the 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, because people do ask us to cover more female killers and usually the cases just aren't that interesting. 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. I've 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 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 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 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 Rena came back and took her daughter to Scotland.

And no one questioned it until August 1971, when Rena came back looking for Charmaine. And this would be her undoing. They couldn't lie to Rena and she would surely go to the police. So they killed her and they buried her in Muchmarcle 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 up and 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 have they've knocked it down it's just like 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. Number 25 Cromwell Street really will form the basis for much of this story and as you said they had to knock it down. It's 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 is 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 gonna 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 wouldaged 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 Amory was not only abused by her parents but also by the clients who came to the basement room, the

brothel and 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 a 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 Butlins 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 at 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, it's the 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. 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. Think you'd probably need it in that job. Yeah. Yeah, so we're gonna stop there,

because 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 gonna be going into the cellar at number 25 Cromwell Street, which is not a place that you wanna hang out, but we will be going there. And we'll talk about the arrests and what happened afterwards. Be sure to come

back next week. You know those creepy stories that give you goosebumps? The ones that make you really question what's real? Well, what if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest and most mysterious stories are not found in haunted houses or abandoned forests, but instead in hospital rooms and doctor's offices. Hi, I'm Mr. Ballin, the host of Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, and each week on my podcast, you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses no one can explain, miraculous recoveries that shouldn't have happened, and cases so baffling they stumped even the best doctors.

So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror stories and mysteries, Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries should be your new go-to weekly show. Listen to Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Spotify or Apple podcasts. In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan. This assailant pulls out a weapon and starts firing at him. We're talking

about the CEO of the biggest private health insurance corporation in the world. And the suspect has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history was targeted premeditated and meant to sow terror. I'm Jesse Weber host of Luigi produced by law and crime and twist this is more than a true crime investigation we explore a uniquely American moment that could change the country forever.

He's awoking the people to a true issue. I mean maybe this would be rich and powerful people to acknowledge the barbaric nature of our health care system. Listen to law and crimes Luigi exclusively on one degree plus enjoying one degree plus the one degree app, Spotify or Apple podcasts. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed, where today we're going to be picking up exactly where we left off last week with Fred and Rosemary West.

So when we left it last week, the police had just started their excavation of number 25 Cromwell Street in 1994 and as the police tore up the patio looking for Heather's body Fred just laughed at them saying it's a family joke you're gonna have to put this all back I'll make sure you pay for that patio to be fixed. The nerve of this man just how mental is he because he knows there's a body down there. He put them there with his own two hands, like he knows. So all of this yelling at the police, it's really pretty irrelevant because too soon they find the bones. And almost immediately Fred just starts confessing to his lawyer that he just joking before I did in fact kill Heather. And he freaked everyone out completely because he started telling them how he did it really vividly and gruesomely and he recalled every detail and also what's

weird he delivered it so matter-of-factly that it chilled everyone and I think this is when they knew that they were dealing with a totally different beast here because originally I think they just thought it was like a domestic maybe like an accident they killed her they buried her there'd be remorse afterwards now he's like oh like, oh yeah, I did it. Whoops. And after being so strongly of the other way, saying, no, I haven't done anything wrong, you're going to have to pay for my house.

It's such a flip of a switch. We will come onto this later on, but it really does make you start to wonder how much of this balance of Fred is that he might genuinely have something wrong with him or is he just the worst person that's ever existed like I'm a bit stuck now. So during the initial dig they found three bodies under the patio and in the garden and Fred just kept confessing and he is super chill about the whole thing it's like he's reading a shopping list and he tells them that it's his daughter Heather and a woman called Shirley Robinson and another

woman who he just said was Shirley's mate and even though Fred was forthcoming he kept changing his story and he'd confused dates and names and generally just be a bit of a fucking weirdo So the police probably would have just completely written him off as a confessing Tom Except they were literally pulling bodies out of the ground behind his house So it's pretty difficult to write someone off as a lunatic and a liar when you you're pulling the evidence With your own hands, But despite all his confusing statements, the one thing he was consistent about was that Rose knew nothing.

Rose is the total innocent in this and that she lived by the law. With three bodies now on their hands, the police start digging through missing persons reports to see if they could find a match. And this is when they start to see just how many young women were missing. They even bring in a profiler and he's very clear, saying that if you had three bodies, not all were killed at the same time but all were buried in the same place, by the same person it was very unlikely that there would have been silence in between these killings. So he said the time between these killings would have been filled with other murders. And one of the victim's skulls they dug up even had

a belt tied around her face. Everything pointed to Fred being a serial killer and a sexual sadist at that. The type of killer that wouldn't stop unless he was stopped. But just how many women had he killed? That was now the question. And as I'm sure you can imagine, this turns into an absolute media circus. There's bodies being dug out of a garden in Gloucester city centre. How would you describe Gloucester to our international listeners? I've never been to Gloucester. All I know about Gloucester is, for our international listeners who want to pronounce it Gloucester,

just remember the rhyme. Dr Foster went to Gloucester. Gloucester rhymes with foster. That's all I know, Gloucester. Just remember the rhyme. Dr. Foster went to Gloucester. Gloucester rhymes with Foster. That's all I know about Gloucester. Have you been to Gloucester? I feel like I probably have been to Gloucester. There's cheese, something to do with cheese, or maybe that's Gloucestershire. Gloucester isn't Gloucestershire. No, I know, but there's a place in Gloucestershire where they roll cheese down hills or something and they like race. Oh. I'm sure. Oh.

I mean, it's just a whatever. But it's not a glittering metropolis. It's like a sleepy West Country place. Yes. Yes, West Country. It's like farmland, right? It's like tratter and cider and combine harvester. You should give accent lessons.

I thought that was pretty good. If you've watched Hot Fuzz, that's how they speak there. Oh yeah. Okay. That's, that's good. Cool. It's just like we did with Yorkshire. We're going to incite passions in Gloucestershire.

Anyway, so the world's reporters gathered around this tiny terrorist house. And watching at home was Caroline Roberts. Twenty-two years before when she was just a teenager, she had worked for the Wests and just about escaped with her life. Watching the news of the police tearing up that patio brought her entire ordeal at the hands of Fred and Rose West back to the surface. One night in 1972 Caroline was hitchhiking, classic hashtag stop Saruti hitchhiking, she won't stop. I haven't hitchhiked in years. You literally text me on like a Saturday night being like

never! I'll never hitchhike again don't worry. Caroline was hitchhiking back from Chooksbury, a town in Gloucestershire. When a car pulls up, it's the Wests. Caroline, in the interview that we watched with her, remembered that the couple seemed friendly. And as we saw with Colleen Stan, like, you're much more likely to get in a car if it's a man and a woman. Same with the Moors Murders. So Caroline gets in the car with this seemingly friendly couple and the West make friendly chat and they are clearly sizing Caroline up. They are profiling her and assessing how suitable she is for whatever their needs are. Absolutely because they were predators and such people are often the best at

spotting who would make good prey and Caroline tells them she doesn't like being at home and that she needs to get away. Fucking bingo. So the West paint a picture of perfect familial bliss at theirs, telling Caroline that they have three beautiful daughters and conveniently that they just happen to be looking for a nanny. Caroline jumps at the chance and takes on the job of nanny to newborn baby Mae, the West's middle child Heather and Fred's daughter from a previous marriage Anne-Marie.

Don't accept a job that you are offered in the backseat of someone's car ever, even if you know the person. Just don't do it. That's very sage advice. She does accept it though. But pretty much as soon as she moves in, Caroline finds the house and the West's really fucking weird. She was very uneasy that there were always men in the house and the Wests really fucking weird. She was very uneasy that there were always men in the house, men who came to spend time alone

with Rose. Now Rose tells her it's nothing and she tells her she's just a masseuse and that there was nothing to worry about. Could she not have thought of a better lie? Like masseuse is code for prostitute, everybody knows that. Like could she not have thought of a more convincing thing that she could have been doing? What would you say though? You're running a secret brothel and I'm like hey Hannah what are all these random guys doing here and why do you keep going into that room locking the door and then coming out a bit later looking sweaty? One by one book club. Outstanding. Good lies. You are a

better liar than Rose West. But I don't know if Caroline would have believed that more considering I don't think there were any books apart from pornography magazines in this house. So it could have been a one-by-one pornography magazine book club. Maybe. That's how I'm going to make my millions. I think you should. Don't leave me to do this on my own though. You know, Caroline accepts this at first, surprisingly, but then Fred starts to freak her out. And this is, we just come back to classic, classic Fred. He constantly again starts harassing her with, hey, I can do abortions. Just let me know.

You need an abortion? I can sort you out. I've done loads of abortions and the women I've done abortions for, they were so grateful they'd even offer their bodies up to me straight after. How much like Donald Trump does that sound? Abortions, I've got the best abortions. I do the best abortions. Everyone knows it.

Believe me, it's true. And also like abortion had been legal in the UK since 1967 and this is 1972. I mean, this is not like Vera Drake era. Like this is obviously I'm sure that that there was, and there still is, a lot of social stigma around it. Maybe you knew your doctor personally were too embarrassed. Backstreet abortions do happen, that's fact. But why in God's name would you go to Red West for an abortion in 1972? They were available on the NHS. You could go and get one safely for free.

Exactly. If you know your doctor personally, get on a bus and go to the next town and get an abortion there. No one was getting abortions from Fred West. Let's just all say that. The only abortion Fred West was giving was cutting the fetuses out of the women he murdered. That's Fred West's version of abortions. Why the obsession with abortions? It's never really explained. I don't know. No, it's never explained. And it's not unusual fetish. It's not like a common thing. But anyway, let's stop talking about Fred Weston abortions. Like for us, all of this abortion chat was absolutely the last straw for Caroline. So she left shortly after moving in. But if she thought she was free of the Wests, she had another thing coming. And five weeks later she's hitchhiking again and in the exact same spot when once again the Wests pull up. They sweet talk her again and tell her that it was all a misunderstanding, a joke, a little funny joke that Fred hadn't meant any harm by threatening to perform an

abortion on her. She wasn't even pregnant. I've got a dark sense of humor but that's too much. How they get her back is they play on her emotions they tell her that the children really miss her. So Caroline gets back in the car. Caroline don't do it. Rose gets out and sits with her in the back. How predatory is that? That is unbelievable. And as they're driving along, Fred casually just asks Caroline, have you had sex recently? That's not a conversation starter, Fred. He just can't stop. He can't stop. He can't stop. It's like compulsive and

immediately Caroline realises that she has made an enormous mistake and this is the fucking worst bit. And then Fred tells Rose to check, as in to check if Caroline has had sex recently. So Rose grabbed Caroline right by the crotch. And then suddenly, Rose just out of nowhere starts punching her again and again in the head. When Caroline woke up she was then at the West's house tied to a chair with her own scarf in the West's kitchen. And as she came to they were wrapping parcel tape around her head.

Fucking parcel tape! And she started screaming but they just had her to calm down. They say we'll make you a cup of tea and we'll let you go home. And surprisingly they did. They took off the tape, gave her a cup of tea and we'll let you go home. And surprisingly, they did. They took off the tape, gave her a cup of tea and a fag and she calmed down. And as soon as she was calm, Rose started trying to kiss her. And at first, Fred just watched. Then they both start groping her.

And in the interview with her that we watched, she says, they kept talking about my genitals. They were stripping her down and probing her, saying that her genitals were abnormal, but with Fred saying horrifyingly, don't worry, I can fix them. Just the humiliation and the fear. Imagine how vulnerable you would feel in that situation. And when they tire of this, because obviously Caroline will be getting worked up, getting upset, the fear would be ramping up, but they get tired of this. They stop, they calm her down, they let her have another cup of tea and then just like before they start

again. It's so chilling. They're committing an absolutely horrendous crime torturing this girl but they're in absolutely no hurry. They just sat in that kitchen taking tea and cigarette breaks with absolutely no fear. And it's the speed at which they do it. They're so casual, go so slowly. And you know in horror films it's always the killer that walks really slowly that scares me. It's never the one that chases you.

It's the one that knows you can run as fast as you want. I don't need to because I'll kill you in the end. It's the total control over the situation that's chilling and I think that's why this is so terrifying because it's like, oh no, you can, that's fine, we can sit together and you can do whatever you want but I'm gonna fuck you up, like I'm gonna get you. It's so much worse than like the knife wielding maniac. Oh, 100%. Like, at least that's over quickly. It's playing with your perceptions, that's what it is.

You never know what the next move is going to be and that's why it is so terrifying. Because Rose out of nowhere starts smothering Caroline with a pillow. At first, Caroline said that she fought and screamed, but after a while she just gave up and said she just wanted to let go. But that's when Fred stopped it because he needs the fear and the screaming we spoke about last episode Like as a sexual sadist like the thrill wears off. You can't keep doing the same things You have to step it up each time So he needs the the screaming and the second that she's given up, it's not worth it It's not gonna get him off so they stopped.

Fred slapped Caroline to wake her up and told her we're going to lock you in the cellar, we're going to let all of our friends have a go at you and when we're done we're going to kill you and bury you under the paving stones of Gloucester. There are hundreds of girls there and no one has found them and they won't you. They carry on this interrogation type situation with Caroline. They'll stop, reset, let her calm down and then they can stoke up the fear again from zero. Classic sadism because either the victim is gonna give up, lose consciousness or become numb to the pain. They took this like sick pleasure in just toying with her, just stringing her

along and once Caroline came to from the smothering, Fred raped her and then he They took this like sick pleasure in just toying with her, just stringing her along. And once Caroline came to from the smothering, Fred raped her and then he cried. And you'll see this a lot with him, like he cries all the time. And Caroline said that she really felt like he was doing this to manipulate her because again it's kind of like the, like letting her have a cup of tea and a fag. It's like, it's throwing her curveball so she doesn't really know what's going to happen next. It's throwing her off constantly, making her unsure. Absolutely. And then the next step they took was by far the most surprising, especially to Caroline, because they let her go. After all of this, they let her go.

She told them, I won't tell anyone about what you've done. But when they let her go, she went straight to the police. Good girl, Caroline. I'm so proud of Caroline because how easy would it have been? Well, not easy. Nothing about this is easy. But just go home, forget about this, move on, just drown away the pain. But she doesn't. She goes straight to the police. But the issue was that she was so traumatised by what had happened that she just wasn't

strong enough to face a rape trial. So the West escaped. And unbelievably they got away with being charged for just indecent assault. And unbelievably they were released with just a £100 fine. And what's absolutely horrifying is that they got away with it here. And in that year they murdered three more women that we know of. It should have stopped here but if you're going to be a rapist and most learn quickly that you just can't leave a witness. I know in this case it didn't come to anything with Caroline

in the first place going to the police but they had let Caroline go and forgotten all about her. Once again they had escaped punishment for their crimes, but Caroline hadn't forgotten them. And she came forward when she was watching the news of the police tearing up the patio and the garden at number 25 Cromwell Street and she told the police about what Fred had said to her about the hundreds of bodies buried under the paving stones of Gloucester and she told them all about the rape cellar. And this cemented to police that the house at Cromwell Street was the key to this crime. Caroline's statement also made it clear for the first time that Rose was just as involved as Fred. So she was arrested and brought in too. Once in custody, Rose totally blanked Fred.

They were in front of the magistrates together. When he leant over and tried to touch her, she just pushed him away. And this was the first time they had seen each other in four months. And she's just like, get off me. He even tried writing her a letter and he said, Rose, it's your birthday, 41 and still beautiful. I love you as much now as I did when we first met. It's the best thing that's ever happened to me.

And Rose sent him back the envelope unread, unopened. And this was torture for Fred because he had protected her and he had, to his understanding of love, he had loved her and he couldn't cope with how she was treating him now. But back to the investigation, to understand what had really happened here, the police basically have to take 25 Cromwell Street apart. They have to raise it to the ground. And the truth of the lies Fred and Rose West had lived there started to emerge. The police find the bedrooms of the house fitted with listening and recording devices. It was like their brothel slash party slash sex slash murder house. And it was a trap to lure in the victims that they wanted. They wanted

young girls. They kept drink and drugs on tap and it was very much an open door policy. Come on in, it's a party but what a fucking party. There were children living there. That's the thing that it makes me think of the Suzanne Capper house. Yes, exactly. It's squalid. It's absolutely like we described in the first episode. This place is squalid. It's full of drugs, alcohol, random men, pornography, all of this sexual paraphernalia and all these children are living there. But their main aim of this house, like you said, was to go after the vulnerable girls from the local children's home. They get them drunk, drug them,

tie them up, rape them, or pimp them out to all these random men who frequented this horrendous place. It was just a big sex ring where the West would just randomly kill off any girl that they fancied. And the worst thing is everyone in town knew all about the brothel. They didn't know about the murder, but they knew about the drugs and the sex and the brothel and all of that. But if this was such an open secret, why was nothing done? You could argue, like in the theatre industry, obviously, and in film and Hollywood, but locally in London, recently all that stuff has come out about Kevin Spacey, all the stuff about Max Stafford Clark.

Everybody in the industry knew. Everybody knew. Oh yeah. When it comes to something like this, you probably, maybe it was like a rumour of you're like, oh well I'm sure it's not really true, but if you knew it was true you'd seen it so you probably didn't want anyone to know that you were there. Absolutely. And I think the biggest reason here, like within many of those cases, is that powerful people or people in law enforcement were involved. Look at Operation Newtree,

the reason they covered up for all those MPs, for Jimmy Savile, everyone knew it was happening but because it was, it went so deep into the roots of every institution, every powerhouse within our country that nobody had any vested interest in starting to fling stones because everybody had something to hide and you don't want to open that can of worms basically. I'm mixing metaphors all over the place but you know what I'm talking about. And in this case it was exactly the same the reason nothing was done was because the police were in there having sex in that brothel. They were in the upstairs brothel having sex with Rose and all these other girls whilst the other girls were being tortured and killed in the cellar. And that cellar, if the house is squalid,

I don't even know how to describe that cellar. We'll post pictures. It is disgusting. And it's horrifying because it's totally self-contained. You can even get in through the back, you can get out through the back, you wouldn't be disturbed, you don't have to go through the house. It's so convenient if you want to have a murder rape torture dungeon. And in the cellar when the police went in they found chains they found all sorts of sexual paraphernalia, sex toys, masses of pornography and hooks all over the ceiling. Given the fact that they just dug three bodies up from the garden it was clear that this was a room where dreadful things had been done. And the fact that they knew that the cellar and the garden were owned by two predatory sexual psychopaths, they knew now that there were

definitely more victims. So they start their search for more victims in the cellar. What started the Civil War? What ended the conflict in Vietnam? Who was Paul Revere? And did the Vikings ever reach America? I'm Don Wildman, and on American History Hit, my expert guests and I are journeying across the nation and through the years to uncover the stories that have made America. We'll visit the battlefields and debate floors where the nation was formed, meet the characters who have altered it with their touch, and count the votes that have changed the direction

of our laws and leadership. Find American History Hit twice a week, every week, wherever you get your podcasts. American History Hit, a podcast from history. In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan. This assailant starts firing at him. And the suspect. He has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione.

Became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history. It was meant to sow terror. He's awoking the people to a true issue. Meanwhile, Fred is still being held by the police, And this is when Fred makes another startling statement. He calls his lawyer, Howard Ogden, and he confesses to a further nine killings. Well, in his written confession he writes, I want to confess to approximately another nine killings, including the murders of Charmaine, Rena, Linda Goff and others to be identified. Like if you're going to write a confession, at least know their fucking names. It's possible he doesn't know how to count pass signs. That's meh, maybe. So Linda Goff, we haven't heard about her yet. Linda was another young

woman who had been a lodger at 25 Cromwell Street. It was her last known address in 1973 which was the time that she had disappeared and she moved in just six months after the pair had tortured Caroline. Mrs. June Gough, her mother, had even gone to Cromwell Street to look for her daughter Linda but was told that Linda had gone and this makes my skin crawl. When Rose had opened the door to June Gough, to Linda Gough's mother, she was wearing Linda's slippers and cardigan and she just tells Mrs. Gough, oh she just you know she gave them to me but she's gone now. Can you imagine looking for your daughter who is missing, you knock on the door of this squalid house and then Rose, I mean Rose West, not a looker, opens the door

and she's wearing your daughter's clothes. That would send me over the edge. I know. And the thing is she told her she left these slippers and these cardigan with me but when they look into the garden, you know on those like plastic spinny clothes dryer things. A washing line, yeah. A washing line. Clothes dryer things, yep, those ones. So yeah, on there, there's Linda Goff's underwear and her mum sees it and is like,

did she leave that with you as well? And she's like, yeah, she gave them to me. Who takes second-hand underwear? Nobody gives you their pants. Oh my god. But you know, what could she do? All she could say is, this woman's got my missing daughter's clothes.

And back then, come on, this is like the 70s. Everyone was a runaway, according to the police. Oh, your 16 year old daughter is missing? Yeah, she probably runaway. She's a runaway. Yeah, she probably like got pregnant and ran away. She must have run away, checked the circus. Like, I really feel like that was the attitude.

And as if this wasn't enough, so he's busy confessing to approximately nine murders and he now also confesses that the crimes are not all confined to Cromwell Street I mean if you're the police now for fuck's sake now, you know, there are 12 victims somewhere But only three have been found and identified. So you've got Heather West, their daughter, you've got Shirley Robinson, who'd also been a lodger at number 25 Cromwell Street in 1978. And when she was there, Fred had had an affair with her and got her pregnant. And when he killed her, this is so disgusting, she was 18 and eight months pregnant with

his child. When he confesses to the murder of Shirley Robinson, he even tells the police, oh Shirley Robinson, she was the girl who caused the problem. You fucking maniac. Don't you think you might be the problem, Fred? Jesus fucking Christ. What's the common denominator here, really? Please. And in usual Fred style, he tells the police very calmly that when he realised that she was pregnant and apparently she was telling him she was in love with him, again the fear of Rose, he's terrified of Rose, terrified of the woman in his life finding out that he's

been banging some other girl on the side because by all intents and purposes he wasn't raping Shirley Robinson, she was in a consensual relationship with him. But just the kind of casual dismissive disposal that we see again and again with these two, he tells somebody, I strangled her, I cut her up, and I buried her in the garden one night as Rose was sleeping. Again, we just see it, that kind of just like,

this person's a bit inconvenient, this person's a problem. Kill him, get rid of him, done. And they always got away with it. For 25 years they got away with it. And the third body they found in the garden was Alice in Chambers. Not in fact Shirley's mate as Fred had said, but another lodger. And the bones of the bodies they found in the garden had all been hacked up. It's like he'd taken an axe to them. A lot of the bones were missing from each victim. Mainly the hands, feet and kneecaps. When they question him on this, he just can't

cope, he just starts crying and we still don't know what he'd done with the bones because they were never found. They were never found. All of the victims they found were missing their kneecaps and most of them were missing either a hand or a foot or whatever. What was he doing with them? They never found them anywhere. You don't think he was eating them, do you? I was gonna say that. That's what I've kept thinking. I mean that's the only thing that's missing from this story is cannibalism.

Ugh. No, no. If you were gonna take a trophy bone, which bone would you take? Kneecap's got a good one. I feel like a finger is too delicate. And you wouldn't want a big old leg bone. And a skull is just so like like cliche. Kneecap. Yeah. Maybe that's what he was doing. But where were they? It's not like he made a little

edgy necklace. I think I take that one in your ear that looks like a stirrup. The really little one. Cute. Can make a little necklace. Just slowly incriminating ourselves episode by episode. Only that we think about these things, not that we've murdered anybody. FYI. Yeah, a fact. So we've got three bodies at this point. Who are the other six unnamed victims? Where are all nine bodies? All approximately nine bodies, if we're according to Fred. Back at Cromwell Street, the search continues and the determination of the officers really should not be overlooked. In one of the dig sites they had even hit a sewage pipe and it was leaking all over the place, but they just carried on. So they were digging in sewage and threw decomposed bodies and mud for human remains and that is no mean feat.

We're harsh on the police when they make mistakes, but full credit to how they took this crime scene apart piece by piece. They didn't miss a thing, full credit. And it paid off because eventually they found five more bodies in the cellar. Therese Seigenthaler, Shirley Hubbard, Lucy Partington and Juanita Mott. And in the bathroom they found the body of Linda Goff. The house was finally empty but still three bodies are missing. If they're to go on Fred's guess that there were three in the garden and he had nine more,

there should be 12 bodies. So yeah, three people are still missing. But despite these missing victims, the police now had to identify the bodies they had found. But the problem was, at this time in Britain, there were 10,000 missing girls. And they're just the ones that had been reported as missing persons. But, and this just blew my mind, by some insane stroke of luck for the investigators.

One of the bodies that they had found in the cellar had distinctive dental work. She had temporary crowns on the front teeth. And the problem was that all of these girls were really similar age, similar ethnicities. There was very little to like distinguish them and to tell them apart. But this person had temporary crowns on their front teeth. And one of the detectives who was involved in the investigation remembered an incident from years and years before where a girl had had her front teeth knocked out during a hockey game.

Seriously. Hockey at school? I was the only one that wore their gum shield. Every hockey game. Seriously. A hockey at school? I was the only one that wore their gum shield. Every single game. Every single practice. Are you mental? Getting smashed in the mouth with a hockey ball? That's what happened to this girl.

And what were the chances though? She just happened to remember this. But thanks to that detective, they checked it out. And can you fucking believe it? It turned out to be her. It was Lucy Partington. The girl who had had her front teeth knocked out during a hockey game had gone missing 20 years before and it was her. Jesus Christ. I mean, Gloucester's small but that is ridiculous.

And I guess the teenage girl having her front teeth knocked out even 20 years later, this detective still remembered it. She may have gone to school with her. Yeah, well she must have done. She may have gone to school with her. Yeah, well, she must have done. But I do feel like it's one of those things where it's like a schoolyard rumour, isn't it? Oh, yeah. It's definitely something that would have been remembered. Not a rumour. Like it would have been remembered, wouldn't it? Yes, absolutely, yeah.

So the new bodies that they had found in the cellar also just gave the police so much more evidence on what had actually happened to these victims. More parcel tape was found taped around their heads. The parcel tape was almost like wrapped around their heads shaped into masks and plastic tubes were pushed up into where the nostrils would have been in the skull. And just the debasement and the torture that they had inflicted through mutilation, the physical agony, the emotional and psychological torture was absolutely clear. Because you put the capital D on debasement, I thought that's a nickname you were giving

to the basement of the house, like the debasement basement. Is that why you text me saying debasement genius? I was like, what does she mean? Oh, I wish I was as smart as you gave me credit for. I thought you were me credit for. I thought you were making a pun. Obviously, this is fucking sick, but there's something about a couple that kill together that's quite morbidly fascinating.

And I do think as a society, we've completely, we're obsessed with Bonnie and Clyde. We're very socialized, I think, to kind of idealize this sort of like ride or die attitude of like I would kill for you. That is something that people say, like that's a turn of phrase. Oh definitely, but I feel like that is us against the world, I'll protect you, I'll do whatever you need. This is just killing for kicks. They were soulmates in the sense that they had met someone who wanted the same fucking thing as them, that got off on the same thing as them. This isn't even Bonnie and Clyde to me. This is Iona Myra, except before.

They were the OG Iona Myra. Yeah, I know what you mean because I feel like Bonnie and Clyde were criminals, but that you're bank robbers. Like, it's a different highwayman. Yeah, they were like, fuck society. Yeah, we're going to take what we want and we're gonna have a great time and we're gonna look after each other. This is, this to me isn't Bonnie and Clyde.

This to me is like just two sadists that would have been doing this kind of thing separately but just found each other and it just blew up. Yeah, because I mean, Fred was killing before he met Rose, but then I do, I've been thinking about this and I wonder whether it's, you know, his sexual sadism has to get like incrementally more and more extreme for him to keep getting off. I wonder whether once he'd done it with Rose, he couldn't go back. He

couldn't go back to just doing it on his own because it wasn't the same kind of thrill. Oh, a hundred percent. I totally agree. Yeah. It's about, it's someone who gets it. I think that's quite a powerful feeling. They had a connection. As thick as it was think that's quite a powerful feeling. They had a connection as thick as it was they had a connection yeah and I think that's what it was. If you have this incredibly fucked up fetish and desire if you find someone that's into the same thing and will do it with you you're gonna have a connection with that person not condoning it because a lot of killers do

take trophies from their victims and obviously we don't know where their kneecaps are but you could argue I think that they are each other's trophy. Like they see the achievements of their victimization of other people and their sadism in each other. It's like a reflection of their crimes in their life partner. Absolutely, because the reason killers, serial killers take trophies is to relive the kill again and again and again. But it's exactly like you said, their gratification and the way they relive it was just to be with each other.

It's perfect almost for them. I have a lot of trouble with the term soulmate because if there is just one person on the entire planet that is for you, it's very unlikely mine is in London, it could be in Malawi. Do you know what I mean? Like there's no... Oh yeah, absolutely. No, the term soulmate in an everyday sense is bollocks. The term soulmate here, I guess I mean, is like two people that have very similar childhoods,

very similar upbringings, both sadists, both sexual deviants, meet each other and they want to do exactly the same thing and they get off on exactly the same thing. They are soulmates. Yeah. I think we're getting into the semantics of soulmates, but you know what I mean. No, I do know exactly what you mean. I don't know, I mean do you think, like a true sadist, because I think they are the closest I've ever seen to a true sadist, and I think in order to be that you do have to be inherently self-absorbed because it's all about your

feelings over other feelings, and you have to have this lack of empathy. So therefore, if you are a sadist can you really love another person? That is interesting. I did also read somewhere, just to go totally rogue though with this, psychopaths absolutely lack empathy. That is one of the crucial things. With sadists, and you know, hear me out, I read an article somewhere where they said, does sadists actually lack empathy? Because if you lacked empathy, how could you tell that that person would suffer because of what you were doing to them? Oh, that is such a good point.

And then how do you get off on their pain, their emotional pain? If you don't recognise it. And if you don't understand, if you totally lacked empathy, how could you be a real sadist? That has put a wrinkle in my brain, I don't know. It was just an interesting thing I read but no I totally agree with you. If you lack empathy can you really love someone? But I don't know is it more of a possession thing and is it more of a just they were gratifying each other's needs and wants and desires so they love them, they're obsessed, they're addicted to it. Yeah, I think that's a better word.

But then isn't that love anyway? Well, what is love then? If you're saying, you know, what's a soulmate, what the fuck is love? Because if you're talking self-sacrifice, Fred was sacrificing himself for Rose. He took all the blame and said she had nothing to do with it. But was she then the real psychopath? That's true. And maybe that's why he's so upset because when she starts to ignore him because he's covered for her

And I've even seen an interview where he's telling what I can't remember which one of his victims It must have been Caroline because she's the one that could live to tell the tale But he said to her like you can't tell Rose that I've done one particular thing he'd done because she'll kill us both So I wonder whether he I mean he's scared of her Let's move on and say they were definitely addicted to each other, if nothing else. Yeah, I'm happy with that. We can say that. All that self-sacrifice. Fred did cover for Rose for a long time, but that was about to come to an end because she was still rejecting him. And it was a huge mistake because now Fred turns on Rose and told the police that she had been involved

with all of it. And now this is like another really interesting part of the Fred and Rose Mee West saga. The whole time he's being questioned, a Fred who had some learning difficulties had an appropriate adult with him. And this is basically someone who is there with someone being held in custody, who isn't to do with law enforcement, who's there to provide that person with support. And it's basically just a way to protect the interests of vulnerable people. Did you ever watch it? ITV, years ago, even made a whole TV drama about it called Appropriate

Adult. No, I don't think I did. I watched it when it came out years ago but I haven't seen it since. But guess who plays Fred? Dominic West. Fuck off. Good actor. He's fucking hot!

How does Dominic West play Fred West? He used to come into a restaurant I worked in all the time and we would just be like, so rude. He's just gorgeous. So rude. And he's so calm and considerate and suave when he's talking. He's like, oh darling, I'll have the suave. Oh, little bit sleazy. I find that now that you're doing an impression of him. I don't know how I feel about that. That kind of ultra posh boy thing. Oh that's absolutely what he is though. Oh, you say that's absolutely for me. Oh, lol, no. I know. Shut up. And also this TV show like if we can find the, I don't know, ITV probably taking it down but it'll be somewhere on the internet if anybody wants to watch it.

But it was absolutely destroyed by Anne-Marie when it came out for being exploitative. So, his appropriate adult was a lady called Janet Leitch. She was a young woman who wanted to be a social worker, so it's great practise, right? But it gets real weird, real fast for Janet. Fred starts confiding in her, and even tells her after his first hearing, there's a fuckload more.

This is really where I start to question whether this whole I'm a bit slow and don't really know what's going on, I need an appropriate adult. I just think he did. I don't think he's playing it. I don't think he's got the mental capacity to plot and plan. I think he is like Donald Trump, just staggers from error to error and buffoonery to buffoonery. And it just starts to creep Janet the fuck out because he starts telling her all of these secrets and he reveals to her that the other bodies that the police are looking for are in much more call.

Whilst the world was watching Cromwell Street, the police moved to the fields of Fred's childhood, and Fred's obsession for Janet Leitch just continued to grow. He kept telling Janet how much she reminded him, and this is horrifying, of Anna McFall. And in case you need reminding who Anna McFall is, she is in a suitcase. She's Fred's very first kill and when Janet saw a photo of Anna, she said that it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end because they do look very, very alike. Can you imagine sitting across the table from this depraved, perverted serial killer and you're not even sure all he's told

you is that there's more and then he tells you that you remind him of his very first kill you remind him of the beginning of his journey run and what's horrifying is when the police first got Janet in to be his appropriate adult they didn't even tell her what he was there for and Janet correctly suspected that this is why he was offloading everything to her. Anna was his first kill, he was obsessed by her. In his diaries he starts to write, I was loved by an angel, Anna. And he even tells Janet that if Anna had never left, he would have lived a happy life. Left? You fucking murdered her, cut out a baby, put her in a suitcase and buried her in a field. She did not leave of her own free will, for God's sake.

Fred now maybe feels that he has a second chance, you know, after brutally murdering his first love, his pregnant first love, no less, all those years ago. And he transfers this obsession. He started telling her everything. He told her that Anna McFall had been murdered and he told her all about Rolf and Rena and the suitcase. Janet tells the police everything and with new names now in the mix the police investigate. They find that Anna, Rena and Rena's daughter Charmaine were all missing and they had been for twenty years. Could this be the extra three missing bodies? Could this be them?

And Fred confesses that they are. He confesses to feeling like he could see the ghosts of his victims coming up at him and that he couldn't cope anymore. He told them that they were all buried in fields in Muchmarcle, just 15 miles away from Cromwell Street. And he tells them that the ghosts will lead him to the bodies. Fred, you know where the bodies are, you put them there. Like, you don't need... This isn't UK's Most Wanted Life. Like, you don't need a You don't need, this isn't UK's most haunted life, you don't need a medium to take you by the hand. You were literally there when they were buried.

That's not a very impressive seance. I don't understand what he's doing. He's trying to cover up for it. Ten days into this investigation in 1994, Fred took the police to Muchmarcle and he took them straight to the body of Rena Costello buried in that field and again he said he could tell that the body was there because these ghosts were coming out of the ground and coming straight at him. He said he could feel where the bodies were, that they drew him to them but it's probably just because he knew exactly where the bodies were buried. Because he buried her by a massive fucking tree. And it was the only tree in the field.

There's no ghosts Fred. But it gets so, it gets weirder. After they find Rena Costello, they're up to 10 bodies out of the 12. Fred then took them to Campley, which is like another field really nearby. And here they find Anna McFall's dead body. And once again they found her just where Fred showed them. And the way he behaves during all of this, he's like pretending to be like a fucking

mentalist. He's putting on some sort of performance. He even is like, oh why have I got the name Anna in my head? Oh for god's sake. Anna, why am I, I'm getting an Anna and it's like oh Anna I know where she is her ghost is leading me to her body and when they find her he says oh he was glad that she'd been found and he only knew where her body was because her ghost had told him where it was and he was adamant he said that they had been in love and that he hadn't killed her and that he was just meant to help find her.

Bullshit. I think Anna was the one murder that Fred was really ashamed of. For whatever reason. Like I don't know, he killed loads of people and he killed other women that were pregnant with his own baby like Shirley Robinson. But we do know with serial killers the first kill is always important and tells you a lot about that person. From Fred's later ramblings, his writings, I do think he had a certain obsession with

Anna. Goes back to that whole Madonna-whore complex. It's like Ted Bundy. Yeah, Rose fits more with Rena and Anna was like an anomaly with the women that he was with. And I think he started to see this in Janet, which was like, fucking hell, Janet, get out of there. Yeah, Janet, run for the hills. Poor Janet at this point is still sticking with it. Fred

keeps telling her more and more of his creepy ghost fantasies. We've only ever done one ghost episode and I would like to do more, so I'm glad that there are ghosts involved in this one, but I was really hoping that it would be not like this because even I am less skeptical on the ghost spectrum than you are. I can't take this seriously. Because he goes full Macbeth and starts telling her that every time he was in his cell, he could see Anna floating above him in a white dress. It's literally like he's seen this on TV. He's seen a shitty BBC adaption of Macb dress. It's literally like he's seen this on TV. He's seen a shitty BBC adaption of Macbeth and then he's like, okay, this is what ghosts are.

And Anna, floating Anna in her white dress, is telling Fred that she has to be found and that's why he confessed and led them to her body. He is just, he's bananas. He's completely bonkers. Either he's lying though, or he does genuinely have, or he genuinely is having hallucinations, which isn't out of the question. It's not out of the question. He could be having visual, auditory hallucinations and he could be seeing these ghosts coming at him like he keeps saying. He could be seeing these dead bodies. Potentially, if we go back to the whole, was Fred in love with Rose? Maybe he wasn't a psychopath.

I don't know, maybe he is ill. But whatever was happening, you don't lead the police to a body and pretend you didn't do it. So eventually, Fred does confess. Honestly, he clearly does not have the capacity to plan a long-term ploy to get away with all of this.

After Anna was found, he started to tell the police the whole truth. And he, sure as shit, didn't want to take all the blame anymore. So with Rose ignoring him, he turned on her. And he told the police that he had just been protecting Rose, and now he impl on her and he told the police that he had just been protecting Rose and now he implicated her in all 10 of the murders. But Rose was still denying it. So they now have Fred pointing the finger at Rose and they had Caroline Roberts with her survivor's testimony. But all they had from the survivor's testimony because no trial was carried out and they just got away with that £100 fine. They can't recharge Rose with this because technically it did sort of come to a case closed situation. All they have is that they need to look into Rose more. They need solid

proof that Rose was involved in the actual killings. But the problem was that Rose was much stronger psychologically than Fred. A profiler who examined Rose told the police she won't give you anything. And the profiler absolutely called it. He told the police Fred was weak and if Rose rejected him he would kill himself. She did and he did. Because on New Year's Day 1995, Fred West made himself a rope with his bedsheets and hanged himself in his cell, leaving only a note for Rose. I'll wait for you in heaven. That is not where you are going, Fred. And now, with almost zero evidence though linking Rose with the murders, it seemed like

she'd gotten away with it. But remember that Fred had also confessed to the murder of Charmaine. But where was she? because she wasn't in the fields of much market with her mother. So the police searched her last known address, 25 Midland Road, the house the West had lived in before Cromwell Street. And in this house, under the cheap linoleum of the kitchen floor, they find the body of Charmaine, Rena's baby. She had been last seen in 1971 when she was 8 years old and the police know that during that period of time the West had lived in that house, Fred was in jail and Charmaine had been solely in Rose's care.

So the police now needed to link Charmaine's death with Rose, prove that she alone had killed the girl. But to identify the time and the date of death they needed a photo of Charmaine to match it to the skull and then date it. They looked for weeks but they found nothing. They just couldn't find a photo that they needed. Because they need like a photo with her teeth showing, like a smile wide enough where her teeth are visible.

I mean that's so specific. So they looked for weeks like I said they, they didn't find anything. And then by some miracle, and again it's like the hockey tee situation, they get a fax, the forensic scientist working on this gets a fax, and in the interview you watch with him, he says, he just watched this fax, print and print and print and print, and it was a photo of Charmaine smiling and it had been meant for Rose's defense team but had been accidentally sent to him the very thing that he was looking for. There are so many things about this case that are just like quite creepy. They even found the photographer who was able to

give him the date the photo had been taken. The forensics team now use this date and compared it to the skull that they had to say how much growth had occurred and so how much time had passed from when the photo was taken to when the death had occurred and this gave them a probable date of death and with that the police were able to now prove that Fred was in jail when the child had been killed so it had to have been Rose. And finally after all of the denials Rose was put on trial in October 1995. She was accused of all 10 counts of murder that Fred had pinned on her before killing himself but classic Rose she pleaded not guilty on all counts but Caroline Roberts took the stand saying she wanted justice not just for her but

for all of the girls that had been killed after her escape. On the stand Caroline relived her entire ordeal telling the court that Rose was in fact the worse of the two, saying, the closest I came to death was at her hands. She should never be released. Rose still maintained her innocence. But the most heartbreaking part of the entire trial for me was that Anne Marie West,

Fred's elder surviving daughter, testified against Rose. She told the court how Fred and Rose had spent her entire childhood raping her, how they had let random men who came into that house rape her, how they brutalized her with sex toys and instruments of torture. She told them how her father Fred West had raped her so badly that she couldn't walk for days. As a child, he'd given her syphilis. And how he had let his own brother, her uncle, rape her over

three hundred times. All the while, Rose just stood in the dock and stared blankly back. And against all advice, Rose, and this is the arrogance of it, against all advice, Rose still took the stand at her trial, and she feigns disgust and blames herself for not having stopped it, and like for not realising. I was just like fuck off Rose and the jury just didn't give a shit. They know Rose is lying. She's a fucking monster and they could tell. So Rose was found guilty of all ten counts of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment and Rose is still alive. She's 64 and serving her sentence at Brasside in Durham. She's apparently losing her sight and threatening suicide. Okay, we've tried in these two episodes,

but there really isn't a simple explanation for this horrendous crime. Yes, both Fred and Rose had abusive backgrounds, but so do loads of people. They absolutely chose to do what they did and they spent 25 years killing people and getting away with it. But there was an eight-year gap with the 12 bodies that they found. Serial killers don't usually stop, they don't normally take breaks like that. What you are much more likely to see is that the cooling off period gets shorter and shorter and shorter. An eight-year gap. It's kind of unheard of. The only killer I can think of that did anything like that was BTK. He went on hiatus for 12 years or something, but that was because his child was born. They do say that sometimes

a deep personal connection with another person can stop the killings, but these two were getting off on it, doing it together so it makes it seem even more likely that there wouldn't have been a silence during those years. And isn't that interesting as well I often think about it you know when we talk about rehabilitation and stuff like that with the whole BTK argument they said the fact that he had a relationship with his wife they just had this baby it stopped him killing for all those years. Then isn't it interesting when we talk about do you think killers as part of their rehabilitation should have things like pen pals and stuff

like that? Like if they have that then maybe they're less likely to re-offend when they come out because they've made a personal connection with somebody? With someone who's a good influence. But you might save more lives in the long run because if BTK had never had that child he wouldn't have stopped for the years that he did. But it's just a thought. Digression. Carry on. But it's very clear that Fred and Rose did not have deep emotional connections with their children so I think we can write that off. That's true.

So I really think there are more bodies out there and I think even with Fred's confessions that come thick and fast, but they only come when he kind of has to. He doesn't really give the game away apart from to Janet. He doesn't tell the police directly anything that they don't already really know. But it's so difficult to like, when do you stop looking? Are there two more? Are there 20 more? Fred is dead. Rose will never confess and probably is on her last legs anyway, we will never know. What makes this just such an insane case is that it wasn't the case of what it normally is with these kind of situations where it's like a sadist and a masochist.

It's a case of two sadists coming together. And as we can see with this, it's a highly dangerous combination. It's like if Ian Brady and Myra Hindley had been able to carry on what they did for 20 more years. But in this case it will always be Rose who fascinates me the most. She was, like we talked about in episode 1, Fred's protochet. And probably at first I think Fred thought she'd probably just be another victim. But she turned out to be cruel and dominant and highly vicious maybe even more so than he was and she in fact took it much further than he could have

on his own because she opened the door for him to get access to victims that he's otherwise just have no chance of being able to lure. The hitchhiking he never would have got Caroline to get in the car if it was just him he never would have been able to lure those girls from that children's home into his house if it was just him. She was his dream woman. And the sick perversion of this like twisted love story is I think what makes it so fascinating. Yeah, I agree. Oh my god, just one last thing because this just absolutely broke my heart and I told you about it when we were doing the research. Anne-Marie, she's the only one that's still

alive because Caroline Roberts passed away in 2016 from cancer, the only other survivor. But the other children, so Stephen, May and Anne-Marie are still alive. And Anne-Marie was the one who bore the most of Fred and Rose's sexual depravity and is still alive. And what just pushed me over the edge during the research for this was as soon as she finished testifying she left the court and she went to Gloucester Bridge and she jumped into that freezing cold water because in the interview watch they saved her they saved her they were rescued her but in the interview afterwards like a few years later she says how she hates herself

that she survives. She suffers with so much survivor's guilt. She doesn't even seem distraught by what happened to her. She seems more horrified by the fact that she survived and all of these other people died and she just can't cope. How do you cope? How do you cope with that? I don't know.

But the fact that she came there, she wanted to. If things had gone her way, she basically knew the court date. She stayed alive long enough to go testify and then her plan was to go immediately kill herself. That is just so devastating. That is absolutely horrific. And before I start crying, let's end it there, I think. Let's cheer ourselves up. With our Patreons this week, we have Marie Skipperud, Brittany in F, and Tasha, who posted in our Facebook group saying that she's an acting student in Australia and we are the first Patreon pledge that she's ever done. Thank you so much, we really appreciate it,

but please, please only give what you can afford. Oh, oh my God, if you can give a dollar a month that's just so touching to us like please give what you can that's all we ask thank you. And Kielani Coche upgraded from a two dollar to a five dollar so we are giving you another shout out because thank you very much. And finally we have got Dina from Twisted Philly is now one of our Patreons and if you haven't checked out her podcast you absolutely should it's really great it's like lots of dark shit happens in Philadelphia and you need to learn about it so go and listen. And she's very slick.

Oh yeah, slick as hell. It's great. Social media moment of the week is actually a joint effort to many of the week is actually a joint effort to many of the people that are on the Facebook group where everyone just starts talking about where they listen to Red Handed every week. And so it's really exciting to hear that we're hanging out with you guys in your ears whilst you're driving trucks, in the bath, cleaning your houses, getting to work,

gymming, and if anyone out there, no one said this, but if anyone out there is listening while they're eating then you're a pervert. Yeah, you are a pervert. Stop it. Put down your cutlery. Five star review thank yous. We have, I love the title of this one, this one is Bowie on a Tractor by NWD0022 and they

say that they are a huge fan of true crime podcasts but Red Handed doesn't disappoint. This pod does a great job at building the background of the story and getting into the thick of the crime and also they note that they enjoy it when we explain UK colloquialisms and make it understandable to an international audience. They've just put gladly chill on a darkened story night and listen to them tell tales hashtag Bowie on a tractor. That would be my favourite pastime. I love it and also because I do still think even after all the episodes we've done I still just love White House for our murder so I love love hashtag Bobby on a tractor. That is great.

And the next five star thank you is from BLK Shem, who said, sounds awesome, which is he or she. You ladies make the podcast. Your content, research, and opinion is delivered with an awesome mix of humor and fact. I feel like I'm hanging out with old friends and catching up on the latest news and drama. Keep up the great work.

We will, and thank you so much and we do make the podcast like we physically May physically make it and also can't can't stress enough how DIY of an operation This is like just how DIY this is like don't tell them about the pipe cleaner No, I'm gonna tell them the pot I want to tell them the pop filter of the mic that I'm using. Is that even the right word? I don't even know. The filter over my mic is held in place with a jumbo pipe cleaner that also still randomly

swings around when I'm in the middle of getting on my soap box about something. Keno's dad who says that typically they... Hannah don't get upset. I'm not getting upset. It's a joke. Typically they hate anyone from the UK but these girls are awesome. With their witty banter and excellent storytelling smiley face, JK about hating Brits. I literally text Saruti the other day being like, I'm really surprised by the amount

of Brit bashing on the internet. Saruti was like, wake up, you live in the real world. Everyone bashes everyone. But you know who doesn't bash us? You guys. So thank you. You guys know what to do by now. Please, if you don't already, you have your pick. We're on all of the social medias. We're on Twitter, we're on Instagram, we're on Facebook. Pick your favourite. Pick all three of your favourites and follow us at Redhandedthepod. And you can find our Patreon page at patreon.com forward slash redhanded. And keep an eye out on the 14th of January we will be doing our rescheduled live episode

at 8pm British time. I cannot remember right now what is it Eastern time? I don't even know. I can't remember the other time zones, but I will post them somewhere We will we'll figure it out for you guys, but 8 p.m. GMT Sunday Is that Sunday the 14th? Sunday the 14th. It's gonna be on killer kids. It's gonna be really creepy My story is horrifying. We're gonna do it like we how we did the Halloween episode It's gonna be exciting if you join now for even just a dollar a month

You can get in on that fun. So we hope to see you there. Yeah, we will see you next time when we're going to be talking about. Oh, Matamoros. We've got our first cult coming up next week. So stay tuned. Bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.

Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.

Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.

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