Serial killer wife rosemary

When she was a teenager, she became more sexually active and was even caught getting into bed with one of her younger brothers and sexually fondling him. Because her figure and her father's rules prevented her from dating boys her own age, she pursued relationships with older men where she lived; one of them took advantage of her and raped her. When Rosemary was fifteen, her mother finally had enough of her husband's abuse, took Rosemary and moved in with one of her adult daughters and her husband.

Rosemary started spending even more time with male companions. Later the same year, Rosemary, surprisingly, moved back in with her father. Not long afterwards, she met Fred West, who was twelve years her senior. In spite of the way he had treated her, Rosemary's father strongly objected to her seeing Fred and even went to the trailer park where he lived with his two daughters and threatened him.

While Fred did several stints in jail for thefts and also failures to pay his fines for previous offenses, Rosemary became pregnant with his child, a girl named Heather, and took care of his children on her own.

Because of her temper problems and her resentment about caring for children who weren't hers, she often treated her de facto stepdaughters badly. In the summer of , Rosemary apparently snapped completely and killed Charmaine. After severing the body's fingers and toes, Fred buried it under their kitchen floor. In August of , Costello disappeared when she came looking for Charmaine.

Because her body was found to have had its fingers and toes cut off when it was discovered, Fred is suspected to have been the killer. Though they married on January 29, , Fred encouraged Rosemary to have sex with other men, both for money and for fun and often watched her through a peephole.

He also took erotic photos of her and posted them in swinger magazines as ads for prostitution. In June of , they had another daughter together, Mae West. In order to make room for their expanding family and Rosemary's business, they moved to 25 Cromwell Street, where they carried out their rapes and murders. Rosemary continued working as a prostitute from their home in a room fitted with peepholes for Fred to use and a red light outside that would be lit to tell the children not to enter.

Over the following years, she gave birth to seven more children, of which three were fathered by Fred. Another may have been conceived by Rosemary and her own father, who kept engaging in incest with her even after she gave birth to her fourth child.

The other three, who were of mixed race, were all fathered by her clients. In October , Fred and Rosemary hired a young woman named Caroline Owens to work for them as a nanny for their children.

They kept making sexual advances on her, but she declined every time. One night in December, after they both unsuccessfully tried to seduce her, she tried to leave only to be held captive overnight.

When Fred threatened to let some of his friends "have" her and that he would then kill her, she complied. The next day, she was released. Over the next six years, they killed at least eight young women who made their way to 25 Cromwell Street as lodgers or employees together. The first was Lynda Gough, a seamstress the Wests knew personally. Next was Carol Ann Cooper, who disappeared while walking home from a movie theater.

In December, Lucy Katherine Partington disappeared from a bus stop while on her way home after Christmas. She was murdered by Fred and Rosemary, who abducted her, held her captive for a week over New Year, raped and tortured her and then killed her. On January 3, Fred was treated for a laceration, which is believed to have been inflicted when he dismembered Partington. It's unknown if the Wests killed more over the following years. If they did, which is not improbable, the bodies weren't buried on their property.

Some of the girls are known to have been abducted, raped, and then released. While committing murders, Fred also sexually abused Anne Marie West, his daughter from his relationship with Rena Costello.

She eventually became pregnant, but the pregnancy had to be terminated because it occurred in her fallopian tube. When she left home, he started abusing Heather West, who was conceived by Rosemary and possibly her own father, and one of his own daughters, Mae West.

Fred disposed of the victims by burying them under the garage of the house or in the garden. To cover up the frequent burials, he pretended to be doing regular home improvement. After interviews with the youngsters who were age between 15 and 11, Fred and Rose West were both charged with abusing their own children.

Charges that were dropped weeks later, when all the children decided not to give evidence. When this family threat was relate to the police, they were justifiably concerned. During the abuse investigations, no trace of Heather could be found. She had seemingly disappeared. A lot of work had been done to try and locate her, which included interviewing both Frederick and Rosemary West.

During the course of these interviews, Rosemary West had made assertions about how she had come to leave. Detectives believe the solution to an eight year mystery may be buried in the back garden of this terrace house in Gloucester. It belongs to a couple whose daughter vanished in But no one ever reported that Heather West had disappeared, and this is proving an obstacle to the investigation.

Just after on the 26th of February, a human female was discovered under the patio of Cromwell Street. Shortly after this first bone had been found, what appeared to be some human hair was discovered, and underneath this were human remains. The covers have now been removed, revealing a gaping four foot trench in the back garden of number 25 Cromwell Street. The home office pathologist was called for, and on examining the excavations in Cromwell Street, he made a startling discovery.

He expressed that he had found two more femurs and came out with this sort of [glimp ] comment that either that he had found the first three legged woman or there was another victim in the garden. Professor [inaudible ] and I was absolutely convinced that this other femur was of a young female. But who was she and why was her remains there? During the following hours, West was interviewed repeatedly, and by that evening he had claimed to be responsible for the murders of not only Heather but also two other women, later identified as Allison Chambers and Shirley Robinson.

Shirley was eight months pregnant at the time she was killed. He said that this girl called Shirley Robinson was someone that had come to live in the house there, and that he had been having an affair with her, and unbeknown to Rose and that although she was a lesbian, he had got her pregnant. She wanted to have the baby and she was going to live with Fred and they were all going to live happily as a family.

Rose was much more clear. Within the investigation itself it was realized that a lot of the things that Rosemary West had said about how Heather disappeared were exaggerated, and now we actually located Heather, made it quite apparent that Rosemary West was lying. Fred West was interviewed times in the course of the investigation. During which he admitted and denied the charges put to him before changing his story again.

That was a challenge for the investigation. As detectives carried on with identifying anyone who had contact with the West, another possible victim emerged. Linda Gough, who had been missing since In possession of this new information, detectives interviewed Fred West again. Then I had a phone call from the solicitor from the [inaudible ] to say that he wished to see me.

We stood in the corridor and he handed to me this note. It signed by Frederick West and it outlined in there that he authorized Howard Ogden to advise me that there were approximately another nine victims. The names of which he could identify included Linda Gough. We now had something that was almost beyond comprehension.

Over the course of the next few weeks, every inch of 25 Cromwell Street was examined, including the gardens and cellar. As excavations continued, the house revealed yet more victims. Their remains gave a chilling indication of how they met their deaths. These victims were not there of their own accord. They were unclothed at the time of their death. That meant that the bindings, especially the rope made of plastic like a washing line plastic, was around the victim in a naked form.

From the remains found in the garden and cellar of Cromwell Street, detectives confirmed that the victims had been bound and gagged with tape or clothing, presumably to keep them quiet as they were tortured. They had been dismembered, and most beheaded. In some cases, small bones such as fingers, toes, and knee caps had been removed and taken away.

One of the most chilling finds was a mask made of tape that was still wrapped around the skull, complete with tubes that allowed the victim to breathe until they were finally killed. The nature of the crimes were so gruesome, that reporters covering the case were told to tone down their coverage. It goes beyond that. They enjoy the humiliation. They enjoy a degradation.

They enjoy the suffering of the victim. Between the 26th of February and the 8th of March, nine sets of remains were found at Cromwell Street. Allison Chambers who was 16 when she disappeared. Shirley Robinson, last seen in April The bones of her unborn child were found with her remains.

Shirley Hubbard missing since December Lucy Partington, who disappeared on her way home in December Juanita Mott, missing since April Linda Gough, who left home on the 19th of April She was never seen alive again, and Carol Ann Cooper, who was last seen boarding a bus on the 10th of November , after meeting friends in Worcester.

In the note given to John Bennett, West admitted killing them both. But detectives were about to prove otherwise. By this time, we already knew that Rosemary West had difficulty in disciplining Charmaine.

Rose would of been 17 at the time of the murder. If you say that Rosemary killed Charmaine when he was in prison, for certain she would of told Frederick what had happened, whether it be an accident or however it occurred, and he would of had to of come up with a plan to resolve it. Should we go and get her? Nearby were the remains of Anne McFall, a previous girlfriend of Fred West, wrapped in some old curtains.

She was six months pregnant at the time of her death. Frederick West always denied having killed her, and always said it was his first love, so what the circumstances were surrounding her death are unknown.

Fred was charged with 12 counts of murder, whilst Rose was charged with nine. In all her court appearances to date, she had denied any involvement in the killings. He asphyxiated himself, having over a period of time made a rope out of blanket. It not only had him cheating justice himself, it left the legal system with a problem.

He and Rose had been jointly charged with most of the murders, but now it was Rose alone. Rosemary West went on trial in Winchester today, charge with the murder of 10 young women and girls. Unlike her husband, who had talked openly to police admitting to several of the killings, Rose had spoken only to deny any involvement in the murders.

Now with Fred dead, she stood alone in the dark to face 10 charges of murder. The evidence that was put to the court consisted of a number of facets, but most importantly there was the forensic evidence. Then there was the evidence of the live witnesses. Then together with that, there was the evidence that joined everything together, which was known as similar fact evidence.

Similar fact evidence is circumstantial evidence. The fact that a number of victims were last seen going to catch buses in country areas. Then you had the fact that these victims were bound, or some of them were bound, or most of them with no clothing. As to the victims in the ground, and who had applied the tape or who had been present, but not just Frederick West, but Rosemary West. There may have been more victims. It was the situation with Mary Bastholm who had disappeared in very similar circumstances.

It was an area of town he would of been very familiar with. She gave birth to daughter Heather in It's thought that the pressure of caring for three children while still a child herself was a trigger for Rose's violent, erratic tendencies, and it's believed that she murdered 8-year-old Charmaine, Fred's eldest child, in during one of these outbursts.

He was then thought to have moved the body, removing the fingers and toes. Fred and Rose were married in Gloucester in January , and their second daughter, named Mae, was born in June of the same year. By this time, Rose earned extra money as a prostitute and Fred committed acts of bondage and violent sex acts on underage girls.

The cellar of their home at 25 Cromwell Street was a torture chamber, and his daughter, Anna Marie, became one of its first occupants, subjected to a horrifically brutal rape by her father while her stepmother held her down. This became a regular occurrence, and the child was threatened with beatings if she told anyone of her ordeal. Their behavior extended beyond the family circle when, in late , they engaged year-old Caroline Owens as a nanny.

She was incarcerated, stripped and raped. Despite threats that she would be killed and buried in the cellar, Owens was able to make an escape and reported the Wests to the police. Charges were brought against them. Incredibly, despite his existing criminal record, Fred was able to convince a court magistrate that Owens had consented to the activities. Owens was too deeply traumatized over what she had survived to give testimony. The Wests both escaped with fines. Rose was pregnant at the time with their first son, Stephen, who was born in August.

After brutal sexual attacks, all were murdered, dismembered and buried in the cellar under 25 Cromwell Street. Rose had several more children, and daughter Louise was born in Not all Rose's children were believed to be fathered by Fred. Barry joined the brood in , with Rosemary Junior following in and Lucyanna in The children were aware to some extent of the activities in the house, but Fred and Rose exercised strict control over them.

Fred's sexual interest in his own daughters didn't wane either, and when Anna Marie moved out to live with her boyfriend, he switched his attentions to younger siblings, Heather and Mae. Heather resisted his attentions and, in , told a friend about the goings on in the house.