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How a "Family Joke" About a Teen "Under the Patio" Led to Serial Killer Couple's Capture
Police thought they were searching for one body at Fred and Rosemary West's home in Gloucester, England — but they'd find many more.
It was a twisted family joke that turned out to be based on an even sicker reality.
For years, the West children were told, “If you’re naughty, you’ll end up like Heather, under the patio in the back garden," according to Peacock's new true crime docuseries, World’s Most Notorious Killers, now streaming.
But when police heard about the disturbing “family joke” and began to investigate, they uncovered a terrifying husband and wife serial killer team, Fred and Rosemary "Rose" West, who targeted unsuspecting young women and even two of their own children for their own sadistic means.
While living on Cromwell St. in Gloucester, England, the couple turned a basement playroom into a chilling torture chamber where victims would be raped, beaten, killed and buried beneath the cellar floor. When the couple ran out of space there, they moved to the garden, where more innocent victims were buried.
“This was a real modern day horror story,” former Gloucester Police Sgt. Tony Jay said on "The West Murders" episode of World's Most Notorious Killers.
The West children speak up
The dark truth began to come out after some of the West children approached a police officer while they were outside playing on their street in 1994.
Geoffrey Wansell, Fred West’s biographer, explained on World's Most Notorious Killers: “The girls turned to the policeman and say, ‘What would you do if your father was abusing one of his daughters?’”
The policeman reported the conversation and Fred was ultimately arrested for raping one of his daughters. Although the charges wouldn’t stick after his daughter refused to cooperate with authorities, the couple’s five youngest children were placed in foster care.
“While they’re in care, the social workers come across what they describe as a family joke," Wansell said. "The younger children said, ‘Well, Fred used to threaten us, you know, "If you’re naughty, you’ll end up like Heather, under the patio in the back garden."'"
The unsettling statement was enough for Gloucester Police to obtain a search warrant to dig up the garden in February of 1994. After several days of digging, they not only found the remains of the Wests' daughter Heather, who seemingly vanished in 1987 — but they also found the bones of other victims.
“I thought we were looking for the body of one girl, I had no idea it was going to turn into a mass murderer inquiry,” Jay said.
Who were Fred and Rosemary West?
The gruesome discovery of multiple bodies on the property rocked the working-class neighborhood where Fred had always been seen as an affable, well-liked guy. But his charming persona masked a much darker side.
Fred, who was born in 1941, grew up on a farm and many of his deviant behaviors can be traced back to those early days.
“He watched his mother, for example, slaughtering farm yard animals,” professor Paul Britton, a forensic psychologist who examined Fred, explained. “He knew that his father had a disregard for women in general. They were there to be used as needed.”
At a very early age, his mother began to have sex with him, instilling in him the idea that “a mother was entitled to break in her children and a father was equally entitled to break in his daughters,” Wansell said.
Rose came from an similar background, in which her father sexually abused her from a young age. She learned she could control men through sex and developed a voracious appetite for hardcore sex.
Rose and Fred met at a bus stop when she was just 15 and he was 27.
“When they met on the bus, it was an accident waiting to happen, a perfect storm,” Rose’s biographer Jane Carter Woodrow said on World's Most Notorious Killers.
Fred and Rosemary West’s 12 victims
Authorities would ultimately uncover parts of 12 bodies, nine sets of which were recovered from the Wests' house on Cromwell St., and three others found in other locations. That included the remains of two of Fred’s children (one from his first wife, and one with Rose), his first wife Catherine “Rena” Costello, Ann McFall (who babysat Fred's kids from his first marriage), hitchhikers unlucky enough to cross paths with the Wests, and young women who had rented rooms in their house.
“When the bodies were found in the basement, they had all been dismembered,” Jay said. “There were nooses, one skull had been wrapped in a thick duct tape. Obviously these girls had been tortured.”
Fred confessed to killing McFall, as well as Costello, whom he shared daughters Anne Marie and Charmaine, and burying their bodies in a field in Much Marcle, Herefordshire, not far from where he grew up. Charmaine’s body was discovered at a former home that Rose and Fred had shared together, according to The Independent.
Although Fred initially admitted to killing Charmaine, who disappeared in 1971 at the age of 8, prosecutors alleged in court that Rose — who never got along with the child — actually killed her while Fred was still in prison for “dishonesty” offenses, according to the outlet.
As for the bodies discovered at 25 Cromwell St., Fred confessed that some of the victims, like Lucy Partington, Carol Ann Cooper, Therese Siegenthaler and the youngest victim, 15-year-old Shirley Hubbard, were picked up either at a bus stop or while hitchhiking.
Others like Juanita Mott, Alison Chambers, Linda Gough and Shirley Robinson — who was pregnant with Fred’s child at the time of her death — had been residents or visitors in the Wests' home.
One victim, Caroline Owens, was able to escape the home dubbed the “House of Horrors” by the media and provided critical insight into how Fred and Rose operated. Owens had once been a nanny to the Wests' children and knew the couple, so she didn’t hesitate to accept a ride from them while hitchhiking. But as soon as she got into the vehicle, Rose started fondling her. When Owens objected, she was punched in the face and knocked unconscious, according to World’s Most Notorious Killers.
“She was bound, she was held captive, she was beaten with a leather belt in her genitalia, she was raped by both Frederick and Rosemary West and then one of the things happened that changed everything for the future. She escaped,” Britton said.
Owens reported the rape to police, but her claims weren’t taken as seriously as they should have been and the Wests were convicted of a much lesser charge of indecent assault. They were fined 25 pounds each and released to carry on their sadistic torture.
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Many of the victims' body parts were missing when their dismembered bodies were found.
“It’s entirely possible Fred removed the knee caps to prevent the girls (from) moving, they weren't capable of moving,” Wansell said. “He removed their fingers and toes as trophies. So you have the dreadful task of assembling the bodies of these young women, who were all naked, all had been abused, all had been mutilated and dismembered and all of whom had been buried in what was supposed to be a children’s playroom.”
Even the Wests' own children weren’t immune from their abuse. Jayne Hamer, a lodger who lived with the family in 1977, said she learned Fred had been sexually abusing his daughter Heather, who at the time was just a young girl.
“I was in my bedroom and it was the middle of the night and I heard Heather screaming, ‘Stop it daddy, stop it,’” she recalled.
Hamer moved out before Heather was ultimately killed in 1987 when she was 16, dismembered and buried in the garden.
Fred and Rose West are arrested
After Heather’s body was uncovered in the backyard in 1994, Fred was arrested and confessed to killing his daughter and the other victims. He claimed his wife Rose had nothing to do with the killings.
In Rose's own interrogation, she also insisted she was completely unaware of her husband’s dark deeds.
“She was quite in control of herself, quite sure of herself and at times quite verbally aggressive in answering questions. In fact, a few times, she actually swore,” Detective Graham Onions says in an interview clip that's shown on World's Most Notorious Killers.
But authorities didn’t buy Rose's claims, especially after hearing Owens' story and looking into the timing of Charmaine’s death. They decided to charge both Fred and Rose in the deaths, believing that they had likely operated as a sadistic pair.
Where are Fred and Rosemary West now?
Fred would never see his day in court. He took his own life on January 1, 1995, by hanging himself in a jail cell.
“Everyone was absolutely livid,” Jay said. “The nation was livid, Fred had cheated justice, which was a travesty.”
Rose — whom Britton described as a “psychopath” — seemed to have little reaction to her husband’s death. In October of 1995, she went on trial for 10 counts of murder, including for the nine victims found at Cromwell St. as well as Charmaine. She was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
Today, she’s still serving out that sentence at New Hall prison in England.
Fred and Rose both came from troubled pasts, and their union proved to be a lethal combination.
“Fred was a farmyard killer and then he met Rosemary West. It was her rage, her sexual lust that was unleashed,” Britton said. “Their journey together took things to a place that only few people can contemplate.”
