"I Discovered the Troubling Childhood of Rose West: What Turned Her into a Sadistic Killer Who Even Shocked Fred"

GRIM faced police officers kept their heads lowered as they carried unmarked black boxes of dismembered human body parts out of Fred and Rose West’s notorious house of horrors.

The eyes of the world were on the home of heinous murderers Rose and Fred West, and the monstrous discoveries sparked a decades-long fascination for Jane Carter Woodrow.

Fred and Rose West killed at least a dozen women Cops searched for human remains in the garden of the West’s home Some of the women Fred and Rose tortured and killedCredit: Rex Features

Criminologist Jane will never forget the chilling day she watched in horror as police unearthed the remains of Fred’s daughter Heather which the twisted couple had buried of their garden at 25 Cromwell Street.

Cops would go on to discover another two bodies hidden under the patio slabs and six more dismembered women in the cellar.

Warped Rose – now behind bars serving a life sentence for the murders of ten young women including her own daughters – participated in gruesome acts of extreme violence until the couple’s

Now Jane, who appears on a new Sky documentary Fred West: The Glasgow Girls, recalls

In an exclusive interview with The Sun she said: “It was a feeling of pure terror.

“The police did not say what was inside those black boxes, but I knew, it was quite obvious to me from what was being said and who was coming out of the house.

“It became apparent that they were boxes of body parts as more and more details came to light.”

Jane, the author of Rose West: The Making of a Monster, became intrigued by the sexually sadistic killer while working as an academic, studying the children of women in prison.

In 2006, she found herself passing the Gloucester house where Fred and Rose tortured many of their young female victims.

Although the property has been demolished, and replaced with a landscaped garden, Jane was fascinated to learn what had gone on inside the infamous house during the West’s evil killing spree – and decided to delve deeper.

Jane explained: “They’d knocked the house down by then but I thought, hang on, I have done a lot of work with women in prison, and of course I knew Rose had been convicted, yet I didn’t really know what her part in the killings had been – was it coercion?

“That’s the usual thing with women. I wanted to know what were the steps to that? How had that happened? How did a little girl grow up to become a serial killer, if that’s what she was?

The police did not say what was in those black boxes, but I knew, it was quite obvious from what was being said and who was coming out of the house

Jane Carter Woodrow

“So I started knocking on doors, contacting people down in Gloucestershire, the Forest of Dean, Cheltenham and where Rose grew up.”

But as she began to learn the truth, Jane was repulsed by the truly sickening

She said: “What Rose did was awful. She ripped girls apart.

“Fred wanted more straightforward sex but she was into more obscure and extreme things.

Rose and Fred followed vulnerable girls and lured them to their homeCredit: Rex Features Police unearthed human remains in the West’s gardenCredit: News Group Newspapers Ltd

“One of the girls was scalped. She pulled out their fingernails.

“There was torture equipment, Rose’s own children had chain marks around their necks.

“It was appalling what they suffered.

“I really did assume, like a lot of women in prison, that Rose had been forced to go along with certain crimes because she was under Fred’s spell – like was to – but I was wrong.

“Rose was just evil.

“I really didn’t expect that, I wanted somehow to find that she had been coerced, that she couldn’t get out of it.

“I wanted to be able to defend her, to write something in her favour because I really didn’t think she would have done it – but she did.”

Sadistic pleasure

Police spent weeks sifting through the garden before the house was demolishedCredit: Shutterstock Editorial Human remains were found in the cellar at 25 Cromwell StreetCredit: PA Jane watched in horror as police removed remains from the West’s houseCredit: SWNS:South West News Service

Rose, who worked as a prostitute and bragged that no man or woman could sexually satisfy her, amassed a vast collection of bondage and restraining devices, and graphic videos showing bestiality and horrifying sexual abuse of children.

She routinely abused and beat her own children, and murdered her own stepdaughter Charmaine in 1971.

When Charmaine’s body was found in the cellar several bones were missing from her skeleton.

Jane said: “It’s unusual for women to kill, even when they’ve got violent partners and long histories of abuse and it’s been normalised.

“Perhaps Rose might have been in thrall to Fred for about five minutes but they were caught in this madness, feeding off each other. She wanted to join in these sadistic things she’d learnt from her father.”

It’s made me very, very wary of being left alone with people

Jane Carter Woodrow

Rose’s monstrous father Bill Letts regularly abused his daughter from an early age, and continued well into adulthood. There have even been reports that her Rose’s son .

Rose was having sex with her violent father long after she was married, apparently with Fred’s blessing, and at one point Bill lived in a caravan on their road.

Jane believes that Rose’s killer psychology began before she was even born – her mother Daisy was treated with electroconvulsive shock therapy (ECT) .

When Rose was a child, she would creep into the bedrooms of her younger brothers Graham and Gordon at night and molest them.

After she met Fred she lured dozens of young girls back to their house for her own sadistic pleasure. She would lock them in the cellar and wore the keys around her neck like a prison guard.

Rose West’s father was abusive to his wife and daughterCredit: SWNS Mum Daisy was given electric shock therapy when she was pregnantCredit: SWNS Rose West was given a whole life tariff and will die in prisonCredit: Shutterstock

Jane went on: “They picked out vulnerable girls on the streets, and followed them home.

“Girls were tortured in that house over two or three days and Rose participated in that, she was doing it when Fred was at work, at his allotment, and even when he was in prison.

“I think she enjoyed these games but sometimes it was so dreadful even Fred would say it was cruel.

“I spoke to lots of people about what they knew, and I have to say, I made a lot of friends – people were very nice, even Rose’s brother Andy and his wife Jackie.

“The more I gathered from neighbours and people who dealt with Rose, the more I realised just what her part was in it.

“She was a victim of abuse herself, groomed by her own father Bill, and she had some kind of learning difficulties.

Sometimes Rose was so dreadful even Fred would say it was cruel

Jane Carter Woodrow

“Children don’t abuse, it doesn’t come out of nowhere. Her father was a very violent man, a sexual sadist.

“Bill would hit the children and beat his wife. It was dreadful, all the time, this atmosphere of fear and all the horrors of that household.

“If you look back further, her grandad was also an abuser so then it’s totally normalised and it’s not surprising that Rose developed this vicious temper, lashing out at anything.

“As time went on she’s angrier, more aggressive.

“When she met Fred the abuse was consensual, but continued. And she continued having sex with her father who was jealous of Fred – they hated each other.”

As the full stomach-churning extent of the couple’s barbaric cruelty eventually came to light it stunned the nation.

When Fred’s first wife Rena’s body was discovered at the couple’s home, she had metal tubing lodged in her dismembered remains.

Fred’s first wife Catherine ‘Rena’ Costello was among his early victimsCredit: SWNS Jane spent years researching her book about Rose West Author Jane Carter WoodrowCredit: Jane Carter Woodrow

In 1972 Rose lured her other stepdaughter, eight-year-old Anne Marie West, down to the cellar where she was stripped naked, bound to a mattress and gagged before Fred raped her. Their nanny Caroline Owens was also forced to endure months of brutal rape and violence.

In 1973 the pair murdered Lynda Carole Gough, Carole Ann Cooper and Lucy Partington. Over the next few years their killing spree included Therese Siegenthaler, Shirley Hubbard, Juanita Mott, Shirley Ann Robinson, Alison Jane Chambers, Ann McFall and Catherine Costello.

Fred later confessed to murdering Shirley Robinson and removing an unborn foetus from her womb.

The body of the West’s daughter Heather was the first to be discovered under the patio at Cromwell Street, having been abused by her parents all her life.

Fred murdered his own daughter CharmaineCredit: SWNS Charmaine’s friend Anne McFall was also killed by Fred WestCredit: SWNS Rose and Fred with family at daughter Anne Marie’s weddingCredit: South West News Service

According to the West’s son Barry it had been a long-running family “joke” that Heather was buried in the garden, which became a grim reality when diggers later moved in to search the property and its grounds.

Fred confessed to 30 killings but in 1995. Rose maintained her innocence, by her husband.

Despite her fascination with the horrific murders, years of in-depth research into Rose’s depraved childhood has taken its toll.

“It makes me angry, I still get emotional. It’s made me mistrustful of people,” admitted Jane.

“At first I think I tried to block it, to pretend it wasn’t real, in order to deal with some of the terrible details, but it has made a difference to me.

“I don’t trust people because you just don’t know what a person is like.

“It made me very, very wary of being left alone with people.

“I would certainly never accept a lift from anyone, because you just don’t know who you’re meeting,” she added.

Sky Crime’s documentary unravels the untold story of the years Fred spent living in Glasgow in the early 1960s, revealing the hidden lives and experiences of his first three victims, his first wife Rena Costello, her daughter Charmaine, and her friend Anne McFall.

Fred West: The Glasgow Girls is on Sky TV now.