MAE West recalls Christmas and birthdays being a special time as a child, one where her family finally felt normal as her mum baked ‘superb’ cakes adorned with sugary icing.
But once the special occasions were over, the darkness fell over Fred and ‘s home as their eldest surviving daughter, Mae, reveals.
Since the were locked up in 1995, Mae, now 53, has tried to live a life that resembles some normality away from the sick killers she called mum and dad.
Rose West was after helping her husband embark on a murder spree of at least 12 women in the 70s and 80s in Gloucester – two of the victims being their own children, Charmaine and Heather West.
While Rose has continuously protested her innocence, Fred West escaped justice when while on remand.
Now 30 years on from being sent to HMP New Hall, The Sun revealed that Rose, 71, who changed her name to Jennifer Jones in 2020, is becoming increasingly isolated and frail. ()
A source told the Sun this week: “She’s in a disabled room now because she can barely walk.”;
“No one talks to her because everyone knows who she is and what she did, even if she has changed her name,”; they added.
Now, Rose is left entirely on her own after she cut her oldest daughter, Mae, out of her life for questioning her sick crimes, leading her to tell all about the woman she once called mum.
HOUSE OF HORRORS
Mae grew up at 25 Cromwell Street and is the oldest surviving daughter of the pair, who had eight children between them.
And she has candidly revealed what it was really like growing up with serial killers as parents.
By the time she was born, the two had already murdered her half-sister Charmaine and her dad’s previous wife, Catherine “Rena”; West.
She was never read a bedtime story, or tucked in by her parents, toys were scarce in the home, so they often made up their own games – wearing their parents’ victims’ clothes for fancy dress, which they found while locked in the cellar at night.
By the age of seven, Mae suffered from extreme sexual and physical abuse at their hands, with her own dad forcing her and her older sister Heather to .
It was a future she was warned about by her older half-sister Anne Marie.
“One day, I went with Anne Marie and she told me she’d been sexually abused by Mum and Dad,”; Mae, who lives in the West Country with her husband and two kids says.
It wasn’t unusual for us kids to come across dildos, vibrators and other sex toys just lying around the house. It amused Dad.
Mae West
“She said it had gone on for years and warned me they might try to do the same to me,”; she wrote in her 2018 book, Love As Always, Mum.
It was even reported that sick Fred hoped to impregnate the girls, telling his daughters: “I made you; I can do what I like with you.”;
“Dad didn’t make any secret of the fact he sometimes filmed [Rose] having sex”; with random men while , Mae told the Daily Mail.
“I used to find it completely repulsive. We always knew about their interest in kinky sex. They never tried to hide it from us.
“They’d leave porn magazines lying around the house, along with bondage gear: masks, rubber suits, whips and the like.
“It wasn’t unusual for us kids to come across dildos, vibrators and other sex toys just lying around the house. It amused Dad, more than anything, to see how we reacted.”;
With Fred and Rose West exposing their children to sex at a young age, as a teenager, Mae was often asked to help Rose, who became a sex worker, book and schedule her clients who would come to the home, even when the kids were around.
Rose also abused her daughter, once dragging a knife along her ribcage.
She and her siblings lived in fear of their parents’ threats that they would end up “under the patio”; like their sister, Heather.
But Mae does recall there was the occasional respite from the torture they endured.
“We ate meals and watched TV together, celebrated birthdays and Christmas, and went on family holidays,”; Mae wrote in her book.
“Mum used to bake superb cakes. We’d always have a fantastic iced sponge for our birthdays and an equally lovely fruit cake laced with booze at Christmas time. She always made a real effort for special occasions and Christmas Day was the one day we really did feel like any other family.”;
LOCKED AWAY
Growing up, Mae and her siblings would often be locked in the cellar of their home at night with a bucket to use as a toilet.
Throughout this time, Fred and Rose invited lodgers, predominantly women, to stay in the home.
Many of these women were subjected to horrific torture and rape before eventually being killed and buried under the house.
They also enticed young women into their car with Rose’s presence in the front seat used as a way to make them feel safe before taking them home to meet the same fate.
Mae recalls that there was a large toy box that was locked in the cellar that they would play on to keep them entertained, later she realised it was used to store the mutilated bodies of their victims.
“I remember there was a chest down there, a sort of toy box, and we’d jump onto it and pretend it was a boat while we waited for Mum to come and let us out. There was always a disgusting smell that came with it, but we didn’t have the faintest idea what was the cause of it,”; Mae recalls.
“It is strange and chilling to think about that game now – – police found human remains hidden in the house’s cellar and under paving slabs in the garden.”;
The children also found a box of clothes down there which they used to play dress up, she later realised they were the clothes of the victims.
FAMILY TIES
Despite the sexual abuse, Mae says Fred was often the nicer parent to be around.
While she and her sisters slept fully clothed and took turns guarding the bathroom for each other from Fred, she said it was her mum they truly feared.
She was the one who terrified us.
Mae Rose
“Extraordinary as it sounds, aside from the sexual abuse, in many ways he’d been quite kind and even funny,”; she says.
“He’d sometimes intervene when Mum punished us with an ‘Ease off, Rose!’ – she was the one who terrified us.”;
While many assume Rose was groomed by Fred, who was 12 years her senior, Mae said her mum “wore the trousers in their “.
Mae’s oldest sister Heather disappeared at the age of 17, a year after confessing to school staff and friends what was going on at home, but nothing was done to protect her.
The siblings were told she had taken a job in Torquay, which she had previously been rejected from.
In reality, Fred and Rose West had murdered their own daughter and buried her underneath the family home.
Fred would even ‘joke’ that, should the kids ever misbehave, they would “end up under the patio like Heather”;.
But Fred and Rose West failed to keep their stories the same about where Heather had gone, which ultimately led to them being caught.
Their younger daughter, Louise, came forward to a friend about the sexual abuse Fred put her through, which spurred the friend’s mum to call the police.
DIGGING THE TRUTH UP
Police eventually caught up with the pair’s sick actions thanks to their children telling people their sister was under the porch, and on February 25, 1994 began excavating the house.
They soon realised the joke of going “under the patio”; was in fact a threat when they found a leg bone in the garden.
Further excavation work led police to nine more bodies found buried under the house – with two more victims found in a field in Kempley.
When Fred was questioned by police, he chillingly revealed there were at least 20 more victims that the couple had killed across the country.
Mae was 20 when the police came knocking and had moved out of the family home by this point, she said at first, she was too stunned to believe it was real.
Mae moved out of the family home in 1990 at the age of 18 after getting a job as a secretary and signed a mortgage with a partner.
Four years later, her parents were jailed for multiple murders.
She attempted to have contact with Rose while she was in prison, but says the relationship was cut off by her mum when Mae probed her on the murders.
Mae continued: “She claimed that Dad influenced and controlled her and that she’d made a pact to stay with him as long as he didn’t harm us kids.
“But it started to sound implausible. If that was the case, why didn’t she leave when Heather went ‘missing’? You wouldn’t just accept that your daughter had disappeared, would you? And why would Mum collude in the sexual abuse? When I started to think about it all, doubts crept in.”;
It was after Mae quizzed Rose about Heather that Rose decided to cut off all contact with her daughter.
“And I watched her squirm. I thought, ‘She’s not going to give me an honest answer for all her promises. And she never has done. You never got straight answers.
“It makes it worse for the families of victims because she is the only one alive now who knows the truth — and yet she hasn’t told it.”;
LIFE NOW
While Mae has mostly remained out of the spotlight, she decided to share her story with her tell-all book in 2018.
She’s also gone on to live a relatively normal life with a husband and has two adult children, and lives in the rural West country.
Despite their horrific childhood, Mae has been able to keep a relationship with her siblings.
They say that families are broken up by these things, but we’ve stuck together.
Mae West
“We’ve all coped in different ways,”; she told the Daily Mail. “We’re very close. I talk to my sister Louise every day on the phone. There are very few people you can go to who share our background.
“Even in our own family, everyone has had a different experience, and as much as people try to, they can’t understand. They just don’t know what we’ve been through, do they?
“They say that families are broken up by these things, but we’ve stuck together. Actually, we’re very lucky.”;
