WHEN her friend’s landlady handed her a cup of tea, teenager Karen Hamilton politely declined.
And 50 years later, she believes it was a decision that probably saved her life.
Karen Hamilton, pictured, would regularly stay with her friend in a bedsit above Fred and Rose West’s House of HorrorsCredit: Karen Hamilton
The flat was on the top floor of the West’s at 25 Cromwell StreetCredit: Getty
She believes that refusing a cup of tea from twisted killer Rose West saved her lifeCredit: South West News Service
Little did she know, the woman holding the teacup was notorious serial killer
“I wonder to this day whether that tea could have been drugged, and I could have ended up as one of his ,” remembers Karen, now 67, who lives in , Australia.
“I’m just glad I didn’t accept it at the time.”
Rose West was sentenced to ten life sentences after helping her husband Fred West 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
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.
While Rose has continuously protested her innocence, Fred West escaped justice when he killed himself while on remand.
Karen says: “When I first heard about all those poor girls who’d been killed at that house, it was terrifying to think that I’d been sat there, in that house with them.”
Karen’s parents Joan and Francis had emigrated to Australia in the 1950’s from the UK, and aged 18, she flew back to stay with her aunt and uncle, who lived five doors down from the Wests’ 25 , otherwise known as the ‘House of Horrors’.
Karen would become close friends with the West’s lodger Liz, often staying with her in her bedsit on the top floor of number 25.
Karen says: “I easily made some friends at the pubs and clubs whilst I was then and had met my friend Liz, who was a year younger than me, at one of the nightclubs.
“She worked at the club and got me a job behind the bar, and I’d often stay in her rented room, so that I didn’t wake my aunt and uncle when we worked late.
“The terraced house, at number 25, was always humming with lodgers, and young nannies and children playing in the yard.
The landlords Rose and Fred seemed delighted to have me in the house, and were very friendly
“The landlords Rose and Fred seemed delighted to have me in the house, and were very friendly – a bit too friendly in Fred’s case.
“When I first met Fred, he gave me the creeps straight away.
“He was dressed in a baggy green jumper with a hammer in his hand as he did jobs around the house.
“His dark eyes bore into me under his mop of unruly dark hair and bushy eyebrows.
“But Rose was always smiling.
“She was a shy plain woman with glasses, who was usually with their two children, Heather and Mae.”
After a while, Fred told Karen and Liz, who has since lost touch with Karen, that they weren’t to go down into the cellar, which was locked with a metal door.
Karen Hamilton (pictured as a teenager) lived on Cromwell Street during Fred and Rose West’s killing spreeCredit: Supplied
Many of the victims were subjected to horrific torture and rape before eventually being killed and buried under the houseCredit: SWNS:South West News Service
Part of the torture basements in the West’s houseCredit: SWNS:South West News Service
“I didn’t know what he was hiding down there,” remembers Karen, “But I didn’t dare to try and find out.
“Their house always had a funny smell there too; it was like a rank stench.
“It was only afterwards that I knew that it must have been all the bodies that were buried there. The thought of it now turns my stomach.”
‘I was told not to worry about Fred’
Karen says that she was clear from the start that she lived five doors down at number 15 with her aunt and uncle.
“I’ve often wondered afterwards if that’s what saved me,” Karen says.
“That my aunt and uncle lived so close, that it put him off doing anything to me.
“Liz told me not to worry about Fred, that he was just a bit weird and that Rose was nice.
“We ended up spending most of our time up in Liz’s bedsit, which was at the top of the house, rather than at my aunt and uncle’s house,” she says.
“We worked together and would get back late, so I would often spend the night.”
After 11 months, Karen flew back home, but then a year later, in 1979, aged 20, she came back for another visit.
She went to visit Liz, and smelt the familiar stench when she went through the door.
Killed by depravity - Fred and Rose West's known victims
Anna McFall
The nanny of Fred and Rena West’s children, McFall was believed to have been murdered in 1967.
She was pregnant when she died, with West believed to have been the father. Her body was found in June 1994 in a shallow grave.
Fred West denied murdering McFall but he is said to have confided to a visitor after his arrest that he stabbed her following an argument.
This happened before Rose West met him.
Charmaine West
With Fred in prison for the theft of car tyres and a vehicle tax disc, Rose was left to look after Charmaine and Anne Marie.
The former just eight-years-old, was Fred West’s stepdaughter from his previous marriage.
A neighbour Tracey is said to have found Charmaine tied to a wooden chair with her hands behind her back with Rose standing with a large wooden spoon.
Rose claimed she’d been taken by her mother, but her skeleton was found at the Midland Road property, hidden and missing bones.
Rena West
Fred’s first wife Rena is believed to have been murdered by strangulation.
Rose was not charged for this murder.
Lynda Gough
Lynda Gough was the first sexually motivated killing conducted by the Wests.
She moved into Cromwell Street in April 1973, having had affairs with several lodgers. The Wests later claimed she’d been asked to leave after hitting one of their children.
Strangulation and suffocation were the likely causes of death.
Carol Ann Cooper
Cooper was murdered in November 1973, aged just 15.
On the night of November 9, she was allowed to spend the night at her grandmother’s house before a doctor’s appointment the next morning.
She attended the appointment and then met her boyfriend, before somehow ending up on Cromwell Street.
Her body was found more than twenty years later.
Lucy Partington
A 21-year-old medieval English student at Exeter University, Lucy returned home for Christmas in December 1973.
She left a friend’s house in a rush to get the last bus from Cheltenham to Gretton on 27 December, with it believed she was abducted from this bus stop.
She was found more twenty years later, her dismembered body in the cellar of Cromwell Street.
Therese Siegenthaler
A 21-year-old Swiss sociology student at Woolwich Polytechnic.
She had planned to hitch-hike to Ireland in Easter 1974. Her family reported her missing having not heard from her for some time.
Prosecution believe she was abducted before being killed, with Fred West later building a fake chimney over her grave.
Shirley Hubbard
Just 15 at the time of her death, Hubbard is believed to have been abducted by the Wests.
Her body was found following an excavation in the concrete and plastic membrane of the cellar floor.
Juanita Mott
In the summer of 1974, Mott moved into 25 Cromwell Street but later went missing when she was living in Newent.
Her body was found in March 1994, 19 years later, with West having concreted over the floor of the cellar.
Shirley Robinson
The first victim buried outside the house, Robinson had an affair with Fred West, and by autumn 1977, she was pregnant with his child.
It was initially claimed she had moved to Scotland but her body was later found.
When questioned, Rose West, herself pregnant with her daughter Tara at the time of the murder, claimed she did not remember her, which was described as “ludicrous” by the prosecution.
Alison Chambers
The last murder with a sexual motive established. She disappeared just before her 17th birthday, having been seen at 25 Cromwell Street throughout the summer.
Her body was buried underneath the patio.
Heather West
The first child born to Fred and Rose West, there is no evidence she was aware of the killings.
Sexually abused by her parents and having told friends, she suddenly went missing in 1987, with her mum claiming she had gone to Wales to be with a lesbian partner.
The couple would joke to their other children that they would “end up under the patio like Heather” if they misbehaved. This, and their changing stories, led to the search warrants for the property, and subsequently to their arrests.
This time she met another young lodger called Shirley Robinson, who said that she was a nanny.
“I felt a jolt of fear when I looked into her eyes,” remembers Karen.
“She looked to be about four months pregnant in her tracksuit but I didn’t like to ask her about it.”
After a month Karen flew back to Sydney and started a career as an audio court typist.
I felt so guilty
It wasn’t until 15 years later, at the age of 35, when her mum called her to say that her aunt had phoned and told her that the Wests had been killing girls at their home.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Karen says.
‘I remember the smell of death’
“Fred and Rose West! Never in my wildest dreams could I ever thought I’d been staying with serial killers.
“They had buried bodies in the garden, in their cellar, and even under the floor in a bathroom.
“Sick to my stomach, I remembered that foul stench, the smell of death.
“I was so upset when I heard that Shirley had been heavily pregnant with Fred’s baby when he’d strangled her and buried her in the garden.
“I felt so guilty that I hadn’t been able to help her.
“And tragically police discovered that Heather – that sweet beautiful little girl that I remembered so well that was also killed.”
Remarkably lodger and pal Liz had survived the killing spree, the pair being two of the few women who encountered the Wests in Cromwell Street and lived to tell the tale.
The Wests tortured and murdered women they took into their homeCredit: Shutterstock
West, alongside her husband, tortured and murdered 10 young women in Gloucester. The actual death toll is at least 12 and probably higher.Credit: Shutterstock
Karen met one of the West’s victims, Shirley Robinson, picturedCredit: Supplied
Rose West was charged with ten murders and her husband with 12.
Escaping punishment, he died by suicide in his cell, aged 53, in January 1995.
In November 1995, after pleading not guilty, Rosemary Pauline West, then 42, appeared at Winchester Crown Court.
She was found guilty on all ten counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Karen says: “I was glad when I heard the house had been demolished and a walkway put in his place.”
Tormented by survivor guilt Karen has written a book Nightmare on Cromwell Street about her time in the House of Horror.
“It’s a tribute to all those girls who lost their lives and were murdered so young,” she says.
“I know I had a lucky escape, and I will always think of those young girls who were killed so violently.”
Nightmare on Cromwell Street is available to buy on Amazon.
Tormented by survivor guilt Karen has written a book Nightmare on Cromwell Street about her time in the House of HorrorCredit: Supplied
Eze Chidiebere Paul
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