UNDER the cover of darkness, serial killer Fred West was led by cops into the back garden of his home.
Wearing welly boots and a quilted jacket, he cut an innocuous figure as he scuffed the ground and pointed nonchalantly to the spot where he had buried daughter , 16, who had been missing for seven years.
Police would go on to find another two bodies under the patio slabs and another six women in the cellar of 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester but, on that cold, rainy February night in 1994, only West knew what .
As he played cat-and-mouse with detectives he turned and winked at police volunteer Janet Leach – then later taunted her with the chilling truth, even cracking a sickening joke.
In a never-before-seen interview shown in a new Netflix documentary about the killer couple, Janet said: “It was really strange.
“It was dark, it was raining and he was upset about the state of his garden more than anything. He just kept looking at me and winking as if it was some sort of game.
“When we got back (to the police station) I said to him, ‘What did you mean, what were you looking at me for?’ He said, ‘Didn’t you see that bone sticking out? It’s just by the back door’.”;;
Mum-of-five Janet was a trainee social worker who was working as a ‘responsible adult’ – volunteers who sit in on police interviews with vulnerable suspects – when she was drawn into West’s evil world.
He confessed to Janet how he killed so many women that he couldn’t remember their names – and drew her a numbered map of where he had buried victims in his cellar.
Over 10 months, the then 39-year-old spent more than 400 hours in a remand cell with West and, astonishingly, was often left alone with him.
By June 1994 he had been charged with 12 murders and his wife Rose, with ten. after hanging himself in his prison cell at HMP Birmingham, aged 53 on New Year’s Day 1995.
In November 1995 Rose was found guilty of 10 murders, including that of eight-year-old stepdaughter Charmaine in 1971, and
Thedocumentary – Fred and Rose West: A British Horror Story, out today – also reveals how West confided in Janet and shows the extent to which he played games with cops, slowly unveiling the wicked killings as more and more bodies were discovered.
Janet sat in on West’s first grilling with detectives when he told them: “I never meant to hurt Heather at all. All I wanted to do was persuade her to stay at home.
“But by this time I had no control over me thoughts at all [sic]. There was a piece of electric flex, I believe it was 13 amp, and I picked it up and I thought, well I better make sure that she is dead, so I tied it around her neck
“I used a bread knife to dismember her.”;;
Horrified by the gratuitous details, Janet said: “I think I was in a state of shock. (I thought) ‘What on earth are you actually doing here?’
“West said to me after, ‘Will you come again tomorrow?”;; I said, ‘I don’t know about that,’ and that’s when the police said, ‘Will you come tomorrow?’ I should have really said no.”;;
Even West’s solicitor Howard Ogden was shocked by the matter-of-fact nature in which West detailed his daughter’s murder.
He tells the show: “A man described murdering and dismembering his daughter but it wasn’t with floods of tears and distress and anxiety. It was simply a black and white set of facts.”;;
It was a pattern which continued with West showing not a shred of remorse.
When we got back (to the police station) I said to him, ‘What did you mean, what were you looking at me for?’ He said, ‘Didn’t you see that bone sticking out? It’s just by the back door’
Janet Leach
Janet was alongside West when he went with detectives to the dank cellar of his house –where he often made his sleep – after drawing her a map of where his victims lay.
She said: “I had some paper and he drew a diagram of the cellar and numbered where each of the bodies were because he couldn’t remember the names. He just numbered them.
“I just hated the man but couldn’t afford to let any of my feelings come out because he seemed to see that and the trust wouldn’t have been there.
“He said all the children slept down there. It was really dark and damp, the smell was awful, I just... I could smell it even when I went to sleep at night.”;;
The documentary, which features unseen footage and unheard interviews, shows the moment West returned to his previous home in Midland Street, Gloucester, and showed police where his young daughter Charmaine was hidden.
Janet said: “He was just looking around the back yard, (there was) just like, a crack right up the house, and there was a mark on the wall and he said, ‘That’s where Charmaine was,’ in the middle of the foundations.”;;
West’s lawyer Ogden said West was like two different characters as he paid a visit to the cellar.
“It was really strange,”;; he said. “He talked like everything was so matter-of-fact.Then he’d get a bit upset, then compose himself – it was like two different people.
He talked like everything was so matter-of-fact.Then he’d get a bit upset, then compose himself – it was like two different people
Howard Ogden
“He marked the floors where the bodies were, which had been drawn on (his) diagram and quite near to the chimney breast.”;;
West’s crime had such an impact on Janet that she suffered a stroke during Rose’s trial. She later sued police, claiming she suffered from post-traumatic stress, but the case was thrown out of court on a technicality.
Janet’s son Paul later told the Sun on Sunday how his mum “fell under West’s spell”;; and was devastated when he was discovered dead in his cell.
Hidden microphones
Paul, who was 18 when West killed himself, said: “I’ve never seen a woman so heartbroken. She was hysterical, screaming and crying her eyes out, an absolute mess.”;;
Between them Fred and Rose West, now 71, raped, tortured and killed 12 women and girls between 1967 and 1987, including his first wife Catherine Costello, who he married in 1962.
As the couple’s bloodlust grew they sought out vulnerable women, who had very often been in care, to stay at their 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.
The victims were taken to Cromwell Street where they were bound, gagged, sexually assaulted and murdered.
He couldn’t remember the names. He just numbered them
Police volunteer Janet Leach
Yet neighbours had no idea what went on behind closed doors.
Ex neighbour Elizabeth Aguis said Rose once told her about her life as a prostitute and “went into details that she had microphones or something in the bedroom”;;.
She added: “Fred was on the opposite side of the room because he liked to listen to things like that. But it was their life, and it was up to them to do whatever turned them on. I never took much notice really.”;;
Elizabeth, who lived near the couple on Midland Street, Gloucester, was later called as a witness against Rose after she told her she liked to go out at night with Fred to pick up hitchhikers.
‘I escaped Fred West’
The West’s ex-nanny Caroline Owens was the only victim to escape the couple.
She fled Cromwell Street as a 16-year-old in January 1972 after they asked her to “join their sex circle”;; but weeks later the Wests spotted her on the street and offered to give her a lift.
Talking in old footage, Caroline said: “They put a gag in my mouth, tied my hands behind my back and put a blindfold on me. Then they put me on to this mattress on the floor and that’s when the sexual assaults started.
“In the early hours of the morning all of that stopped. Fred grabbed me by my throat, lifted me up, shouting at me, telling me ‘When I’m finished with you I’ll kill you, bury you under the paving stones’.”;;
Caroline went to the police but could not face the trauma of giving evidence and, unbelievably, the couple were fined just £50 for the attack.
The pair’s former lodger Hayne Hamer, who was just 16 when she moved in in 1976, tells documentary makers how she forged a bond with 18-year-old Shirley Robinson, who was also staying at the house.
Shirley confided to Hayne that she was pregnant with West’s child.
Hayne cries: “Whenever I think of Shirley it hurts. She was there when I needed a friend and she should still be here now.”;;
In police interviews, West tells police how he killed Shirley after they got into a row because he wouldn’t run away with her to Bristol and wanted to stay with Rose.
He is recorded saying: “Shirley said, ‘Well, I’m going down to tell Rose that this is yours’ (the unborn baby). And I turned around and I just smacked her straight in the jaw and she went on the floor.
“I got a piece of flex and tied it around her neck.”;;
The murder also saw the loss of Shirley and West’s unborn child but – as ever – he showed no sympathy, calling her “the girl who caused the problem”;;.
- Fred and Rose West: A British Horror Story is available to stream on Netflix today.
