Rosemary West is one of the notorious killers in the United Kingdom. She is known for horrifically torturing and killing at least ten young girls, including her stepdaughter. Married to Fred West, the couple were known to be serial killers, and together, they killed over twelve young girls. It is also believed that Rose killed Charmaine Fred’s daughter and Rena Fred’s first wife when she came to look for her daughter. The two had turned their home located at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, into a crime scene where all the notorious activities were taking place. The two murdered the girls and buried their bodies in the cellar of their home. The two conducted their criminal activities for over 15 years unnoticed.
Rosemary West, or rather Rose, was born in Devon on November 29th, 1953, to Bill Letts and Daisy Letts. A fifth-born child in a family of seven, Rosemary was born after her mother had a difficult pregnancy. She was so unlucky to be born into a family where both of her parents were suffering from mental illness (O’Sullivan, 2024). His mother had been diagnosed with depression, and therefore, she was receiving electroconvulsive therapy before, during, and after her pregnancy with Rosemary. Many argue that this treatment may have caused prenatal development con, tributing to poor grades in school, weight problems during adolescence, aggression growing up, and the development of interest in older men in their youthful life.
Roses parent’s marriage was not an easy and smooth one since both of them were suffering from mental illnesses. Her father was paranoid schizophrenic, and over and over, he was abusive to his partner in terms of being violent, and he was also a terrifying dictator to his family. As a result of this, Rosemary’s mother moved out of her home, taking Rose with her. However, Rose decided to move back with her father again around the same time she became intimate with Fred West in her teen years. Her father disapproved of her relationship with Fred, and he objected to it strongly; however, his efforts were in vain; within a very short time, she was already pregnant and gave birth to their first daughter, Heather, in 1970. At the same time, she was married to Fred and she became the caregiver to Fred’s two children from Rena Costello. She stayed with the children when Fred was in prison for petty offenses like theft and evasion of paying fine charges. Shortly after getting a child with Fred, Rose got married to Fred in Gloucester in 1972, and they had their second-born daughter, Mae, in June of the same year. Rose had no defined career, but she earned money through prostitution (Biography.Com Editors, 2023).
Rosemary and her husband Fred’s case came to be known after a detective by the name of Constable Hazel Savage drew attention to what he heard the children joking about. He searched for Cromwell Street in August 1994, and this led to the arrest of the serial killers. However, before this operation, in late 1972, their nanny, a 17-year-old girl named Caroline Owens, was stripped and raped, and threatened to be killed, she reported the matter to the police, but Fred convinced the judge that Owen had consented to the activity and this led to their release.
In December 1994, Fred was charged with 12 acts of Murder, and he committed suicide while in his cell; however, before he committed suicide, he said that he had killed more than 30 people. Rose went on trial in October 1995, and in November of the same year, he was charged with ten acts of murder, and she was sentenced to life imprisonment without bail. Currently, Rose is an inmate at HM Prison New Hall, West Yorkshire.
The killer’s crime scene was her home located at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, commonly referred to as Britain’s House of Horror. The killers could subject their victims to torture and rape before killing them. It has also been recorded that some of her victims had their bodies dismembered, and the toes and fingers were removed. The home had a cellar where the bodies of the victims were buried. At the crime scene, after the arrest of the killers, over eight bodies of the victims were found in the cellar of the house, including the body of their daughter Heather. In all the murders they committed, the two could bury the remains of their victims, and this was one way they were able to hide the evidence from the authorities and even their neighbors and friends. From the first murder they committed, the victims are known to vanish, and no trace of their existence or relation to the West family can be found.
From the time Rosemary killed Fred’s daughter, Charmaine, she vanished, and no one saw her again. It is believed that she kept the body in their house and waited for Fred to come back from prison, and together, they disposed of her body, and all the other victims were subject to the same treatment (COPPOLA, 2021). The two parents were hostile to their children, and those who knew something was off in the family could not report or tell anyone of the atrocities that were conducted in their home, and this was enough to have the parents continue abusing young girls.
The patterns observed in the crime scene were that girls were going missing, and no one could trace where they were or where they had traveled. The case that triggered investigations was that of their daughter Heather, who was killed in 1987. These patterns were significant in the inquiry as they helped understand how the killers were carrying out their activities and also helped find where the victims were buried.
The two significant items of evidence that were recovered from the scene of the crime were the remains of the victims buried in the cellar of the house the killers lived in (Campbellsville University, 2019). The remains of their daughter, Heather, were the first piece of evidence found at the crime scene. In their previous address or home location, the remains of their stepdaughter Charmaine were found, and the remains of Fred’s first wife were found near Fred’s birthplace in Herefordshire. This was enough evidence to connect the suspects to the murder of these women. Other than this, some of Fred and Rosemary’s children confessed to having been raped and threatened to be killed. According to the sources, Stephen, their son, was forced to help with digging the hole where Heather was buried in the cellar.
Constable Hazel Savage initiated the investigation of the serial killers. This was after the couple were accused of rape in 1992 by a girl they had defiled. After this incident, the detective overheard children making jokes about Fred’s eldest daughter, Heather; the children were joking with the social workers, saying that Heather was “under the patio,” and since Heather was missing, Constable Hazel Savage decided to start a broader investigation (Morris-Grant, 2024).
Detective Constable Hazel Savage managed to convince the senior officers of the possibility that the joke made by the children was not a mere dark joke. Still, it could be holding much meaning, and this prompted the police to perform a search of the home at 25 Cromwell Street. During the search, Heather’s remains were the first to be found then those of other girls were also found. This led to the arrest of the two serial killers, Rosemary and Fred.
However, many deficiencies led to the delayed arrest of the serial killers, and if they could have been avoided, the killers could not have killed all these girls. One of the primary deficiencies identified is the fact that Owen, the family’s nanny, had reported the matter to the police. Still, the matter was not taken that seriously since Fred managed to convince the court’s magistrate that own had consented to the rape, incarceration, stripping, and threats of being killed if she had told anyone of these atrocities.
Even though at the time when the girl reported the matter to the police, Rosemary was pregnant with their second child, the magistrate’s decision to take Fred’s side of the story to be true allowed the killers to operate freely. The second deficiency was the fact that they knew Fred was a criminal since he had been taken to prison before for theft and failure to pay fines. The other reason was the disappearance of their children and Fred’s first wife, with no signs of coming back. All these are among the deficiencies that led to the delayed arrest and conviction of the criminals.
There are a number of forensic technologies that could have been used to catch the killer at an earlier stage before the committed many atrocities. These technologies include The use of surveillance cameras. CCTV footage could help in identifying the killers earlier than they did. This is because CCTV footage could be used to provide the forensic intelligence teams with mental pictures of the activities that were taking place in the area at the time the killers were carrying out these activities (A. K Gupta, 2024). The footage could provide circumstantial evidence like clothes, weapons used in the activities, the individuals involved in the activity, their faces, the height estimation, and other activities that took place during the killings, like how the bodies were disposed among others, and this could help to identify the murderers earlier. Therefore, the availability of CCTV cameras in the area could be a valuable technology for forensic investigations.
The other technology that could be used is artificial intelligence with forensics. Even though synthetic intelligence is new in the field of forensics, artificial intelligence could be used to identify the suspects earlier through digital forensics; through identifying, processing, and reporting the data available online from the public domain, the suspects could be arrested earlier. This is the case where social media and the internet could be available. This way, the people who know about the case of the disappearance of the killed people could share their concerns and stories, and this could help in tracing the killers and bringing them to book.
References
Biography.Com Editors. (2023, October 3). Rosemary West, Serial killer Rosemary West murdered at least ten young women. Most of them were dismembered and buried in the cellar of her home on Cromwell Street. Retrieved from https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/rosemary-west
COPPOLA, F. (2021, February 4). THE MESSED UP TRUTH ABOUT SERIAL KILLERS FRED AND ROSEMARY WEST. Retrieved from Grunge: https://www.grunge.com/326846/the-messed-up-truth-about-serial-killers-fred-and-rosemary-west/#:~:text=In%201992%2C%20Fred%20and%20Rosemary,and%20wanted%20to%20interview%20Heather.
Morris-Grant, B. (2024, March 10). Fred and Rose West claimed the lives of 12 young women and girls. Thirty years on, some questions remain unanswered. Retrieved from ABC NEWS: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-10/fred-rose-west-victims-anniversary/103453858
O’Sullivan, K. (2024, February 25). Where Rose West is now – ‘name change, obesity and Myra Hindley love affair’. Retrieved from Mirror a Reach plc subsidiary: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/rose-west-now-name-change-32198173
K Gupta, G. S. (2024). FORENSIC SCIENCE Criminalistics and Crime Scene Investigation. https://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in/epgpdata/uploads/epgp_content/forensic_science/07._criminalistics_and_forensic_physics/32._use_of_cctv_for_forensic_evidence/et/9071_et_et.pdf
Campbellsville University. (2019, May 15). Modern Forensic Technology. Retrieved from Campbellsville University. Criminal Justice: https://online.campbellsville.edu/criminal-justice/modern-forensic-technology/
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