01x02 - Rose

[bunniefuu]

[foreboding music playing]

[recorder whirs]

[officer] What I'm concerned about,

Fred, is that you are gonna keep quiet

because you think,

or you are frightened to death

it would implicate Rose.

[Fred] Rubbish.

[intense, ominous music playing]

[Savage] Was she ever in the house

when you were k*lling somebody?

- [Fred] No.

- [Savage] Or cutting them up?

- [Fred] No.

- [Savage] Never once?

[Fred] No. She knew nothing

because I am sure of one thing.

If she'd have known,

she'd have been the first to report me.

Turn it off.

[eerie music playing]

[music fades out]

[gentle music playing]

[reporter 1] Cromwell Street

has become a magnet

for the sympathetic, the shocked,

and the downright curious.

It's still giving up its grisly secrets,

but already it's one of

the most infamous addresses in Britain.

[reporter 2] Detectives, who've unearthed

three bodies in the garden,

don't expect to find any more there.

The search for bodies

has now switched to inside the house,

as, piece by piece,

25 Cromwell Street is torn apart.

The case has developed

from a missing person

to three bodies in a garden,

and now, suddenly,

this acknowledgement

is made of nine more victims.

So the police now have to cope

with a multiple m*rder inquiry.

[music continues]

[Williams] Fred confessed

to a series of killings.

So from that point of view,

it wasn't a complicated investigation,

it wasn't complex.

The difficulties we had was,

one, identifying the victims,

and two, what to do about Rose.

You can only work

with the evidence that you've got.

Rose was in a safe house

with the children, Mae and Stephen,

where she spent the time whilst

we were excavating 25 Cromwell Street.

There were a lot of listening devices

throughout the premises,

and the intention would have been

to elicit, covertly,

some admissions to what Rose knew,

gathering evidence which should directly

implicate her in any of the murders.

[beep]

[Rose] I thought Dad was a very sick man.

And it's come out, he is a very sick man.

And the worst liar I ever could have

dreamed of.

But nobody could have known.

[music swells]

[Leo Goatley] She was devastated,

quite clearly distressed, um, and shocked.

[male reporter] She denies she knew

anything about the bodies.

- Is that correct?

- Yes, she does.

[male reporter] What about knowledge

of the killings?

- She totally denies that?

- Yes, she does.

Whilst there was

this huge shadow on Rose West,

clear instructions to me were that

she had got into a relationship with Fred

when she was still a young girl, 16.

He'd always been the dominant older party.

He'd manipulated her.

She'd been totally hoodwinked.

[music fades out]

[Rose] I mean,

if I got near the b*stard now,

I'd put me hands round his throat.

This is something you don't forgive.

I'd never forgive that.

You don't forgive that.

You never forget it.

[Williams] Although she talked a lot

in the safe house,

there was no new information.

We were getting nothing,

absolutely nothing.

[dramatic music playing]

[Leach] Fred was

at Gloucester Police Station

for the m*rder of his daughter Heather.

I used to spend quite a lot of time

with Fred in the morning

before, um, Scott or Howard turned up.

So, you know,

we had chance to talk quite a lot.

And he said, "The other girls

that I've talked about before,

they're in the cellar."

So I had some paper,

and he drew the diagram of the cellar,

and he sort of pinpointed

where each of the bodies were.

Because he couldn't remember

what the names were, I just numbered them.

Police are concentrating the search

in the cellar area.

This follows a day's scanning

using imaging technology.

This highly sensitive equipment

allows them to see

into walls and underneath floors,

shadows on the monitor revealing

any object encased in bricks or concrete.

[male officer] Just a quick shot

of the, uh, threshold to this far room.

See the original access to the basement.

Staircase and a grille.

The cellar was accessible

down some fairly steep stairs.

[male officer] There's another room

off on the side there.

[Williams] It was clear that the kids

had used it as a den at some stage

because there was pictures on the wall.

But it was cold, it was dank,

it was particularly smelly

because Fred had split sewage pipes.

[music continues]

[Howard Ogden] We went to the cellar

at Cromwell Street

with a view

to guide the officers to then dig.

[Janet Leach] Fred came in the back way

because of the press,

and then they brought us

into the basement.

[eerie music playing]

[male officer] We're currently

in the basement of the premises.

The people present are

Mr. Frederick Walter Stephen West,

accompanied by Mr. Howard Ogden,

Mr. Scott Canavan,

and Mrs. Janet Leach,

um, appropriate adult.

Officers present,

Detective Chief Inspector Law, DC Savage.

[eerie music playing]

- Is there anything in here that we've

- Along that line, that line there.

Okay, under here.

[Ogden] So it's just

where you're standing then, Fred, yeah?

[Fred] She's there, or somewhere

just on the edge of there.

I don't think it's quite far over as that,

but just on the edge of there somewhere.

[Law] Right.

[Leach] It was strange.

I mean, because as he talked,

everything was so matter-of-fact.

You know, he, he'd get a little bit upset,

but then compose himself

very quickly and change,

you know, it was like his personalities

were like two different people. You know?

One of the officers asked him

to choose a spray can

to mark where the bodies were,

which had been drawn on the diagram.

He sort of marked the floors,

uh, quite near to the chimney breasts.

[Fred] It's across there.

[Law] And who is that?

[Fred] That's the second girl.

I just hated the man,

but I couldn't afford to let

any of my feelings sort of come out,

because he seemed to sense that.

So then the trust

wouldn't have been there.

I'd say that's probably where it came in.

He said, like,

all the children slept down there.

It was really dark and damp.

The smell, it was awful. It was just

I just [scoffs]

I could smell it.

When I went to sleep at night,

I could smell it.

[Hazel Savage] Fred,

is there anybody else in here?

[Fred] No.

Are you sure?

You realize all this will come up,

don't you?

[Fred] Yeah.

Well, I mean, what's one more? [echoing]

[music fades out]

[gentle music playing]

[sirens wail]

[reporter 1] Concrete from the cellar

of 25 Cromwell Street

was removed from the house

as police continue

their hunt for more bodies.

Today they announced that three more

sets of human remains had now been found.

These were found in the cellar area,

and this brings the total

in Cromwell Street to six.

[reporter 1] The bodies are believed

to be those of women as yet unidentified.

[Williams] For the first week,

we were hearing about

victims' remains being found.

With the discovery of each new body

comes the task of identification.

[male reporter 2] Revelations

in Gloucester have aroused fears

of thousands of people

who have missing relatives or friends.

[Williams] We knew just from

a local police force, Gloucestershire,

that we had

certain people missing on our books.

But then we expanded that

out to our neighboring counties,

neighboring police forces.

We had thousands of calls.

[John Bennett] The Missing Persons Bureau

in London

has from the outset of this investigation

been of considerable assistance to us.

We would hope that persons who have

for some reason distanced themselves

from their relatives or friends,

that they can make contact

with their relatives

or contact with the Missing Persons Bureau

and establish their safety.

[intense music continues]

[Belinda] There was a number coming along

the bottom of the screen, so I rang it.

And then within an hour or two,

this detective came to my door

and said to me,

"Can you explain why you think

your sister Juanita is one of those?"

I said, "I've just got this feeling."

I was about 15

when Juanita was last known of.

The last time I'd spoke to Juanita,

she'd been kicked out of home

because she was so naughty.

Well, she was Juanita.

I was in bed asleep, and I heard

these stones being thrown at the window.

So I looked out,

it was her, so I let her in.

And I said, "What happened last night?"

And she said,

"Oh, Mum and them wouldn't let me in."

I said, "Well, you know

the window will always be open for you."

She said, "Yeah,

and you've got to remember

that I'll always be there for you."

"No matter what or no matter when."

"Just find me."

[music fades out]

[ominous music playing]

As a journalist,

you want a story that's got legs,

as they say in journalism,

i.e. a story that's going to keep going.

And the West case had that quality.

It's a bit like a jigsaw puzzle.

You have some of the pieces

and, you know, you do the border.

And some pieces join up,

but there are missing pieces.

And early on, one of the pieces,

certainly that I tried to put in place,

was how did Fred and Rose meet?

And the truth was slightly obscure.

But essentially, in 1969,

Rose was a 15-year-old schoolgirl.

Fred West was a 27-year-old man.

And somehow he chatted her up

and they bonded.

And almost immediately,

she becomes pregnant with Heather.

[music intensifies]

[Fred] I trained Rose

[music ends]

to what I wanted.

That is why

our marriage worked out so well.

For a simple reason,

Rose had had no wild life.

She just blended into my way of living.

[Savage] Rose would act

under your instruction?

[Fred] Yes.

- Well, yeah. Yes.

- [Savage] To be fair to Rose.

[somber music playing]

[Goatley] Rose West was complex.

Her relationship with Fred was complex.

Rose was bringing up a family,

but at the same time,

Fred was also sending her out

with these other men.

[officer] Statements that I've read,

Mr. West, from people who know you

This chap says he learned about

your wife's sexual habits through you.

How she was a prost*tute at the house.

[music intensifies]

I probed on that. She said, "Well,

I did it because Fred made me do it."

I was in love with your father.

Whenever I made love

with your father, that was it for me.

But I had to go out with this bloke

I didn't like and climb into his bed

and make love all night

and come home in the morning.

[Sounes] One of the big

talking points of the West case is,

who was in control?

I think certainly when they first met,

Fred must have been the dominant partner.

He had to have been.

He had much, much more life experience.

I thought Fred must have bewitched her,

and she must have gone along

with Fred's idea of what was okay,

sexually and otherwise.

[tense music continues]

[Rose] My mum tells me,

"Get an older man."

"He'll look after you.

He's had his life. He's had his flings."

"You know, you'll be all right."

I mean, and I'm with this man.

I am almost completely brainwashed.

You know, and I am doing what he says.

[music ends]

Now, how much he coerced her

is really unknown.

[Williams] As

the investigation progressed,

the focus then was

to go to speak to people

who would have knowledge

and understanding of Fred and Rose.

What did you know

about Fred and Rose's lifestyle?

Were you aware of any activities

that were going on at the premises?

At that time, the house would be packed.

[officer] Right.

I want to talk first of all, Mr. West,

about a statement of evidence

that we've received

from a lady called Elizabeth Agius.

[ominous music playing]

Rose started telling me

about her personal life.

How did I feel about it,

by she was a prost*tute?

Um

I just told her it was her business.

It was nothing to do with me.

She did go into details

that she had, like,

microphones or something in the bedroom.

Because if she ever had,

uh, clients there,

Fred was always on the opposite side,

into the next room.

And, um, he likes to listen

to things like that.

[music intensifies]

But their life,

it was up to them

to whatever I thought turned them on.

And, you know,

I never took no notice, really.

[Williams] Rose came across,

in her early days,

as somebody who was

sweet, vulnerable, gullible.

The more we looked into her,

the more devious she appears to have come.

Fred and Rose, though a couple,

was clearly engaged in activities

which we would consider

not the social norm.

[officer] Has she been happy

to go along with this?

[Fred] Well, all I can say is that

for that 23 years we've been together.

I mean, do you think

she would have stayed?

She thinks just as much of me

as I do of her.

[Williams] You had these underlying,

sordid activities

that were constantly going on

at 25 Cromwell Street,

which people were aware of,

but for whatever reason chose not

to bring it

to the attention of the police.

This lady says

when she was shown around Cromwell Street,

she was shown a trapdoor

which led to the cellar.

[music fades out]

We went down there,

and Fred said, um, he wasn't sure

what to make of this yet.

He said, "I don't know whether to make it

a playing area for the children."

Or he nudged me and he used to say,

"Or else I could make this

into my t*rture room,

and just think," he said,

"what I could do

to you down here," he said.

"Nobody would hear me," he said,

"'cause I'd make it soundproof."

[dramatic music playing]

- [woman] Did you consider going to police?

- [Agius] No.

What they did was their business.

I accepted them as they are,

so long as I wasn't involved in anything.

[Williams] It was

extremely surprising to see

that this activity could take place

in a house

in the middle of the town center.

But the burning question,

the crucial question was,

what were the victims doing

in 25 Cromwell Street?

How did they get there?

[foreboding music playing]

[engine revs]

[somber music playing]

[officer] The conversation then got round

to the fact that Fred used to go out

looking for young girls

who were hitchhiking or thumbing lifts.

She says that when she asked

why you did it,

"Fred said that he liked

to pick up young women

to get them back to lodge with them."

"He said

he could get them into prostitution,

and he liked them to be aged

between 15 to 17 if possible."

What was going through my head

at the time was,

"This is great,

this is a breakthrough, great evidence."

[Britton] A key feature of Fred's strategy

was simply to go cruising

and to look for a victim of opportunity,

someone who seemed vulnerable.

[Williams] But we also realized

it wasn't just people living

in 25 Cromwell Street that went missing.

These victims were

from all over the country.

250,000 people go missing

in Britain every year.

The majority return home

within a few days.

But around 3,000 vanish without trace.

[gentle music playing]

[reporter 1] What has happened

to Lucy Partington?

Has she simply vanished for reasons

which her parents aren't aware?

Lucy's bus was ten minutes late

leaving the center of Cheltenham

and didn't arrive at the stop

on Evesham Road until half past ten.

But by then,

the 21-year-old student had vanished,

and there's been

no trace of her ever since. [echoing]

[somber music continues]

She was four years younger than me,

and, um, I was rather

the bossy older sister.

We were all together at Christmas

at my mum's house.

One of my brothers gave Lucy

a lift to her friend Helen's

and offered to pick her up afterwards,

and she said,

"No, it's fine. I'll get the bus."

And was never seen again.

[reporter 2] What do you think

has happened to your daughter?

Well, I don't know. [laughs nervously]

A very difficult question.

You know, I think that whatever has

happened to her was against her will.

I'm quite convinced myself

that she meant to catch that bus.

I don't think

she would have accepted a lift.

I don't think it would have been

in character with her.

[Marian] The police searched.

They dragged the lake by the bus stop.

They put up notices of missing person,

and nothing was found.

I would like this thing put to bed,

as they say in journalist terms.

Yeah, I would like the thing

Have it finished. If she is dead, let's

put an end to it. Let's have a funeral.

The whole thing is so uncertain,

isn't it, at the moment.

And I would like to know

what happened to her.

I don't like to think that I shall die

without ever knowing what happened to her.

- [man] Thank you very much.

- Okay.

[Marian] I first heard

about Cromwell Street when I was at work.

We just felt very restless,

and it was, you know, very disturbing

that all this was going on.

Maybe it was just because

this was about missing people.

And this was about bodies being found,

and it wasn't very far

from where Lucy disappeared.

I just remember

saying to my mum around that time,

"I think it's going to be better to know

than not to know."

And my mum said,

"I'm not so sure about that."

[music fades out]

[Fred] I never actually ever knew

their names.

[eerie music playing]

[Fred] I didn't want to know

or make up a name, whatever it was.

[Savage] No? What about Lucy?

She was well publicized as a missing girl.

[Fred] The thing is,

all these are so mixed up in my mind,

I haven't got a clue which is which.

[Savage] You put them there, didn't you?

- Don't know whether you put them there?

- [Fred] No.

- [Savage] Buried these people?

- Yeah, buried the people.

But I mean, I didn't

It was done quick and a long time ago.

[Canavan] He did know a couple of names,

but some were strangers.

Which, to me, put a different light

on Fred at that point.

I started to imagine then

what these poor victims had

actually gone through before they died.

[Savage] Fred, you've got

that awful smirk on your face again.

That's worrying me.

And I need to know

we're not going into another world now.

[Fred] No. But, I mean, every girl

I picked up, I didn't put in the basement.

- [Savage] Where did you put them?

- [Fred laughs]

I dropped them off

where they wanted to go.

[sinister laughter echoes]

[Britton] In the early interviews,

what you see is a cunning man

who's living in a fantasy.

[Fred] I mean, each one was

their own kinky sex, that's all it was.

I mean, that's why

you probably find it hard.

It was what they

their thing that they wanted to try, do.

[Ogden] So far as Fred is concerned,

his approach

is largely entirely matter-of-fact.

Really concerned about himself

as opposed to the deceased.

[Fred] It was just this urge

at the time when they they upset me,

that I went for 'em.

And the whole fear,

and this is something

that we've got to go into,

was that the biggest fear that was in me,

was Rose finding out that

I was messing with other women.

Frederick West seems unmoved

by the fact that these people are dead.

And what we see are the hallmarks

of the sadistic sexual psychopath.

[eerie music playing]

[reporter 1] More human remains

have been found

at the house in Gloucester

being searched by police.

The latest discovery

in the cellar of the house

brings to nine the number of bodies

found at the home of Frederick West.

[eerie music swells]

[Fred] The whole thing now,

you've got them all.

Yeah.

So there ain't no more in the basement.

[Sounes] When the police excavation

on Cromwell Street stopped

[somber music playing]

they were bringing

the victim remains out.

Fleet Street is down there,

BBC is down there,

the TV, Sky News, CNN,

Canadian television, French television.

They're all there because victims

are being brought out in black boxes.

It goes around the world.

When the victims' remains

were all excavated,

and you saw the conditions

in which those remains were coming up,

you saw they were dismembered,

you saw evidence

that they had been taped

and bound and gagged,

you start to think,

how could anybody do that?

And then you think

how those kids must have suffered

immediately before their death.

[music swells]

For every victim that we identified,

there would have been

10, 20, 30 names that remained missing

and were never found.

Eventually, we were able

to put a name to all the victims.

[reporter 2] 25 Cromwell Street

was the burial ground

for a total of nine young women.

They were Heather West,

Rosemary West's eldest daughter,

who was 16.

Shirley Robinson, who was

eight months pregnant by Frederick West.

Alison Chambers, who lived

in a children's home in Gloucester.

Lynda Gough, who'd left home in 1973.

Carol Cooper, who'd run away

from a children's home in Worcester.

Lucy Partington, who vanished

after visiting a friend in Cheltenham.

Thérèse Siegenthaler, a Swiss student

who'd vanished while hitchhiking.

Shirley Hubbard, who'd lived

with foster parents in Droitwich.

And Juanita Mott, another lodger.

We were picked up in a car,

shielded from the press

because they were camped outside,

and taken to the station,

and we were told,

"Really sorry to tell you,

but it is confirmed

that Juanita was found in the cellar."

[officer] You talked

to Hazel about a girl from Newent?

[Fred] Yeah.

[officer] If I said her name,

which we now think we might have

[Fred] Yeah.

would you think you'd recognize it?

[Fred] I'll certainly try.

[officer] Juanita Mott?

- [Fred] That's her.

- And what did you do with her?

[Fred] Buried her in that hole.

[gentle, somber music playing]

[Mary-Ann] It wasn't like,

"Oh, our little bubble's burst."

It was worse.

It was worse than you could ever imagine.

It was an expl*si*n.

Poof, this is it.

Your life is never going to be the same

because of what he did to her.

[Belinda] Up until that day,

I honestly thought,

"One day she's going to get hold of us."

"Never know, she might

just knock on my door one day."

But she never came back.

[music continues]

There was a phone call from the police

saying they had some news for us.

Russell Williams arrived and then said,

Fred West had told them

that one of them was called Lucy.

[music intensifies]

The first question that

you always get asked is, "Are you sure?"

Because I guess

there would always be a little

[sighs] a little sliver of hope

that it's not their loved one

and their loved one's gonna

and walk through the door one day,

but we know that reality doesn't exist.

[Marian] My mum didn't express

much emotion at all,

but we met Dad off the train,

and he just broke down

and burst into tears,

and I we just held each other.

You don't really think.

You just feel

a huge amount of shock and denial.

That's right, you can't quite take it in.

It doesn't feel real.

[mystical music playing]

Especially because

the deaths were so brutal

and meaningless.

[Dezra] It all becomes reality that, yeah,

it's all confirmed that

you're never going to see her again,

and then you realize why she never

got in touch, that all makes sense.

It makes you realize that it must have

been complete hell for her at the end,

knowing that you're on your own.

Nobody knows you're there,

so no one's gonna come save you.

No one's going to

There's not gonna be a knock at the door

It's, um

It must have been horrific for her,

for all of them.

[Mary-Ann] She was hidden.

They were all hidden.

And my mum, having to see

my mum's face, listen to this

[exhales sharply]

[cries softly]

[crying] I saw my hero,

my mum, my hero [inhales sharply]

crumble.

[music fades out]

[Savage] Since you've been spoken to,

we've been able to piece together

eh, a little bit more about each body

as it's been recovered by the police.

Most of these people

have got some sort of material with them.

- [Fred] Oh, have they?

- Yes.

[Fred] I don't know, Hazel.

No idea. I can't

Well, why don't you know?

So that means then,

that somebody else might be involved.

If you didn't put it there.

- [Fred] Hazel.

- Well, I don't know.

[Fred] There is nobody else involved.

I did it all on my own.

[Savage] Right.

[Fred] And there is nobody else.

Let's get that straight.

[Savage] Right, so

Just because I don't remember

what I did to each one in detail,

surely after these good 20-odd years.

- [ominous music playing]

- [indistinct chatter]

Fred West had emphasized that there was

nobody else involved but himself.

Rosemary West

didn't know anything about it.

[Fred] This was all done

behind Rose's back.

I kept her pregnant.

I kept her with other men.

Everything out of my way

when I did things.

[officer] You said the other day you

and her mentally switched into each other.

- [Fred] Yes.

- You're "as one," you said.

That was your words.

[Fred] But there's a difference,

a lot of difference

between evil locking together and love.

[indistinct chatter]

[Fred] Eh?

Rosemary West is

the most important person in his world.

[laughing]

He needs to protect,

to keep safe, Rosemary West.

[Fred] I've been tempted

over the years to tell Rose, I must admit.

- But I never ever did.

- [Savage] Why, Fred?

[Fred] Um Well, one reason,

I didn't know how she'd take it,

what she'd do,

whether she'd walk out on me,

or what would happen,

or whether she'd think she was at risk.

I mean, Rose might look a bit hard faced

and that, but Rose is as soft as a kitten.

[dramatic music playing]

[Ogden] At all times,

Fred was seeking to protect Rose.

He had a notion that he would

go to prison for however long it may be,

but she would live nearby,

and she would visit him,

and that that relationship

would continue, uh, unabated.

[Sounes] Mad and weird as he was,

and mad and weird as she is,

on some depraved level,

they also loved each other.

Rose was his whole world,

and he wanted to save her.

[Rose] If they think I've got

f*ck all to do with it,

they may as well put me

in a cell and throw the key away.

Because I shall always protest

my innocence,

and I don't care if I spend

the rest of my life in the f*cking nick.

- [laughs]

- [eerie music playing]

[Ogden] I always sensed

that there was more to this story

than I was getting from Fred.

And by more, I mean

the knowledge and involvement by Rose.

[tense, ominous music playing]

[music fades out]

[Savage] The police have gone

to see a girl this afternoon.

Used to be the nanny?

[Fred] Oh, um, Carol.

[unsettling music playing]

I caught the news,

and all I can remember is it said

a man in Gloucester had been arrested

for all the killings that went on.

And I just broke down.

I got onto the police straight away,

and I just said,

"You need to really look into this

because he did the same to me years ago."

"He was gonna k*ll me."

[music stops]

[Sounes] When Fred was being questioned,

he's asked about Caroline Owens.

She lived at 25 Cromwell Street

as the nanny in 1972.

So in '94,

a detective was sent to see Caroline

and take a statement from her.

[ominous music playing]

When I was actually living there,

I wasn't aware

of what was actually going on,

um, especially with Rose

and the male visitors to the house.

During a conversation

one evening with Fred,

he said, "Me and Rose

want you to join our sex circle."

And I think he thought

that he could groom me.

To me, that was dirty, scary.

It wasn't me.

I left the Wests

and went back home to live.

But on December 6th,

I remember going to hitchhike

to see my boyfriend in Tewkesbury,

and I saw their car.

At the time, I was thinking,

they are gonna be really angry

with me because of how I left.

I didn't think they would

do anything really bad to me at all.

So I got in the car.

- [tense music playing]

- [engine revs]

[officer] You pull into a gateway

turn around and whack her one.

- She's semi-unconscious.

- [Fred] Rubbish.

[officer] And she's tied up

and taped and taken back.

- And you were with Rose.

- [Fred] No!

I was always on me own when I went.

- [officer] You weren't.

- [Savage] No, you weren't.

[officer] You went with your missus.

- [Savage] Rose sat on her.

- [Fred] No, she did not!

[officer] The truth is you will write Rose

out of anything you can.

[Fred] No! That is wrong!

[officer] There's these people buried

in the basement, the garden,

and your wife

didn't know anything about it.

It's just too ridiculous.

[Williams] Fred was not on his own.

Rose was in the car.

This MO, the way that they abducted her

was very similar to how we perceived

and imagined the other victims were taken,

that were taken

from the streets, hitchhiking,

or waiting at the bus stop as Lucy was.

That's a blueprint of what happened

to these other girls.

[Owens] At some point, I blacked out.

And when I came back round,

my hands were already tied behind my back.

And all the time he was saying,

"Now, just calm down."

Uh

"We're gonna take you back home.

We're gonna clean you up."

Uh

"Calm you down, give you a cup of tea,

then we'll go take you back home."

At that time, I wasn't sure

what was gonna happen.

[ominous music playing]

[Savage] When she's in the house,

she describes how

both you and Rose undressed her.

[Owens] They put a gag in my mouth.

My hands were tied behind my back.

I had a blindfold put on me.

And then I was put onto

this mattress on the floor.

That's when the sexual as*ault started.

Early hours of the morning,

all of that stopped.

He grabbed hold of me

by the throat and lifted me up,

shouting at me and telling me

that he was gonna keep me in the cellar.

"And when they've finished with you,

we're gonna k*ll you and bury you

under the paving stones of Gloucester."

[unsettling music swells]

[Savage] What about that, Fred?

- Absolute rubbish.

- [music stops]

[Williams] Eventually,

she managed to escape.

If Fred had been imprisoned

for the offense,

he would have come across the radar

a lot more than what he did

when it came to starting to look

for the abductions of these, uh, girls

that were happening around that time.

[somber music playing]

There'd been a court case in 1973,

and regrettably, scandalously, actually,

the Wests had got away with a fine.

They should have been jailed, really.

The level of abuse was far more serious

than the way it was actually dealt with

in the Magistrates', as a summary matter,

when really it involved r*pe

and should have been indicted

and go to the Crown Court.

And the outcome at that time

was a £25 fine, I think it was,

at the Magistrates' court

for both of the Wests.

[Williams] I think,

yes, it is a missed opportunity.

It was a missed opportunity

to raise the profile of Fred and Rose

to identify them as possible sex offenders

who could carry out abductions,

kidnapping, and imprisonment.

Fred and Rose did get off lightly with it.

- [Owens] What they did was evil.

- [intense, ominous music playing]

[crying] It's almost like,

"Oh well, we got away with it."

"But only by the skin of our teeth.

So next time, they've got to die."

[dramatic music playing]

[Savage] In hindsight, did you ever think

she was a "practice run" for you?

[Fred] What do you mean, "practice run"?

[officer] The others ended up

being taped, and they're dead.

The only difference is with Mrs. Owens

is she's still wandering around, luckily.

Was it a practice run?

[Britton] The relationship

between Frederick and Rosemary West

was essential to this whole case.

When she came to Frederick West,

she was a relatively young woman.

A girl, almost, and that, yes,

she had had a difficult early life.

She had had a sexually a*usive life.

But it was Frederick West who taught her,

allowed her to fly

in this sadistic, cruel world.

[Agius] One day Rose said

she was going out with Fred.

And I said, "Well, why are you

going with him, you know?"

And she turned and said to me,

"So long as there's a woman

in the car with a male,

there's always an easy chance

for another girl

who they're going to pick up

and get inside the car."

"Because she will be there with him."

[Britton] What I'm seeing is

a series of behaviors that tell me

I'm looking at a pair

of sexually sadistic predators.

Not one but two.

[eerie music playing]

[Savage] I could understand

if it was very difficult

for you to tell us if Rose was involved.

I know that,

and you know I know that, don't you?

We're not stupid, hmm?

[dramatic music playing]

You're not alone in this whole saga.

Fred?

[Fred] From the very first day

of this inquiry,

my main concern has been

to protect other person or persons.

I have not, and still not

told you the whole truth

about these matters.

- [music fades out]

- [high-pitched ringing]

[tape clicks off]

[chilling music playing]