Fred West was an English serial killer who murdered twelve women between 1967 and 1987. In 1987, the majority of those murders were with his second wife, Rose West. At least eight of the murders included rape, bondage, torture and mutilation.
The women’s dismembered bodies were usually buried in the basement or garden at the home of the West residents in Gloucester, which is why it became the House of Horrors. Fred West was known to have supposedly committed two murders on his own. Rose supposedly murdered Fred’s stepdaughter, Charmaine.
Fred West’s Childhood
Fred West was born on September 29, 1941, at Bickerton Cottage. He was born into a low-income family of farm workers. His father was very disciplinary, whereas his mother was the opposite, very overprotective. In 1946, his family moved to a semi-detached building adjacent to Moorcourt Farm, where Fred’s father worked as a milking herdsman.
They had no electricity; their only heat source was a log fire. Fred’s mother gave birth to eight children; only six survived, but Fred West was known to be her favorite. He was known as a mama’s boy and always went to his siblings to bond with and establish companionship.
The children had assigned chores to do, and they all did seasonal work on the farm as needed. The chores consisted of picking strawberries, harvesting wheat, and hunting rabbits. Working to earn a living was instilled in Fred West early on, learning to survive. As he grew older, Fred West developed a habit of petty theft, thinking he needed to do that to survive.
The Teen Years
In 1957, when Fred West was 17 years old, he was injured and suffered a fractured skull, a broken arm, and a broken leg from a motorcycle accident. He was not conscious for a week and had to walk with braces for several months. He became terrified of hospitals after this incident. He would have fits of rage if he had to go to the hospital. Fred again suffered another injury two years later; he was trying to grope a woman when she punched him in the face, and he fell off a fire escape down two stories.
In June 1961, Fred’s younger sister confided in her mother and said that Fred had been raping her since the previous December and had gotten her pregnant. He was arrested and admitted to police he had been raping his sister and said, “doesn’t everybody do it?” His trial was on November 9. At the last minute, his sister Kitty refused to testify, and the case collapsed.
Fred’s mother intended to testify in his defense. After his sister refused to testify, most of Fred’s family disowned him, and his mother banished him. He moved in with his Aunt Violet. In the middle of 1962, he reconciled with his parents but not with the rest of the family.
Fred and Rose West
Fred West and Rose first met in 1969, when she was just 15 years old. When they first met, Rose was disgusted by the 27-year-old. As a young girl, she admired all of the attention that Fred had given her. He discovered that although she had never dated, she was very promiscuous.
After dating for several months, Rose introduced Fred to her parents. Rose’s mother right away concluded he was a pathological liar. Her father, who was diagnosed as schizophrenic, was believed to have molested Rose, so he disapproved of the relationship as well. Her father also threatened to call social services if they continued to date.
The Murders
The first known murder of the Wests was a 19-year-old girl in 1973, Lynda Gough. Her body was found, completely dismembered, and her jaw was wrapped in surgical tape. Two small tubes were inserted into her nasal cavities to allow her to breathe. Her dismembered body was missing five cervical vertebrae and numerous finger bones, which were all buried in a pit beneath the garage.
She was likely suspended from holes carved into the wooden beams, so she was hanging from the beams. Fred later admitted he had suspended his victims’ bodies from the ceiling, and most of them died of strangulation or suffocation.
The following 17 months, other victims between the ages of 15 and 21 suffered the same fate as Lynda Gough. 15-year-old Carol Ann Cooper and 18-year-old Juanita Mott. Most of the murders were done in the same way as with Lynda.
The Final Murder
The last murder that Fred West and Rose West committed was with a sexual motive on August 5, 1979. She was a 16-year-old girl named Alison Chambers. She ran away from a local children’s home and became the live-in nanny for the Wests. She lived in the household for several weeks before her murder. After she was murdered, her body was also buried in the garden close to the bathroom wall. Her body was most likely dismembered; striations did not mark her skeleton as the earlier victims’ bodies had been.
Fred was arrested for all of the murders he had committed and hanged himself in prison at age 53 in 1995. If you are interested in learning more, check out Recently discovered police recordings and first-person accounts tell the story of Fred and Rose West, two of the UK’s most prolific murderers, on Netflix.
