Inside Fred West's chilling past life in Glasgow and the three Scottish victims he killed

Daily Record

23-05-2025

Fred and Rose West are known to have killed at least 12 women but it's highly speculated that the evil pair are behind even more deaths with suspicions that Fred could be responsible for the disappearance of four Glasgow girls who went missing while he lived in the area in the 1960s.
Netflix's new chilling docuseries Fred and Rose West: A British Horror Story has gripped horrified viewers since its release last week with the three-part programme shooting to the top of the streaming platform's most currently watched TV shows. The notorious serial killer couple, who carried out their heinous crimes in Gloucester at their"house of horrors" on 25 Cromwell Street, are known to have killed at least 12 young women between the years of 1967 and 1987, three of whom were Scottish.
However, it has long been rumoured that the evil couple are responsible for more deaths than previously thought with fears that Fred, who previously lived in Glasgow, could be behind the disappearance of four other women in Glasgow. Fred was married to his first wife, Catherine 'Rena' Costello, before he met Rose and worked as an ice-cream man in Glasgow in the 1960s where he is said to have regularly chatted up women and young girls.
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At the time, the couple lived at Maclellan Street in Kinning Park and they had two children together. Fred's eldest child was called Charmaine, who was born in Glasgow in the spring of 1963. Charmaine was Rena's child, having fallen pregnant with another man before she began dating Fred but was no longer with the father.
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His first biological child, Anne Marie was with his ex-wife Catherine and she was also born in Glasgow in July 1964. Since Fred West's arrest 30 years ago, there has been speculation that his serial killer's murder spree started long before his move to Gloucester amid fears he may have previously claimed victims in Scotland too and buried their bodies at his former home, which was initially believed to be buried underneath the M77/M8 interchange.
However, Ordnance Survey Maps from the time actually show that his allotments were on Gower Street, Maxwell and Sherbrooke avenue.
During a Sky documentary about the killer couple, writer Paul Pender, who grew up in the East End of Glasgow said: "I think there's a lot we don't know about Fred's time in Glasgow. Obviously the suspicion is that he killed in Scotland before he killed in Gloucester....
"He spent his entire time looking for young women in his ice cream van and unlike all the other people who had to return their vans to the depot he often didn't return his until three or four in the morning. In Glasgow there's very little demand for ice cream after sundown."
Archived footage of John McLachlan, a former pal of Fred and Rena's said in 1995: "There's four girls from that area just disappeared off the face of the earth".
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Pender explains: "Fred had an allotment, the allotment was in the South Side in Kinning Park near Maclellan st. I don't think he was interested in vegetables but there was a patch of his allotment that was said to have beautifully brown earth always well tilled.
"When asked by a neighbour what he was growing there he said I'm saving it for something special, that's on record and that's a fascinating comment.
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"Unfortunately the allotments were destroyed in order to build motorways in the 1970s so we'll never know the truth but the obvious implication is that he was picking up young women and taking her back to his allotment where he would in some way violate her and that's the popular suspicion and that's what John McLachlan thought."
Colin MacFarlane, author of The Real Gorbals Story, brands the neighbourhood in 1965 as being the "roughest in Europe", claiming there was a "continual stream of violence and the place was inhabited by a continual stream of psychopaths".
He says: "Fred West arrived in the Gorbals where he became quite well known as the Mr Whippy man. He was taken as a bit of a joke character. He had little curly hair and a little smiley face.
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"He quickly became known as a bit of a pervert because he was interested in chatting up the young girls and at one point even had them in the van as he drove around Glasgow.
"His motives were sinister and dark and ice cream was the camouflage for him but he was not seen as a threat because there were so many threatening people going about at the time who looked like threatening people."
Fred West was forced to flee Glasgow after he angered the city's gangs. He also ran down and killed a three-year-old boy in the Gorbals.
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He left the city with his two daughters and Rena and the children's nanny Anne McFall followed him south and persuaded pal John McLachlan to help them get the kids back.
Unfortunately Anne was charmed by Fred and Rena and John's plan failed. In May 1967, West murdered Anne when she was just 18-years-old and pregnant. She is believed to be the first person he ever killed.
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Born in Scotland, Anne worked in a knitwear factory in Glasgow and in 1966 she moved with friends to the Gloucester area.
The 18-year-old was nanny to Fred West's children from his first marriage to Catherine Costello with the serial killer's biographer, Geoffrey Wansall saying she "flirted restlessly with West, according to him".
Anne was said to be "naive" and lived with West in his caravan, going on to become his lover during one of the periods when his wife was away. He also fathered her unborn child with Anne being pregnant when she disappeared in 1967.
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Her remains, and those of their unborn baby, were found in a field at Kempley, near Fred West's home village of Much Marcle, Herefordshire.
Fred's first wife Catherine Costello went on to become his second victim. Born in Scotland, she is said to have had a "strong personality" and left West in 1969 amid reports of violence and sexual abuse.
Her family and friends are said to have lost contact with her in 1971. The 26-years-old's body was found at a field in Kempley, close to where Ann McFall was buried.
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Between this time, Fred had met Rose when she was 15-years-old in 1969 and was in a romantic relationship with her. The evil pair went on to marry in 1972 and had nine children of their own.
Rose and Fred were both convicted of eight-year-old Charmaine's murder, who they also killed in 1971 with West murdering Rena the next time she came to visit.
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Charmaine's body was discovered under a concrete floor at the couple's first home in Gloucester's Midland Road.
The pair then went on to commit another nine murders together, including the killing of their own daughter Heather West in 1987 at their infamous 'House of Horrors' on Cromwell Street -but many believe they could've been stopped had more attention been paid to the disappearance of the four Glasgow girls in the 1960s.
They were eventually found out after police visited their home in 1994, based off a horrifying tip from social services that the couple's other children were told that if they misbehaved they'd end up under the patio like their sister, Heather, who had been missing since 1986.