Children locked under stairs hear horrifying screams - then see grim clue in basement

Daily Mirror

6 days ago

* WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT * Fred and Rose West's children were often strapped to their beds in their home. But, claims one child, little was worse than the sight of fresh concrete
It's an address that chills the blood of even the most hardened police officer: 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester. This November will mark 30 years since the monster that is Rose West was found guilty on 10 counts of murder. She became only the second woman - after Moors murder Myra Hindley - to be handed a Whole Life Order, meaning she will never be freed.
Her husband Fred West took the other way out. He hanged himself in his cell on January 1, 1995 and never faced justice. Between them the pair of them killed nine young women between 1973 and 1987 at Cromwell Street - including their own 16-year-old daughter Heather. They buried them in the garden and cellar of their small six-room, three storey terraced home.
Rose was also convicted of murdering eight-year-old Charmaine - Fred's stepdaughter from his first marriage to Rena Costello, who was found at their previous address. Meanwhile West admitted to killing Rena, 26, and his heavily-pregnant mistress Anne McFall, 18, in the late 1960s.
All the bodies were mutilated, missing body parts, and most were unclothed, suggesting there may have been a sexual assault. It's believed one of the women found buried. in the cellar, could have been held hostage for up to six days before she was killed.
But the gruesome lovers Fred and Rose were not living alone in their so-called House of Horrors. They had children: Some were Fred's, some just Rose's (a byproduct of her prostitution work), and some belonged to them both. All were terrified.
'My dad was a solid monster,' said one of the youngest siblings, Barry. 'But she [Rose] was a complete psycho. That's what people don't know: My mum was, child abuse-wise, the main person. My mum was completely sick in the head. She beat me way more than my dad did, and enjoyed it, absolutely enjoyed it.'
Barry was speaking in an interview given two years before his death by misadventure, aged 40, in 2020. He was 13 when Fred and Rose were finally caught and he was placed into care, but struggled with what he had endured and suffered from mental health issues and drug use during his adult life. His interview was only published for the first time today, as part of the Mirror's exclusive serialisation of the a new book The Fred West Tapes: Secrets of the Fred & Rose West Murder Investigation.
Now an author and TV producer, Howard Sounes helped break the West story while a Mirror reporter in 1994. He's since become a the leading expert on the case and recently gained access to more than 100 hours of Fred West's unheard police interviews.
The details of the West's crimes are horrific. It's thought Fred and Rose picked up vulnerable young women from bus stops around Gloucester, or preyed on the female lodgers that came to rent one of their cut-price rooms. The pair were believed to have made the women fulfil their sexual needs before ultimately becoming their next kill. It was understood West took the bodies and dismembered them in the tub of the family bathroom - using a kitchen knife so as not to scratch the bath enamel.
Lynda Gough, 19, was the first Cromwell Street victim. She was the eldest daughter of a senior fire brigade officer and had learning difficulties. It was understood she had left home just before her 20th birthday, presumably trying to embrace her independence by getting her own lodgings. Instead, it's believed West and Rose lured her into their depraved activities - and when it went too far.....she ended up buried under what would later become a new extension for a new bathroom. Seven more victims soon followed - all vulnerable young women. Two were buried in the garden - where they would later add the remains of their own daughter Heather - and five were in the cellar.
Shockingly, the cellar was also where the youngest West children were made to sleep. In his new book Howard explains: "When the West children were young they were made to sleep in the cellar, often locked in there at night, sometimes strapped to their beds. "Rose was her children's gaoler, wearing the keys to the cellar around her neck."
However, while the children are open about the abuse they faced at the hands of their parents and their friends, most of them maintained they had no idea what was going on with the murders. But not all of them. One later spoke to Howard to make a claim that was truly disturbing.
"Years later, however, one child (whom I won't identify) claimed that there were days when they were locked in a cupboard under the stairs while they heard shouting and screaming," he explains. "When they came out they saw fresh concrete had been poured in the cellar."
It fits the reality, but it is impossible to know if the child saw what they thought they saw or was mistaken. However it was true that each of the five girls in. the cellar had been dismembered, placed in wells in the floor and then concreted over.
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Childhood at Cromwell Street was simply joyless. Rose sent her girls to school with short hair, like boys, wearing boys' shoes because they lasted longer. She made her daughters clean their hair with washing-up liquid rather than shampoo and she didn't allow the purchase of deodorant, which the girls were teased about. The West boys went to school in their sisters' hand-me-downs, allowing their hair to grow long like girls. Many developed squints and speech defects, which can be indications of child abuse.
Barry even contemplated killing his father to end their misery. "I tried stabbing him when I was eleven with a screwdriver. He just laughed at me," he claimed. 'Why didn't we all run away? I suppose that's the hold he had, the power. My dad was like God. You couldn't beat him. You couldn't run away. He would find you.'
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The children knew there was an unspoken Code of Silence. Their sister Heather had been vocal about wanting to leave home as soon as she was 16. One day she disappeared. The children were told she'd moved away and cut contact, but it became a family 'joke': if you crossed Fred and Rose, you'd end up like Heather - under the patio, three paving stones up and nine across.
Barry told Howard: 'That was what was going to happen to all of us when we got old enough. If we didn't turn out like him, we was against him. And if we was against him, we would have to go in the garden – under the patio. He made us understand that.'
The family 'joke' finally reached the ears of the police. In 1994, when concerns began to grow about the whereabouts of Heather who had not been seen for seven years, the police moved in. And it turned out the Heather being under the patio was every bit as real as they feared.