
On 13 December 1994 Fred West was charged with 12 murders; his wife, Rose West, would later be found guilty of 10 murders and sentenced to 10 life sentences. The Wests lived at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, which had literally, over a period of many years, become a house of horrors. Fred’s murderous tendencies pre-dated even meeting Rose. The Wests lived a bizarre life of extreme sex, prostitution, rape, imprisonment and murder. Their cellar was a torture chamber, where Rose would entertain clients and Fred would murder women. A succession of young women and unfortunate family members were raped, strangled, suffocated and then buried within the grounds of the house; several unwanted children were also dispatched. It was only the tenacity of Detective Constable Hazel Savage, who was investigating the rape of a young girl, that linked the Wests with a series of disappearances. When the police finally searched the house, on 24 February 1994, no fewer than nine different sets of bones were found in the cellar alone. The forensic evidence was overwhelming and, rather than face trial, Fred West committed suicide at Winston Green Prison, Birmingham on New Year’s Day 1995.








