On November 22, 1995, one of the most shocking trials in British criminal history ended: Rosemary West was found guilty of brutal sexual murder with her husband Frederick. The case caused horror throughout the world.
In announcing his ruling, Judge Charles Mantell chose clear words. The defendants’ actions were “disgusting” and “depraved,” and “if my words mean anything, then you will never be released!”
This marked the end of one of the most horrific trials in British criminal history on 22 November 1995. Rosemary West, then 41, was found guilty by a jury of sexually abusing, torturing and ultimately brutally murdering ten girls and women aged between eight and 21. She did this with her husband, Frederick West. He could not be tried again: he committed suicide in his cell on 1 January 1995.
This case caused concern in the UK and around the world. Since February 1994, the West family home on Cromwell Street in Gloucester, southwest England, has been widely referred to as the “House of Horrors”. There, buried in the garden, under the terrace and under the basement and kitchen floor, police gradually discovered the mutilated remains of nine bodies, including West’s daughter Heather (16) and Rosemary’s stepdaughter Charmaine (8). Another body was found at West’s former residence.
Authorities ordered the house of horrors demolished. They also drew another conclusion from the case, which came to light almost by chance in early 1994: She was afraid of “ending up under the porch like Heather,” the Wests’ daughter told a social worker about her sister, who had been missing for years. Investigators should have long suspected that things were not going well at the house on Cromwell Street: they first noticed Frederick West in 1961, and the couple several times since the 1970s. But there is no place where information from social services, police, schools and hospitals can be gathered. As a result, the coordination of authorities to detect cases of abuse has improved.
Both Rosemary and Frederick West had very troubled childhoods. Frederik and his five siblings grew up in poor conditions in the country; according to Frederick’s subsequent statement, their parents often sexually abused their children. Frederick later stated that his father always told him that you could do whatever you wanted as long as you didn’t get caught. At the age of 20, he was charged with raping a 13-year-old child, but the trial collapsed when he withdrew his statement.
When Frederick met his future wife, she was still a teenager and, after her parents divorced, living with her father, who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, frequently sexually abused his daughter and was violent. Her mother suffered from depression during her pregnancy and was treated with electroconvulsive therapy. It was later speculated that this damaged Rosemary’s brain and may have caused her to become very moody and sometimes aggressive in her youth. Two serious accidents may have caused Frederick’s tendency to explode, as a result of which he fell into a coma for a time.
After marriage, Rosemary repeatedly worked as a prostitute, which Frederick approved of and encouraged. A room in the West’s home was reserved for this purpose, and the couple rented out several other rooms to overnight guests. Rosemary gave birth to a total of eight children from different fathers, while Frederick brought two daughters into the household from his first marriage.
One of her daughters, eight-year-old Charmaine, killed Rosemary in 1971 while Frederick was serving several months in prison for a burglary offence. In subsequent years and in the 1980s, the Wests murdered at least nine girls and other women, including family members, overnight guests, and kidnapping passersby. The details of the horrific atrocities that occurred in “House of Horrors” are almost unbearable. Western countries brutally persecute, torture and kill their victims – while their own abused children are aware of it.
Authorities learned of the Wests’ whereabouts several times until police finally obtained a search warrant for the house in February 1994 — and made a grisly discovery there. After Frederick turned himself in in early 1995, Rosemary received a life sentence without the possibility of early release on ten counts of murder in late November of the same year (which she is still serving to this day).
It has been decades since a woman in England received this sentence: serial killer Myra Hindley, who, with her partner Ian Brady, abused and murdered five children and teenagers, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1966.
About the main topic Martin Klemrath WELHistory covers cultural history, technological history, contemporary history and United States history – as well as criminal history. Aileen Wuornos case.
