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Fred & Rosemary West

They seem to have murdered the search function.
 
I've been wondering...

It's a fiction book, underlining, it's a fiction book!

One of Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins books involves the West atrocities peripherally. He always acknowledges sources and indicates where he thinks the fiction/fact line is.

As I remember he seems to have consulted something or someone who brought up a possible West connection to high ritual magic.

Maximising the buzz stylee :nooo:

I'll try to dig it out of one of the book mountains.
 
I'm reading "Happy like murderers" at the moment, hence my interest. Fred took the knee caps too, according to it :(
 
ChrisBoardman said:
What's fortean about them?
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Well, for starters, issue number 3 of The News (page 7) reports on the mysterious disappearance of Lucy Partington. We now know of course that she was one of Fred and Rose's victims.
 
tavbet said:
Well, for starters, issue number 3 of The News (page 7) reports on the mysterious disappearance of Lucy Partington. We now know of course that she was one of Fred and Rose's victims.
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'issue number 3 of The News (page 7)' - where do I find that?

Lucy Partington's disappearance was indeed a mystery until her remains were found under the Wests' home.

I saw a documentary about her in 1983, ten years after she went missing, which showed the bus stop where she was assumed to have been waiting just after she was last seen. It was possibly Man Alive or World In Action, but I've never been able to track down the episode online.

At that time I had fashionably frizzy hair and round specs which gave me a similar appearance to hers. The resemblance was close enough to make me shudder and her name stuck in my mind.

When her body was found and her photo was shown on the news I felt both relieved and sad for her family, but also a bit creeped out. Kept seeing what looked like my own younger face on the TV news.

I have family who lived in the Gloucester area too. They were all safe but I bet they knew a few stories.
 
There was an episode on the wests on last sundays 'crimes that shook critain'.

There is a new series sundays 8pm, channel 553 (555 non hd) on sky.
 
escargot1 said:
tavbet said:
Well, for starters, issue number 3 of The News (page 7) reports on the mysterious disappearance of Lucy Partington. We now know of course that she was one of Fred and Rose's victims.
Click to expand...


'issue number 3 of The News (page 7)' - where do I find that?

Lucy Partington's disappearance was indeed a mystery until her remains were found under the Wests' home.

I saw a documentary about her in 1983, ten years after she went missing, which showed the bus stop where she was assumed to have been waiting just after she was last seen. It was possibly Man Alive or World In Action, but I've never been able to track down the episode online.

At that time I had fashionably frizzy hair and round specs which gave me a similar appearance to hers. The resemblance was close enough to make me shudder and her name stuck in my mind.

When her body was found and her photo was shown on the news I felt both relieved and sad for her family, but also a bit creeped out. Kept seeing what looked like my own younger face on the TV news.

I have family who lived in the Gloucester area too. They were all safe but I bet they knew a few stories.
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You need to get the compendium of Fortean Times issues 1 - 15. Fortean Times was called The News up to issue 16,
 
Ah right, I see! Thank you.
 
escargot1 said:
Lucy Partington's disappearance was indeed a mystery until her remains were found under the Wests' home.

I saw a documentary about her in 1983, ten years after she went missing, which showed the bus stop where she was assumed to have been waiting just after she was last seen.
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Lucy Partington went to the same school as my missus; actually my missus used that bus stop a lot, visiting her best friend out in Winchcombe. I remember she told me about the disapperance one time when we were both waiting at the stop to go back to Cheltenham. This was long before the bodies were found.

What makes me really sad (and a little disturbed) is that Partington was just about the only victim who was ever reported missing. All the others went completely under the radar.
 
Back in 1994 we met a couple on holiday who were from the West country. Some friends or relatives of theirs were a Husband & Wife decorating contractors. The Wife was working on a job where Fred West was working too - obviously before all the horror stories broke, and the Husband was working elsewhere. After the first day or two the Woman was so concerened about the questions Mr West was asking her about her background, like was she married? did she have much in the way of realtives? that she persuaded her Husband to swap jobs with her.
Lucky escape?
 
horribly plausible. If Fred West was a jobbing builder and did a lot of work all over Gloucestershire, that's any number of opportunities for disposing of inconvenient evidence. And a lot of builders like to leave a bit of graffiti somewhere to advertise their work, or else leave a note to posterity that they were there. Roofers and tilers, for instance: my grandfather liked to leave his signature and the date written on the underside of a slate tile on every job he did, wondering who'd find it at some unspecified future date. He said once this is a trade custom - if on a job he found a tile "autographed" by a previous contractor, from perhaps a century earlier or older, he'd treat it with care and try to reincorporate it somewhere in the work he was doing, out of a sense of history and respect for the bloke who'd been there before him. Although if Fred West was doing the same on the wall before adding paper, you wonder if this might have been the sort of "teaser" a lot of serial killers leave behind to taunt the people likely to come chasing them.... I'd start getting uneasy about what could be hidden in the wall-space, or under the floor, or buried in the concrete....
 
FrKadash said:
A friend of mine wrote a funny punk song about Fred West:

I can be see in the background, larking about on the stairs :rolleyes:
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Good larking!

I really like the song. Puts me in mind of Jaz Coleman doing guest vocals on one of New Order's rockier toons.

The words are a bit troubling, obvs.
 
AgProv said:
horribly plausible. If Fred West was a jobbing builder and did a lot of work all over Gloucestershire, that's any number of opportunities for disposing of inconvenient evidence. And a lot of builders like to leave a bit of graffiti somewhere to advertise their work, or else leave a note to posterity that they were there. Roofers and tilers, for instance: my grandfather liked to leave his signature and the date written on the underside of a slate tile on every job he did, wondering who'd find it at some unspecified future date. He said once this is a trade custom - if on a job he found a tile "autographed" by a previous contractor, from perhaps a century earlier or older, he'd treat it with care and try to reincorporate it somewhere in the work he was doing, out of a sense of history and respect for the bloke who'd been there before him. Although if Fred West was doing the same on the wall before adding paper, you wonder if this might have been the sort of "teaser" a lot of serial killers leave behind to taunt the people likely to come chasing them.... I'd start getting uneasy about what could be hidden in the wall-space, or under the floor, or buried in the concrete....
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This is true, I worked with a stone mason who always signed and dated a piece of stone or marble. At the same firm there was a decorator who painted his initials on a wall before it was papered.
 
rynner2 said:
The life of housewife Janet Leach is transformed when she is asked by police to act as an appropriate adult for a man they have arrested - serial killer Fred West.
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Dominic West is absolutely cracking in that. As he always is.

I'm an Appropriate Adult though, and procedureally- the thing is a nonsense :D
 
Coastaljames said:
Dominic West is absolutely cracking in that. As he always is.

I'm an Appropriate Adult though, and procedureally- the thing is a nonsense :D
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Really? It's always a shame when supposed true story dramatizations basically make it all up with disregard for the facts, but it seems to be the norm in TV and film production. You would have thought the West story had enough to be going on without all that, wouldn't you?
 
GNC said:
Really? It's always a shame when supposed true story dramatizations basically make it all up with disregard for the facts, but it seems to be the norm in TV and film production. You would have thought the West story had enough to be going on without all that, wouldn't you?
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I know a fair bit about the case. The dramatisation is pretty spot on. But the role of the AA is pretty inaccurate and the development of the relationship between West wouldnt, and actually didn't, occur.
 
Coastaljames said:
I know a fair bit about the case. The dramatisation is pretty spot on. But the role of the AA is pretty inaccurate and the development of the relationship between West wouldnt, and actually didn't, occur.
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I suppose it was a method of dredging up the sordid details for a Sunday night TV audience. Provides a nice person focus for a nasty person story.
 
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