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Fred & Rosemary West

Sky TV: Fred West: The Glasgow Girls

Here's an interesting documentary about Fred West's time in Glasgow.

When I'm asked 'How tough was the Gorbals really?' I say 'Well, the ice cream man was Fred West!'

Fred West documentary investigates if serial killer could have been stopped in Scotland​

A new documentary is set to investigate if serial killer Fred West could have been stopped in Scotland before launching his infamous 20 year killing spree in England.

It will try to find out if some lives could have been saved if the disappearance of his first wife, Rena Costello, her daughter Charmaine and Rena’s friend Anne McFall had been reported and investigated properly
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I've watched some of the first episode (of three) and found it quite compelling, especially the interviews with people who knew him.
One woman whose father was a convicted and prolific paedophile wonders if he was friendly with West.
They certainly had someone in common: both a friend of the father and the friend's friend were also paedophiles.

West was locally known as a 'pervert', or an abuser of young girls. One woman says he tried to abduct her after offering her a lift in his ice cream van. She escaped by jumping out of the van when he stopped to open a gate and ran home.

As she wasn't supposed to accept lifts she didn't tell her mother about it. Years later when she saw West's face on the TV news she recognised him right away.

Perhaps enough time has passed for West's life to be examined and described calmly.
It's been so many years and some witnesses have already died.
 
Wasn’t there some talk about him having had an allotment in Glasgow but not growing much in it saying he was saving it for something ‘special’?
It’s now built over, or so I read.

I’ll have to watch that.

escargot said:
Perhaps enough time has passed for West's life to be examined and described calmly.
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Yes, it doesn’t seem like that long ago he was arrested, but it is, and he was operating long before that.
 
Fanari_Lloyd said:
Wasn’t there some talk about him having had an allotment in Glasgow but not growing much in it saying he was saving it for something ‘special’?
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The allotment is mentioned in exactly that context. One assumes any remains were scooped up by the bulldozers.

Girls in the area were known to vanish without a trace at that time. Haven't seen it all yet but I suspect there will be discussion of West's possible involvement at some point.
 
Tigerhawk said:
I am partway through reading about these two, and had to put it down for a while, as it is fascinating and disturbing in equal measures. Will have to pick it up again soon....
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It very much is disturbing. Gloucester’s not that far away from me and we pass it when going to Wales. Lovely cathedral; all I can think of is Fred and Rose West which is a bit sad but those poor girls there and elsewhere. It leaves a shadow on the memory.
 
Fanari_Lloyd said:
It very much is disturbing. Gloucester’s not that far away from me and we pass it when going to Wales. Lovely cathedral; all I can think of is Fred and Rose West which is a bit sad but those poor girls there and elsewhere. It leaves a shadow on the memory.
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It's a shame that a nice area can still have the stench of such cruelty lingering after all these years.
 
Tigerhawk said:
It's a shame that a nice area can still have the stench of such cruelty lingering after all these years.
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I think it’s the fact it went on so long yet the Wests were apparently seen as a pretty stable and normal family. But he was building extensions on top of murdered bodies year after year. All murders are dreadful, but that one seems like an especially deep sinkhole of horror for that fact. The Cromwell street ones were ‘concentrated’ though I’m sure there were more. I’m glad the house was bulldozed as if any modern building deserved to carry an atmosphere, it would have been that house.
 
I read this book a while ago, ‘Love, as always, Mum.’ a ghost-written account of Mae West, one of the daughters and it’s deeply upsetting as of course it would be. It’s very hard to get one’s head around the fact that the West children grew up in this place and even found times of fun and laughter.
The fact that some of the children slept in the cellar when as she said ‘it was already a graveyard,’ is disturbing on so many levels. but also this:

‘I don’t really believe in ghosts but there were times when Heather and I were in the bathroom — which was in an extension Dad had built — when we sensed some kind of other presence with us. There was a feeling of coldness in the air which we couldn’t understand. Most of the time we put it down to the fact that Dad hadn’t built it properly so it was cold and damp, but there were occasions when it really did feel like someone else was with us. Long afterwards I discovered that one of the victims was buried under there.’


If there’s any truth to the theory that intense emotions imprint on places then all those poor girls buried in such a relatively small area after such horrendous deaths must certainly leave its mark on the atmosphere.
 
Fanari_Lloyd said:
I think it’s the fact it went on so long yet the Wests were apparently seen as a pretty stable and normal family.
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If you ignore the stream of young women living in the house then 'leaving', the sex services supplied by the West's etc.
I've never been to Gloucester at all, but most accounts say the area in the city, at the time, was pretty low-rent with a transient population.
 
Stormkhan said:
If you ignore the stream of young women living in the house then 'leaving', the sex services supplied by the West's etc.
I've never been to Gloucester at all, but most accounts say the area in the city, at the time, was pretty low-rent with a transient population.
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I was in Gloucester for the first time in December, for a couple of days. For a beautiful historic city, its poverty was obvious and a little shocking.
 
Fanari_Lloyd said:
I read this book a while ago, ‘Love, as always, Mum.’ a ghost-written account of Mae West, one of the daughters and it’s deeply upsetting as of course it would be. It’s very hard to get one’s head around the fact that the West children grew up in this place and even found times of fun and laughter.
The fact that some of the children slept in the cellar when as she said ‘it was already a graveyard,’ is disturbing on so many levels. but also this:

‘I don’t really believe in ghosts but there were times when Heather and I were in the bathroom — which was in an extension Dad had built — when we sensed some kind of other presence with us. There was a feeling of coldness in the air which we couldn’t understand. Most of the time we put it down to the fact that Dad hadn’t built it properly so it was cold and damp, but there were occasions when it really did feel like someone else was with us. Long afterwards I discovered that one of the victims was buried under there.’


If there’s any truth to the theory that intense emotions imprint on places then all those poor girls buried in such a relatively small area after such horrendous deaths must certainly leave its mark on the atmosphere.
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The spot is a walk-through now, like a short cut to town for shoppers. There is nothing left of the horror.

The victims' remains were recovered and returned to their families, and funerals were held. The Wests were both named as their murderers even though only Rose was sentenced.
That's not much compared to having the girls back but it's about as much as anyone could ask for in the circumstances.
 
escargot said:
The spot is a walk-through now, like a short cut to town for shoppers. There is nothing left of the horror.

The victims' remains were recovered and returned to their families, and funerals were held.
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Yes. I read that at the time when they were deciding what to do, there were members of Glos Council who wanted some kind of memorial, not that it should just be refashioned as a walkway and were unhappy the idea was rushed through. But as you say, the remains were gone.
 
SimonBurchell said:
For a beautiful historic city, its poverty was obvious and a little shocking.
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It’s like a lot of places who used to have industry. Now it’s a lot of industrial ‘parks’ with the centre pretty much forgotten. There seem to be nice places the further away you get from there. I remember shopping there in the mid 80’s and it seemed a nice place, but now, not so much. Cromwell Street, from the look of it, is very much like the ‘inner town’ streets here in Swindon. Run down, scruffy, bedsits that you wouldn’t really want to rent out, but desperate people will/would and the Wests took what back then were DSS tenants. A lot of landlords won’t these days.

Stormkhan said:
If you ignore the stream of young women living in the house then 'leaving', the sex services supplied by the West's etc.
I've never been to Gloucester at all, but most accounts say the area in the city, at the time, was pretty low-rent with a transient population.
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It seemed to be considered ‘normal’ for that street at the time and though the Wests were not in the least normal even on the surface, they still represented a ‘family’ which might have made these girls especially feel safer. One older male neighbour shouted at the police investigator (who recorded it in his book) that the Wests were a lovely family who‘d done nothing wrong and was furious. :oops:
 
Fanari_Lloyd said:
Yes. I read that at the time when they were deciding what to do, there were members of Glos Council who wanted some kind of memorial, not that it should just be refashioned as a walkway and were unhappy the idea was rushed through. But as you say, the remains were gone.
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Yup, that was a talking-point at the time.

A memorial would be wrong. Obliterating the house was the right decision.
The victims aren't there, they were taken back and laid to rest by the people who loved them. They have their own memorials.

A poster on'ere went with friends to look at the now-anonymous site of some other famous murders.
They described parking down the road and preparing to stroll past, but being thwarted by locals who spotted them as gawkers from a mile away. They were lucky to get away without a thumping.

A memorial there, as with Gloucester, would have been an excuse for ghouls to gather.
 
escargot said:
A memorial there, as with Gloucester, would have been an excuse for ghouls to gather.
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Agreed. Hopefully the suggestion came from a place of respect rather than wanting to gain notoriety and pull in the ‘dark’ tourists but who knows. (There’s always an appetite for the macabre but while I can understand Ripper Tours as they’re conducted over an area and incorporate a bit of a history lesson of Victorian London, when these things are still remembered by living people it does feel ghoulish, if understandable, human nature being what it is!)
 
Fanari_Lloyd said:
It’s like a lot of places who used to have industry. Now it’s a lot of industrial ‘parks’ with the centre pretty much forgotten. There seem to be nice places the further away you get from there. I remember shopping there in the mid 80’s and it seemed a nice place, but now, not so much. Cromwell Street, from the look of it, is very much like the ‘inner town’ streets here in Swindon. Run down, scruffy, bedsits that you wouldn’t really want to rent out, but desperate people will/would and the Wests took what back then were DSS tenants. A lot of landlords won’t these days.



It seemed to be considered ‘normal’ for that street at the time and though the Wests were not in the least normal even on the surface, they still represented a ‘family’ which might have made these girls especially feel safer. One older male neighbour shouted at the police investigator (who recorded it in his book) that the Wests were a lovely family who‘d done nothing wrong and was furious. :oops:
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It was interesting to contrast it with Chichester - both historic cities built on a Roman foundation and street plan, very similar in layout (although, sadly, Gloucester city walls are long gone - at Chichester they're still there). Chichester, although it is not without its problems, is obviously more wealthy - and yet the two cities look so similiar in layout and architecture, and feel so different in atmostphere!
 
Fanari_Lloyd said:
Agreed. Hopefully the suggestion came from a place of respect rather than wanting to gain notoriety and pull in the ‘dark’ tourists but who knows. (There’s always an appetite for the macabre but while I can understand Ripper Tours as they’re conducted over an area and incorporate a bit of a history lesson of Victorian London, when these things are still remembered by living people it does feel ghoulish, if understandable, human nature being what it is!)
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The intention was pure. Human nature sometimes isn't. :(

As you say, people who personally remember the events don't take lightly to dark tourism.

Had a discussion on this subject with a mod a few years ago; his belief was that certain grisly events of the 1960s were all but forgotten, whereas I know people who still hold them fresh in the memory.
 
escargot said:
The intention was pure. Human nature sometimes isn't. :(
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Very much this!

escargot said:
his belief was that certain grisly events of the 1960s were all but forgotten, whereas I know people who still hold them fresh in the memory.
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Oh yes. My partner’s dad was talking a few weeks ago about the Moors murders, which he still recalls even though he would have been pretty young at the time.
If there are families and relatives of the victims, they keep the memory in the public sphere for a long time.
 
The Moors murders were current in my 20s. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't have retired yet!

Why do people find it so hard to look beyond their own sphere of experience?
 
Fanari_Lloyd said:
Very much this!



Oh yes. My partner’s dad was talking a few weeks ago about the Moors murders, which he still recalls even though he would have been pretty young at the time.
If there are families and relatives of the victims, they keep the memory in the public sphere for a long time.
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What was the context of the conversation about the murders? Just curious.
I sometimes work with people from the area and the subject comes up, partly because one colleague reckons he was nearly abducted by them.
 
escargot said:
What was the context of the conversation about the murders? Just curious.
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I think it It evolved from a conversation about the killer Halliwell. There was something about him possibly being involved with other murders a few weeks back, apparently.

My partner’s dad is a true-blue ‘born-within-the-sound-of-the-Bow Bells’ Cockney so he was far from Manchester, but remembered the horror of it.

escargot said:
I sometimes work with people from the area and the subject comes up, partly because one colleague reckons he was nearly abducted by them.
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That’s definitely something that would stay with you for life! I’m sure the poor kids who were taken weren’t the only attempts.
 
Fanari_Lloyd said:
I’m sure the poor kids who were taken weren’t the only attempts.
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Indeed. There's a story about a young lad who was enticed back to one of the murderers' previous homes and decided to make his escape through a downstairs window.
Why didn't he raise the alarm at the time? Because he'd been told not to go off with strangers and didn't want to get into trouble.
 
escargot said:
There's a story about a young lad who was enticed back to one of the murderers' previous homes and decided to make his escape through a downstairs window.
Why didn't he raise the alarm at the time? Because he'd been told not to go off with strangers and didn't want to get into trouble.
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That’s understandable, especially then, when it wasn’t uncommon for kids to get a good hiding if they disobeyed their parents but he must have felt dreadful all his life :(
 
Fanari_Lloyd said:
That’s understandable, especially then, when it wasn’t uncommon for kids to get a good hiding if they disobeyed their parents but he must have felt dreadful all his life :(
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I'd have done exactly the same at that age. Wouldn't have dreamed of dropping myself in it.
I'd've copped a battering either for going off with strangers or making things up or both.
 
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