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Fred & Rosemary West

Spookdaddy said:
Yes. The landlords of the flat next door to mine are that mix of cunning and thick as mince, sly and stupid; they are probably the only people I know who I truly and actively hate. My dad used to call such intelligence 'money-clever,' or 'money-canny'. He'd been brought up on a farm in a rural community and I think the phrase was a common one back then - used to describe people who's intelligence only ever surfaced in the pursuit of their own appetites.
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Ah yes: peasant cunning.
 
Cochise said:
Hopefully he has been 'disappeared' by relatives of his victims. Not something I'd normally be in favour of, but there are limits to everyone's tolerance.
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A lot of people believe that to be the case. His victims were mainly indigenous Indian children, so the authorities didn't care that much (at some point he was about to be killed by a tribe who had caught him, and an American missionary persuaded them to take him to the police, who let him go)
 
In the early Nineties, my folks and I used to go shopping in Gloucester on a Saturday afternoon. We used to park the car in a clinic car park that was open to the public on weekends and walk through a side street to get to the city centre, passing a house that somehow used to catch my attention. One Saturday, a man came out of the house and I got a look at his face. No reason. Several weeks later, that man and the house were on TV. It was Fred West. The side street was Cromwell Street. The house was Number 25.

A friend of mine(until 2010) used to live in a flat on Trier Way in Gloucester. The landlord of the building used to get Fred to do the occasional job for him.
 
Recently heard a podcast interviewing Vic Reeves (Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast, it was), where Reeves said he was hitch-hiking back home from Glastonbury as a teenager and got a lift from Fred and Rose West!

He also said he once had a cup of tea with the Yorkshire Ripper at a factory he worked at.
 
Kryptonite said:
Recently heard a podcast interviewing Vic Reeves (Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast, it was), where Reeves said he was hitch-hiking back home from Glastonbury as a teenager and got a lift from Fred and Rose West!

He also said he once had a cup of tea with the Yorkshire Ripper at a factory he worked at.
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Debbie Harry claimed that Ted Bundy tried to pick her up in a car, however I've heard this isn't likely to be the case (Bundy wouldn't have been in New York at the time, if ever).
 
Kryptonite said:
Recently heard a podcast interviewing Vic Reeves (Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast, it was), where Reeves said he was hitch-hiking back home from Glastonbury as a teenager and got a lift from Fred and Rose West!

He also said he once had a cup of tea with the Yorkshire Ripper at a factory he worked at.
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That's...an odd coincidence.
 
Seems even serial killers can be forgiven with a nice cake...

Serial killer Rose West wins prison bake-off with Victoria Sponge cake
West, 64, who was convicted of ten murders in 1995, came out top when inmates at HMP Prison Low Newton voted for her Victoria sponge cake.

The 64-year-old is said to love baking and often impresses her fellow ‘housemates’ with her skills.

According to a source, West uses her cooking skills to ‘win people over’.

‘There are some very violent women on the wing and a lot of them are very aggressive towards West because of her crimes. But she tends to defuse situations by offering other prisoners cakes and biscuits.’
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https://metro.co.uk/2018/09/30/seri...n-bake-off-with-victoria-sponge-cake-7991940/
 
Ah yes, I was on the same street in Leeds as the Ripper on a night of one of his attacks (victim survived and I didn't realise til years later, reading about it as coppers were pretending many of them weren't Ripper attacks at the time and the day after I went to university over 100 miles away so didn't see the Yorkshire local news, where no doubt the attack was reported as something random/unrelated). I only knew I was definitely at the same place and time as it happened to be my birthday and I was out on the same street as Sutcliffe, having a curry. Apparently he was sat in the KFC watching the women go by. It will have been dark and at some point I will have been alone. Was quite surprised reading that a couple years ago.

At the time though, a few months before this, I had been going to university interviews and at Liverpool this creepy man chatted me up in a cafe at/near the station. I got chatted up a lot in those days but not by middle aged men, only lads my own age. This older man creeped me out so much I was convinced he was the Ripper. (Even though it was Lpool not Leeds). When Sutcliffe was arrested I was very keen to see what he looked like, in case it was that weirdo. It wasn't. Didn't look a bit like him.

ETA: I thought he was Ripper cos he told me he was a lorry driver and by then I think we all had heard the rumour that the Ripper was probably someone who drove for a living.
 
I’m reminded of the time I think I escaped being picked up by a lorry driver. I was only 14. Definitely not the Yorkshire Ripper, looked nothing like him and was younger but I was terrified. Never ran so fast in my life! Of course he might just have been some creep who thought I was older than I was and wanted me to climb into the cab for nookie, but he still frightened the life out of me.
 
My old A level Chemistry teacher's daughter was killed by the Wests. Dr Roger Partington taught us in 89 before retiring. I was astonished to see his face in the paper and his voice on the radio years later talking about Lucy. Poor soul, it must have been preying on his mind for years.
 
DrPaulLee said:
My old A level Chemistry teacher's daughter was killed by the Wests. Dr Roger Partington taught us in 89 before retiring. I was astonished to see his face in the paper and his voice on the radio years later talking about Lucy. Poor soul, it must have been preying on his mind for years.
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Yes, how awful, for him and the whole family.

Lucy disappeared without a trace, bad enough, then the Wests' crimes began coming to light, and her remains were found in a condition that proved she'd been terribly abused before her murder.

It's about the worst possible outcome. I can't see how people carry on their lives after learning that.
 
Do we know yet if they know the body recently discovered in the cafe where Fred worked is Mary Basholm?
 
Souleater said:
Im not sure they have discovered any remains yet.

This is the latest.

"Forensic experts examining a basement in the Gloucester cafe removed kitchen equipment earlier.

Professor Jane Monckton-Smith said if nothing was found that could be "worse than doing nothing"."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-57109633
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I have to say I think the professor is wrong. Surely the family would be pleased that the police still haven't given up, even though they might be on the wrong trail.

If OTOH they were suggesting there was a chance of finding Mary alive and got it wrong that would be very bad.
 
Fanari_Lloyd said:
Possible evidence that body of a girl is buried in the cafe

Latest from the Guardian.
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Police statement says they are going to start the excavation today

"Excavation work is to begin at a cafe where police have been searching for a teenager whose disappearance was linked to serial killer Fred West.

Mary Bastholm went missing in Gloucester in 1968 and police have been searching the cellar of the premises where she used to work.

Officers were called to The Clean Plate cafe on 7 May following suggestions a body may have been buried there."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-57152485
 
This must be terrible for Miss Bastholm's family. They might be about to find her and lay her to rest after all these years but it's surely come too late for some of them.
 
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