Fred West - The Victims

The Victims

• Charmaine West (born 22 February 1963): Killed in June 1971 by Rose West while Fred was in prison, the motive said to be Rose's wish to break links with Charmaine's mother, "Rena".
• Catherine Bernadette "Rena" West (born 14 April 1944): Killed August 1971. Rena had called to take Charmaine away with her and it is believed Fred West killed her to avoid an investigation into Charmaine’s whereabouts.
• Lynda Gough (born 1 May 1953): Killed April 1973. A lodger at 25 Cromwell St, Gough and Rosemary would share lovers. Following her disappearance Gough’s mother called to visit and Rosemary, wearing Gough’s clothes and slippers, told her she had moved to find work in Weston-super-Mare.
• Carol "Caz" Ann Cooper (born 10 April 1958): Killed November 1973. Cooper was living in a children’s home in Worcester when she disappeared while walking home from the cinema.
• Lucy Katherine Partington (born 4 March 1952): Killed December 1973. Spent Christmas with her family in Cheltenham and visited a friend, and disappeared after leaving to catch a bus home. There is strong evidence that she had been kept alive for at least several days. A week after she disappeared, Fred went to a hospital in the early hours of 3 January 1974 to get a serious laceration stitched. A knife matching the cut was found with Partington's body and police surmise he sustained the injury while dismembering the body. Partington, a university student, was the cousin of novelist Martin Amis and the sister of author Marian Partington, who wrote about her sister's disappearance and the discovery of her remains in her memoir If You Sit Very Still (2012).
• Therese Siegenthaler (born 27 November 1952): Killed in April 1974. A student in South London who left to hitch-hike to Ireland and disappeared.
• Shirley Hubbard (born 26 June 1959): Killed November 1974. Left a work experience course in Droitwich to return home but did not arrive. When her remains were found her head was completely covered in tape with only a three-inch rubber tube inserted to allow her to breathe.
• Juanita "Nita" Marion Mott (born 1 March 1957): Killed April 1975. A former lodger at 25 Cromwell St, Mott was living with a friend of her mother's in Newent when she disappeared.
• Shirley Anne Robinson (born 8 October 1959): Killed May 1978. A lodger at 25 Cromwell St, Robinson was a prostitute for the Wests. Disappeared after becoming pregnant with Fred’s child.
• Alison Chambers (born 8 September 1962): Killed August 1979. Last known sexually-motivated killing.
• Heather Ann West (born 17 October 1970) Killed June 1987. Heather became the focus of Fred’s attentions after Anne Marie left home. She complained to friends about the abuse, and when this got back to Fred and Rose, they decided to eliminate her as Heather now risked exposing them. Also, Heather was probably sired not by Fred, but by Rose's abusive father, Bill Letts. Fred West claimed he had not meant to kill her but she had been sneering at him and he "had to take the smirk off her face". Rosemary told an enquiring neighbour the following day that she and Heather had a "hell of a row" so it is believed Rosemary may have initiated her death. The Wests told their children Heather had left for a job in Devon, but later changed the story to her having run off with a lesbian lover when she failed to contact or visit them. Later still Fred would threaten the children that they would "end up under the patio like Heather" if they misbehaved. Heather's body was found under the patio that Fred had built over the fishpond dug by his son Stephen. Heather's murder indirectly led to the Wests' arrests almost seven years later.

Their only known victim between 1979 and their arrest 14 years later was their daughter Heather (who died in 1987), compared to nine murders in the previous eight years committed by the pair as a couple. However, police believe the couple murdered more. There were no known murders in the years 1976–1977, 1980–1986 and 1988–1992. During questioning after being arrested, Fred West had confessed to murdering up to 30 people, but the police believed the pair may have killed only 13. As well as the 12 confirmed, they believe that West also killed 15-year-old Mary Bastholm in January 1968, but to date no body has been found. West's son, Stephen, has said he firmly believed the missing Gloucester teenager was an early victim of his father, as Fred West had reportedly boasted of committing Miss Bastholme's murder while on remand in prison during 1994.

Although no forensic evidence linked Fred West to the murder of Anne McFall, and he always denied killing her, in contrast to the other murders, the state of the body (missing finger and toe bones, as was the case with the other bodies) and the dimensions of the grave site match aspects of West's modus operandi.

Janet Leach, West's appropriate adult who also visited him in prison, says West told her that he had been involved in at least 20 further murders, including children killed in a barn.