Editor’s Note: This profile contains disturbing information and may not be suitable for all audiences.
1953–present
Latest News: Rose West Featured in New Docuseries
A new documentary series delves into the gruesome crimes committed by British serial killer Rose West and her husband, Fred. Netflix’s Fred and Rose West: A British Horror Story details how the couple raped and murdered several women and young girls in Gloucester, England.
Among the victims were three family members. Although she has denied her involvement, Rose personally killed Fred’s daughter Charmaine and the couple’s eldest daughter, Heather.
Through previously unseen footage and first-person accounts from Rose and Fred’s living children, the docuseries seeks to reexamine the case through a new light and chronicle how their brutal crimes were uncovered. The show, which premiered on Netflix May 14, also focuses heavily on the victims and the families.
Who Is Rose West?
Rose West is one of the most horrific serial killers to have terrorized the United Kingdom. Alongside her husband, Fred West, Rose was responsible for the rape, murder, and dismemberment of 10 women and girls between 1971 and 1987. When the couple first met, Rose was still a teenager, but Fred already had police record and a growing number of victims. Rose’s violent streak began when she murdered one of Fred’s daughters. From that point on, she and Fred made an infamously brutal duo. Police finally apprehended them in 1994 after opening an investigation into the disappearance of the couple’s daughter Heather West. A unanimous jury found Rose guilty on all 10 counts in November 1995. She remains in prison today, serving a life sentence.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Rosemary Pauline West
BORN: November 29, 1953
BIRTHPLACE: Barnstaple, United Kingdom
SPOUSE: Fred West (1972–1995)
CHILDREN: Heather, Mae, Stephen, Tara, Louise, Barry, Rosemary Jr., and Lucyanna
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Sagittarius
Early Life
Rose West was born Rosemary Pauline Letts on November 29, 1953, in Barnstaple, a small port town in southern England. Her parents were Bill and Daisy Letts.
Electroconvulsive therapy administered to her pregnant mother for deep depression might have caused prenatal injury that contributed to Rose’s poor school performance and bouts of aggression growing up. She also had a weight problem in adolescence and developed an interest in older men.
The marriage of Rose’s parents was a turbulent one. Her father was a paranoid schizophrenic prone to violent behavior and served as a terrifying, dictatorial presence. Her mother eventually moved out of the family home, taking Rose with her. The girl, however, decided to move back in with her father again when she became a teenager.
Marriage to Fred West
Rose met Fred West while waiting at a bus stop in Cheltenham, England, in 1969. At the time, she was 15 years old, while Fred was around 28. Although Rose was initially repulsed by Fred’s unkempt appearance, the married man continued to pursue her, and she soon grew flattered by his attention. Fred showed up to her job at a local bread shop to give her a present and ask her on a date. The teenager agreed, and the two soon began a relationship.
A few weeks later, unbeknownst to her parents, she left her job to become the full-time nanny to Fred’s two daughters, Charmaine and Anne Marie. When Rose eventually introduced Fred to her family, they were appalled. Rose’s mother pegged him as a pathological liar, and her father resorted to contacting social services and threatening Fred directly to no avail.
Fred’s wife left him permanently in late November 1969, and Rose, newly 16, moved in with her lover and his young kids. They lived in a mobile home in Bishops Cleeve, just north of Cheltenham, before relocating to 25 Midland Road, Gloucester, in July 1970. By that point, Rose was pregnant with the couple’s first child. She gave birth to their daughter Heather on October 17, 1970.
Meanwhile, Fred had been sent to prison for nine months on petty theft and driving charges. Rose found herself looking after Charmaine, Anne Marie, and Heather alone. It’s thought that the pressure of caring for the three children while still a child herself was a trigger for Rose’s violent, erratic tendencies, and she killed 8-year-old Charmaine in 1971 during one of these outbursts. Whatever the circumstances, Charmaine suddenly disappeared while Fred was still behind bars. His knowledge of Rose’s murderous act undoubtedly gave him a significant hold over the young woman.
The year 1972 brought many changes for Rose and Fred. The couple were married on January 29, 1972, and the former Rosemary Letts became Rose West. That June, she delivered their second daughter, Mae. The family also moved into a large home at 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester that had enough room for lodgers who could help cover the rent. It was spacious enough for the growing family, too.
Rose had six more children over the next decade. Stephen, the couple’s first son, was born in August 1973 followed by daughters Tara and Louise in 1977 and 1978, respectively. Barry joined the brood in 1980 ahead of Rosemary Jr. in 1982 and, finally, Lucyanna in 1983. While not all of the kids were believed to be fathered by Fred, he still considered them his own.
The couple were cruel and abusive parents. Rose repeatedly helped Fred sexually assault Anne Marie and later attack Heather, Mae, and Louise. When Heather told a friend, her parents murdered her. Their daughters weren’t the only victims the Wests tortured and murdered at their home. The couple’s other children were aware to some extent of these acts, but Fred and Rose exercised strict control over them.
In August 1992, five of the kids were placed in the care of social services after Fred and Rose were arrested for child abuse. The kids’ occasional offhand comments about Heather being under the patio—considered a “family joke”—eventually led to the investigation that stopped their parents’ brutalities forever.
Victims
It’s not clear when Rose learned of her husband’s true nature, but Fred already had a considerable history of violence when the couple first met. He was known to sexually assault women and girls—targeting teenagers, in particular. Around age 20, Fred was convicted of child molestation after impregnating a 13-year-old family friend in 1961. Six years later, he is believed to have committed his first murder. He killed Ann McFall, his former lover and nanny who was around six months pregnant with his child.
For her part, Rose was known to have violent outbursts, but she didn’t descend into depravity until 1971. Rose’s actions over the next 16 years resulted in a total of 12 convictions. She was found guilty of assault in 1973 and of 10 murders in 1995, though she has always maintained she never killed anyone.
Murder of Charmaine West
In June 1971, Rose killed Charmaine West, Fred’s eldest child with his first wife, Catherine “Rena” West. What led to the murder isn’t known, but authorities believe she hid the 8-year-old’s body for some time. When Fred was released from prison later that year, he likely dismembered her remains, removing the fingers and toes, and buried her underneath the kitchen at their home on 25 Midland Road, Gloucester. Retaining their victims’ fingers and kneecaps became a signature of the Wests.
When Rena came in search of her daughter, also in 1971, Fred strangled, dismembered, and buried his estranged wife in a field at Kempley, roughly 30 minutes northwest of Gloucester. Police found no evidence that Rose was involved in Rena’s murder. From then on, however, authorities believe the partners in crime acted together.
Assault of Anne Marie West and Caroline Owens
Rose might have started earning money as a sex worker around 1972, but if she was, police never found evidence of this. What is certain is that Fred began committing bondage and violent sex acts on underage girls with his second wife’s help around this time. The cellar of their home at 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester was turned into a torture chamber, and Rose’s stepdaughter, Anne Marie, became one of its first victims. Fred brutally raped the young girl while Rose held her down. This soon became a regular occurrence, with the child being threatened with beatings if she told anyone about her predicament.
The couple’s behavior extended beyond the family circle when, in late 1972, they engaged 17-year-old Caroline Owens as a nanny. Instead of actually employing her, she was incarcerated, stripped, and raped. Despite threats that she would be killed and buried in the cellar, Owens was able to make an escape and reported the Wests to the police.
Charges were brought against them, but despite his criminal record, Fred convinced a court magistrate in January 1973 that Owens had consented to the activities. The teenager was too traumatized to give testimony otherwise. The Wests pleaded guilty on two assault charges, both considered minor infractions back then. They avoided jail time, and each were ordered to pay a £50-fine.
More Murders
The assault convictions hardly seemed to matter to Rose and Fred. By the end of 1973, they had killed three more victims. The first was 19-year-old Lynda Gough, who had stayed with them and was last seen that April. In November, 15-year-old Carole Cooper went missing after getting onto a bus in the Worcester suburb of Warndon. Cooper’s disappearance led to a police investigation, something that hadn’t happened for any of the previous victims dating back to Ann McFall in 1967, but the case went cold. Like Coooper, 21-year-old Lucy Partington was last seen while trying to catch a bus back home to Bishops Cleeve, not far from Gloucester, in December.
Over the next six years, the Wests carried out five more murders. These victims were 21-year-old college student Therese Siegenthaler; 15-year-old Shirley Hubbard; 18-year-old Juanita Mott; 18-year-old Shirley Robinson, who was pregnant at the time she went missing; and 16-year-old Alison Chambers, who was originally from West Germany.
After brutal sexual attacks, all eight victims were murdered, dismembered, and buried at 25 Cromwell Street. Police looked into most of their disappearances, but nothing led them back to Fred and Rose.
Final Murder of Heather West
Fred’s sexual interest in his own daughters didn’t wane with time. When Anne Marie moved out to live with her boyfriend, he switched his attentions to his and Rose’s daughters, Heather and Mae. Heather, however, resisted her father’s attention and even told a friend about the abuse in 1987. The Wests responded by murdering and dismembering her before burying her in the back garden under the patio. Their son Stephen was forced to help dig the hole.
Several years after Heather’s murder, Fred began raping 13-year-old Louise in May 1992, again with Rose’s help. Within weeks, Louise bravely told a close friend about what her father had done to her, and that August, the friend’s mother filed an anonymous tip to the police. This quickly prompted an investigation.
Two days later, Detective Constable Hazel Savage of the Gloucestershire police force oversaw a search of Rose and Fred’s Cromwell Street home, where pornography and clear evidence of child abuse was found. Fred was arrested for rape and sodomy of a minor and Rose for assisting in the rape of a minor. Five of the West children were taken into care. Ultimately, the case against the Wests collapsed when two key witnesses decided not to testify against them.
Still, the investigation had further uncovered the abuse Anne Marie suffered as well as Heather’s disappearance, which hadn’t be reported. In time, social services employees began to think the casual remarks they had heard Rose and Fred’s kids make about Heather being under the patio had some weight to them. Savage continued to pursue her search for Heather, questioning the West children repeatedly, but they had been well trained by their parents and failed to cooperate.
Arrest, Trial, and Conviction
Finally, in February 1994, the Gloucester police ramped up their investigation into Heather West’s disappearance by obtaining a warrant to search Rose and Fred’s home on Cromwell Street. Fred initially told police he had seen Heather recently in Birmingham, but when they returned the next day, he abruptly changed his story and confessed she was in the garden.
Both he and Rose were arrested on February 25, 1994. As excavation of the area under the patio began, and multiple sets of human remains were found, Fred admitted to the murders of Shirley Robinson and Alison Chambers, who were also buried there. He began deflecting blame away from Rose by saying his wife had no knowledge of Heather’s or Robinson’s murders. When Rose heard of the confession, she denied all knowledge of Heather’s death. She was released on bail two days later.
After a week in jail, Fred inexplicably presented a handwritten note confessing to “a further (approx) nine killings expressly Charmaine, Rena, Lynda Gough and others to be identified.” The case against them developed as the remains of 12 victims were found hidden in six places across three locations. Increasingly, Rose tried to distance herself from her husband. She claimed she, too, was a victim, but police weren’t convinced of her innocence given the sheer number of murders that had occurred and her participation in the rapes.
Rose was arrested again on April 20, 1994, for “unrelated matters” that “were later discontinued by the Crown Prosecution Service,” according to a police summary of the investigation. She hasn’t been free since.
Four days later, authorities charged Rose with Gough’s murder, to which she replied, “I’m innocent.” She made identical or nearly identical statements as she was charged with murdering eight of the other victims over the next month. The one exception was in the case of Juanita Mott, to which Rose didn’t respond after charges were filed against her. Her 10th and final murder charge arrived January 13, 1995, for the killing of Fred’s daughter Charmaine. Again, Rose denied any wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, Fred had been charged with 12 murders (to account for Ann McFall and Catherine “Rena” West). As they both awaited trial, he killed himself in his prison cell that January. His wife was left to answer for their crimes alone.
Rose formally pleaded not guilty on all 10 counts in May. Her trial began on October 3, 1995. The jury unanimously convicted her of all 10 murders on November 22. She was later sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The Wests’ home at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester—dubbed the “House of Horrors” by the press—was razed to the ground in October 1996. In its place is a pathway that leads to the town center.
Editor’s Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or self-harming behaviors, call or text 988 to get help from the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
Life in Prison
Rose immediately refused to accept her fate and launched appeals in 1996 and 2000. She claimed variously that new exculpatory evidence had come to light then that huge media interest had prevented her from receiving a fair trial. The 1996 appeal was rejected, and in 2001, Rose announced she would no longer be appealing her case but maintained her innocence. She remains incarcerated in a prison in West Yorkshire.
Rose was again the focus of media attention in January 2003, when it was claimed that she was to marry Dave Glover, the bass player of rock group Slade, following a courtship via letters. Glover disputed that there was an engagement and said the media attention over his letters to Rose had cost him his position with the band.
Documentaries and Shows
Since her arrest and imprisonment, Rose and her late husband’s gruesome crimes have been the subject of several documentaries and TV shows. The three-part docuseries Fred and Rose: The West Murders aired on England's Channel 5 in 2001 and included exclusive footage and interviews of the couple. In 2006, the Discovery Channel series Crimes That Shook the World released an episode on the Wests and their infamous House of Horrors. Another limited series called Fred and Rose, released in 2014, documented the West’s disturbing childhoods and the events leading up to their serial killings.
A fictionalized take on their evilness arrived in the 2011 ITV mini series Appropriate Adult. British actor Monica Dolan portrayed Rose.
Additional documentaries have followed. A three-part docuseries from the BBC called Untold: The Wests released in 2021. Next came 2023’s Fred & Rose West: Love & Murder. Netflix is the latest outlet to reexamine their brutal crimes. Its docuseries Fred and Rose West: A British Horror Story premiered in May 2025.
Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us!
The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site. To meet the team, visit our About Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us
Catherine Caruso joined the Biography.com staff in August 2024, having previously worked as a freelance journalist for several years. She is a graduate of Syracuse University, where she studied English literature. When she’s not working on a new story, you can find her reading, hitting the gym, or watching too much TV.
