Hey weirdos, it's Ash.
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morbid at smallwoodhome .com that's promo code morbid to get 30 off your first order at smallwoodhome .com give your memories the showcase that they deserve hey weirdos i'm elena i am ash and this is morbid party party not really this is not going to be a party today we're starting a series that a lot of you have asked for for a long long time a long time and i've been avoiding it just just simply because this is a tough one.
It's going to be a tough one.
It's going to be a tough one for all of us.
It's going to be a long, long, tough one.
It is. It's going to be a little long.
It's going to be tough.
And we are covering Fred and Rosemary West. Oh, goodness.
We're going to break this up because there's a lot to this story.
Fair warning right off the bat.
So many triggers. I mean all the triggers this is a fucking terrible story they are fucking terrible people and it's a tragedy all the way around so just you know just know that buttercup but I need to start out by recommending a book that was written by the West's daughter and Marie West whoa and it's called Out of the Shadows.
She endured things that no one should ever even have to think of in the darkest recesses of their minds, and I urge you to get her book and read her story from her point of view.
Yeah, I feel like that's so important.
Definitely go find it.
We can obviously tell it from research and news reports and other books, but she lived it, so definitely go read her book.
Yeah, definitely. But let's get into this because I don't even have it in me to banter before this one because it's it's a lot but this happened in the so this actually happened in the 90s what it learned kind of ended in the 90s i should say i didn't for some reason tim like in my head it was like 60 70s that it ended yeah i mean it spans over a long period of time yeah yeah but it kind of all culminates in the early 90s okay uh in may 1992 gloucester uk police and And I had to look this up because I was like, do you guys say it like we do?
Massachusetts has a Gloucester too.
We say it Gloucester.
But I was like, do you guys say it Gloucester or something?
You know, like, I don't know.
Gloucester. I wish they did.
So Gloucester UK police received an anonymous tip claiming that Fred West had been sexually abusing his 13 -year -old daughter, Louise, and that his wife had been physically abusing the girl.
Oh, God. The tip was the one thing they needed that initiated an investigation into allegations of abuse, which soon unfolded into one of truly the most shocking serial murder cases in England's history, where Fred and Rose West were suspected of killing 13 young women, including one of their own children.
I thought that they had killed one of their own children.
In the months after this tip, investigators would eventually exhume nine bodies that had actually been buried in the West's own backyard. Nine bodies in their backyard. And evidence of several other horrible murders committed by Fred.
Some going as far back as the late 60s.
Right. I thought so.
So that's why this spans over such a long period of time, so you weren't wrong.
Now, let's start this off by finding out who the fuck is Fred?
Okay. Who is this fucking monster of a human being?
So Fred, what was Fred West was born in much Markle.
And that's in, I'm going to try to say this correctly because I appreciate and respect our UK listeners, Herefordshire, Herefordshire, England.
And I hope I said that right for you guys because, you know, again, we live in Massachusetts.
chooses we also have weird town names and people get them wrong all the time so get it I get it we're trying so Herefordshire England on September 29th 1941 what would that make him he's not a Virgo right um he might because Virgo doesn't that end like on the 21st yeah oh no is he a Libra Mikey he might be I'm not positive though September 21st September 29th he's a Libra yeah I'm sorry.
I'm sorry you share a sign.
But he was the second of eight children born to Walter and Daisy West, which, like, Walter and Daisy sound adorable.
You know, like, those names together?
They do. Walter and Daisy, like, I love that.
Yeah, it sounds like you would never know.
Oh. You know? Oh. Now, two of his siblings actually died in childhood.
Wow. That's awful. As a farmer, because Walter was a farmer, as a farmer in a very rural part of the country, he was kind of struggling to make a living for that many children.
And he was kind of barely able to provide for this family that just kept rapidly growing.
And the West family often drank whatever unpasteurized milk Walter could bring home from the farm.
That's like a thing right now.
Oh, I know. Raw milk.
Yeah, it's not good for you.
No, it's not. Don't do that.
Don't. And they got by on fruits and vegetables that they grew in their own garden.
Despite living in an actually relatively big home at Moor Court Farm, where Fred was employed, the living space was cramped because it was so many people.
The children were typically kind of like all crammed into like one or two bedrooms. Oh, man.
It was tough. Also, bathrooms at the cottage consisted of really nothing more than a bucket that had to be emptied a lot of times a day.
That's not sanitary.
And when Fred was born, it was one year after the death of Daisy's firstborn daughter.
Oh, wow. Her name was Violet, and she died a few days after her birth, which is tragic.
Fred was, according to his other siblings, always their mother's favorite child and could do nothing wrong.
Years later, Fred's younger brother, Doug, would tell a reporter that Fred was Mammy's blue -eyed boy.
Mammy. And in fact, in years after that, people would comment that at times Fred and his mother's relationship seemed a little too close.
Yeah. It was off -putting.
Okay. That's all. Like, from the outside point of view, they were like, it was just a little unsettling.
It's getting edgy. Yeah.
Daisy's sister -in -law, Edna Hill, said, quote, Fred came first with Daisy, even in front of Walter.
Oh. And it's just like, I don't know if they should even be in the same category here.
Yeah. I know. And the answer is they shouldn't.
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe because of his closeness to his mother, Fred really never formed a bond with his father.
Like they did not really have anything.
And his father was also a very strict disciplinarian and didn't like that Daisy was said to coddle, especially their eldest son at the time.
Now, despite being prioritized and adored at home, Fred's reputation pretty much everywhere else was not great.
Okay. Yeah. Not well -bitched.
yeah not well bitch at home loved him they loved him or excuse me his mother loved him yeah but everywhere else no according to author howard soons fred's classmates looked at him as being uh dim dirty and always in trouble because of his slovenly performance slovenly performance yep slovenly performance and he was dim and dirty dim is such a cunty like way to tell someone on they're dumb yeah it really is it's just like you're really dim like when somebody says like don't be dim it's like it's kind of like on the same same uh level as like dingbat it really is because it's like because to me
it gives the it gives the visual of like a light bulb that's just about to burn out so they're like you're fucking dim you know like you're you're you're barely hanging on yep to that one little piece of light poor you but daisy would have to defend her son against you know the things that the teachers would say.
The teachers would be like he's not doing anything.
Like he's really not moving forward. He's slovenly.
He's kind of just like hanging out.
He's a sloth this guy.
He's a sloth. And his mother Daisy would have to defend him and that kind of only made things worse because then he was labeled at school as a mummy's boy and he was mocked and bullied at school.
Which is sad. Yeah.
Which for the kid, sad.
Right. As he got older Fred only really became more isolated on the farm, he didn't really have a lot of friends or acquaintances to pass the time with, so he would just kind of help his father out on the farm and he would, you know, work with his brothers, like that kind of thing.
And despite like hanging out together all the time and doing stuff on the farm and really just being in a cramped space together, Fred's relationship with his brothers, John and Doug, was kind of strained and there was a lot of arguments that always, almost always escalated into physical fights with little provocation on Fred's part.
Like, Fred could get provoked very easily.
He would snap. And Doug told reporters after Fred's death because Fred is dead.
I'll give you that in the beginning.
Fred's gone. Bye, Fred.
Bye. So that's your least little piece of like, okay, at least he's not around anymore.
So Doug, his brother, told reporters after Fred had died, I know it sounds rich now, but I disliked Fred from the outset.
So he's like, I've been new.
I know because he's dead, it sounds a little wild, but like and i know because we know all that we know about him i realize this sounds like right i didn't like him from the first place but he's like i truly did not like my brother hear me out yeah he sucked like his own brother is like i didn't like this kid from the beginning and although fred was the um was like kind of like the biggest of the boys like he was and he was the one that was provoked the easiest he was also kind of bullied by his younger brother john Really?
And Doug recalled, John used to beat the hell out of Fred.
And so, like, they really got into it.
Damn. And they were usually, like, the fights would get broken up by their dad, who, unfortunately, depending on his mood at that time, would punish them by whipping them with a belt.
Oh, my God. Now, by the time he reached 15 years old, it was pretty clear that Fred had really no interest in school or learning.
He wasn't succeeding at all academically.
So he dropped out and began working alongside his father as a general laborer at Moor Court Farm.
Okay. While it's clear that Fred's intellectual development was definitely somewhat stunted, there's also a question as to whether he was stunted in other areas, like social development, particularly with regard to sex later.
Okay. Following his arrest, he told, Fred, told interviewing officers that his mother, and this is a trigger warning for sexual abuse, there's gonna be a lot of that in this so just please know that it's good i'm gonna try to warn you when it comes but it's gonna it's all over the place yeah it happens and it's fucking awful um he told officers once he was arrested later as an adult he said that his mother had sexually abused him beginning when he was 12 years old wow and he said quote his father had sex with with underage girls and had taught him to have sex with sheep.
What? That's what he told officers when he was arrested.
Oh, my God. Mm -hmm.
You said sheep? I said sheep.
Okay. Yep. Years later in an interview, though, and this is, remember, that came from Fred.
Right, right. I want to be clear that Fred West is not a reliable source of information.
He's a fucking demon. And it's like, so don't, because Doug West, and again, none of us were there.
I don't know what happened in that house.
I'm not saying anybody's right here.
We're just giving you all the viewpoints.
I want to give you all what they all have to say because it's important.
Because nobody wants, you know, he's not the most credible source in that family for sure.
But Doug West, the brother, in an interview years later, very much denied any of his claims. Okay.
He told the documentary crew in 2014, none of us was ever abused in any way by anybody.
As far as mom and Fred and dad and animals, that was just fantasy by somebody.
Hmm. And that's what he has to say about it.
Yeah. And he lived in the house, so I'm just, you know, that's what both of them say.
Yeah, both sides should be represented.
Presented. And Doug chalked up these and other claims as just exaggerations and lies.
And he said, we all know what a fantasizer Fred is.
Which we will come to find out.
And that is the 100 % truth.
Right. So whether Fred's more wild claims about sex were true or not, by his mid -teen years, he had developed a very strong interest in women and girls.
Though the interest was rarely, if ever, returned.
Yeah. According to Soons, when the boys would go into town to socialize, quote fred was always chatting up the girls but his manner was crude and they considered him boorish and unpleasant oh no these teenagers ridiculed fred as a country bumpkin oh that's not nice fred's behavior didn't do anything to endear himself it doesn't sound like it the source says if fred saw a girl he liked at the club or a local dance he simply grabbed at her it did not matter to fred whether she was interested in him or not sir get your filthy paws off of us he was He's just gross.
Mm -hmm. He's gross.
And entitled, evidently.
Very entitled. And aggressive.
Mm -hmm. All of the above.
Now, among the few things that did interest young Fred was motorcycles.
And he loved going to the motorcycle shops off of High Street and nearby Leadbury.
And to him, the vehicles were kind of like this freedom.
They were like powerful, you know, all that stuff.
Probably felt like it made him look cool.
He kind of felt like he was like oppressed on the farm by his parents.
They were very strict.
he felt like his mom was kind of like all over him all the time so he looked at motorcycles as like this like I can just go out in the open road I get that you guys I tried my mochi ice cream the other day and I was lifted off of this planet into just another galaxy entirely it is a cool cool, creamy scoop of ice cream wrapped in a soft, chewy dough.
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Hey there, my weird weirdos.
I want to take a minute to recommend another podcast called Who Took Misty Copsey?
In September of 1992, 14 -year -old Misty Copsey leaves the Washington State Fair with her best friend and is never seen again.
Her body is never found.
At the time, western Washington is home to prolific serial killers like the Green River Killer, which leads to different theories on who's responsible for what happened to Misty.
Over the course of eight episodes, host and cold case investigator Sarah Kalin speaks with Misty's friends and family, looks at police records, and different anonymous tips to try to figure out if Misty's disappearance is the work of a serial killer or someone who knew her.
No suspects are ruled out.
After 33 years, Sarah Kalin hopes to answer the question, who took Misty?
You guys are going to love this.
If you listen to Morbid, we know that you love a cold case, and we always tell you, a cold case is never cold, so definitely give this a listen.
Definitely look into the case.
Listen to Who Took Misty Copsey wherever you get your podcasts.
At first, Daisy was, of course, not okay with Fred getting a bike, but she did relent eventually and he agreed to sell it if he ever got in an accident or got hurt.
So on the evening of November 28th, 1958, Fred was on his way back to the farm, riding his motorcycle that he had got and was just a few hundred yards from home when he collided with a local girl who was riding a bicycle in the opposite direction oh no the details are not super clear but it's and it's kind of unclear what actually caused the accident but it was significant enough to attract the attention of a local farmer who came to run for help and the man first helped the girl who looked like luckily she had only suffered a few minor scrapes and cuts oh good She was okay.
But then they turned to Fred and he was in way worse condition.
He was motionless and a large pool of blood.
When the ambulance arrived, his condition was considered very serious and he needed complex care.
So they took him to one of the instead of going to the local hospital, they went to 14 miles away to Hereford Hospital, which was like a bigger hospital.
Fred was unconscious at that hospital for several days.
and as everyone grew more and more concerned that he might never wake up imagine i know like obviously that would have been a loss for the family at that point in time exactly but imagine what could have been avoided but on the seventh day he regained consciousness and slowly regained the ability to speak to move um an experience he later said was like coming back from the dead while his parents were relieved that he had woken up he was pretty beat up and he was covered in cuts and scrapes and had several broken bones including a broken nose arm and one leg that had been so badly damaged he had
to wear a metal brace until it healed wow um he also suffered a significant head injury i was waiting for that he actually fractured his skull oh oh my gosh it's unclear whether there was additional brain damage suffered by this like particular injury But the recovery process was slow, and it was very painful and not great.
And I'm sure it didn't do anything positive for him.
And he ended up having a fear of hospitals that he had for the rest of his life.
Oh, wow. Now, despite the injuries and the slow healing process, Fred did go out still while he was healing and, you know, went to clubs and pubs around Ludbury.
and it was at this time that people began to notice a very significant change in fred's behavior which is what makes me think that they're head trauma some head some brain damage um he used to be he was aggressive with girls in the sense of like you know grabbing at them and all that shit but he was also pretty avoidant of most people when he was out like he wasn't like a party animal before and he wasn't like getting into fights out and about he would get in fights with his you know brothers brothers yeah but like out and about socializing he was pretty like nobody really noticed him yeah to
be quite honest but now he seemed much less restrained when it came to aggression like hungry for the fight before when other boys would like mock or make fun of him or try to like start shit with him he would just shirk like he would shrink away and kind of let his brothers take care of it because his brothers would stand up for him yeah because Because they're his brothers.
After the accident, though, he would respond very aggressively, and he would start fights.
Like, he was, it was a very noticeable change that people saw.
And the changes in Fred's personality and behavior might have had something to do with the accident, but I think they were also compounded with him getting more and more discontented living at home.
I could see that. That makes sense.
Obviously, the head trauma is a magnificent part of this, but I think he was very discontented at home.
He was going into teen angst years.
All of that combining, I think, was just a really bad storm.
And in the late 1950s, Fred complained to one of his friends that he was deeply unhappy living at the farm and that he couldn't live under his parents' rules and restrictions anymore.
Now, in 1960, Fred met 16 -year -old Catherine Costello while the two were at a dance at at memorial hall she was actually known as reena to friends and family and she was staying with some relatives in the area because she had moved from scotland a short time earlier after uh what was what was said to be her defiant attitude and behavior had become too much for her single father father to handle okay from a very early age reena had been what they said about her, a difficult child.
She was in trouble a lot for a lot of petty offenses like theft and fighting, like just always kind of in trouble, always getting into stuff, which had resulted in her being shuttled around a lot to various relatives, various schools, other authorities.
Like she was always...
It sounds like they were trying to get it in check.
Yeah, they were trying.
To Fred, who'd never traveled further than Leadbury at the time or the farm, So it is a little bit, it's reminiscent of Ed Gein at this moment a little bit.
Yeah, it very much is.
But her life seemed very adventurous and like, wow, she's so worldly.
And she's like, she's rebellious and all that.
So he was immediately smitten.
From the moment they got together, though, their relationship was tumultuous.
Fred was immediately very demanding when it came to sex, especially.
And Rina, who had experienced very little affection or positive attention in her life because she had always been known as a problem kind of thing.
She just kind of like gave in to his demands all the time.
Oh, that's really sad.
Soons wrote, The relationship became so intense that Rina tattooed Fred's name on her arm using a sewing needle and black ink.
Commitment. Yeah. Perhaps because it was so intense and the fact that she had been staying out most nights, Rina was eventually asked to leave her relatives' home and began sharing a room with a friend at an inn in Ledbury.
I think the relatives were like, this is too much. Yeah, like this isn't.
Like you just carved his name into your arm.
Yeah, this isn't going anywhere good.
Unfortunately, that whole thing with her friend in Ledbury ended quickly because both of them were asked to leave after being said that they were disruptive and reckless and were irritating the other guests at the end.
They're like, you guys are a lot.
You got to get it together.
But without any other options for housing, Reena packed her bags and returned to Scotland, and that ended her relationship with Fred.
Oh, wow. With Reena gone, Fred shifted his very much unwanted attention back to the younger girls at the youth center.
One evening in the fall of 1960, Fred was standing on the second floor landing of the building's fire escape and attempted to grab a girl who was standing near him.
In response, this girl turned and hit Fred, sending him over the railing and falling one story to the ground below.
That girl's an icon.
Violence is never the answer, of course.
But... But don't grab that girl.
Yeah. Don't grab that girl.
You, what is it, you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.
Don't put your hands on her.
And the distance of the fall hadn't been more than 10 feet, but Fred hit his head on the concrete.
Yeah. And for the second time in just a few years, he was unconscious and in need of medical treatment.
Oh, that's not good.
Fred regained consciousness the following day, but this time there was almost certainly brain damage done.
Almost immediately, family members started noticing changes in his personality.
Now he was, I mean, a split second away from anger, lashing out, aggression.
I mean, it took nothing to set set him off now before it would it was little provocation now nothing what is that when you get like too many head injuries it's called something like it happens to football players sometimes yeah cte cte that's exactly what i'm thinking of uh chronic traumatic encephalopathy yeah yeah so yeah your eights it might be similar to something like that when i wonder if like he eventually had that like had cte honestly you wonder that it's a very valid thing yeah i'm not armchair diagnosing i'm just like maybe just saying like the behavior does line up now beginning in 1961
fred's unusual behavior became more apparent and problematic he was very directionless at this time he had very little to occupy his time Wasn't really doing a whole lot Yeah because apparently CTE gets worse Over time So I'm like I mean he definitely got worse Over time I also never understand these people why Like they have kids But then they are so fucking put Out by kids And then like the other parent will be like well I'm gonna Take the kids and leave and they're like You're not taking my kids you leave And it's like you're put out by those kids Why are you just let those kids go with someone
who actually wants to take such an ego thing it's so fucked up yeah so beginning in 1961 his kind of problematic behavior really went up a notch because he was super directionless at this moment yeah it sounds like he wants to get out of the farm but he's not making any moves to do it he's dropped out of school he's not really endearing himself to people around him he doesn't have a lot to occupy his time at this moment right so he starts shoplifting oh that will help help everything.
That will help. Yeah, that will give you direction.
And in April he had to make his first appearance in court because of it.
Oh wow. The shoplifting, while very frustrating to his parents, would turn out to honestly be the least of Fred's troubles that year.
Because in June, just a few months after the arrest for shoplifting, Fred's 13 -year -old sister Kitty disclosed to their mother, and again a trigger warning.
Oh no. 13 years old, that Fred had been sexually abusing her for months and that she'd become pregnant oh oh my god yes oh my god yeah i told you this is really bad wow really bad case daisy the mother took the girl to be examined by a doctor and that initiated an investigation and fred was soon arrested yeah now how the fuck does he make it out of that the family was horrified and obviously horrified humiliated shamed all the things fred didn't understand why anyone was upset with him and that does make you wonder it definitely concerns about his claims for sure according to soons he was quote
belligerent with police answering their questions as though they were completely unimportant what in fact the more that investigators asked fred about the allegations and interviewed him the clearer it became that his attitudes and interests around sex were far from normal or average yeah very very abnormal attitudes about it fred acknowledged and was like yeah i have he said he had been molesting and assaulting young girls young girls multiple for years but he wasn't ashamed of his behavior he was really just kind of perplexed as to why everyone was making a big deal out of it he was even quoted
as saying well doesn't everyone do it oh okay yeah see yeah yeah no matter what something's very wrong here very wrong like very wrong now the arrest and allegations caused honestly nearly everyone in the family to distance themselves from fred yeah um some disowned him completely like some just were like no thank you you can very much understand that decision.
He was briefly held in a cell following his arrest but was unable or he was able to make bonds so he ended up being released.
The problem was that no one wanted him to come to the family home any longer so he was sent to live with his aunt Violet and he was going to stay with her pending the outcome of the trial.
Now in the following months however and this is just really sad Kitty grew kind of reticent about testifying in court and And when the time came for her to testify, she didn't want to participate.
I mean, you can understand that.
That would be humiliating.
Exactly. And so the trial did fall apart, kind of.
And the charges were dismissed.
Now, by the summer of 1962, Walter and Daisy West appeared to have gotten over their feelings of shame and humiliation about Fred and his behavior.
um and despite protests from his other siblings they welcomed him back into the family home i don't understand yep what that's like months after this happened this poor girl now in the meantime reena the girl he had been dating had found life in scotland to be much more difficult than she imagined.
It was worse than when she had left it the first time.
She was barely at this point managing to keep herself afloat and she was having to resort to like what she didn't want to do, which was sex work and petty theft to get herself just even by just floating above the water.
So she was tired of this whole thing.
She was tired of the cycle that she was finding herself in.
So she ended up coming back to England in the summer of 1962 and immediately immediately they've started dating again okay life doesn't happen bi -weekly so why should payday the money that you earn can be in your hands today with earnin earnin is an app that gives you access to your pay as you work up to $150 per day with a max of $750 between paydays just download the earnin app and verify your paycheck, then access up to $150 a day as you work, and leave an optional tip.
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That's GoodRx .com slash morbid.
So just before she left Scotland, Rina did have a brief relationship with a man and she had become pregnant.
Okay. Now when Fred learned that she was pregnant, he was angry and he was angry.
And at first you're like, what do you like?
You weren't together.
Yeah. You know, like that, But you can't be angry for her for what she did when you were not together.
Yeah, she's in a completely different place.
But he was angry because he was racist and this man was Asian.
So he was angry that she was pregnant with what would be a half Asian baby.
Oh, my God. So he insisted that she terminate the pregnancy.
Are you fucking kidding me?
And actually tried to forcibly do it himself.
Oh, my God. But luckily, he tried to do it in the woods in Ludbury.
but fortunately the whole thing drew the attention of local police they intervened and he had to stop his plan but nothing happened to him after this what like no charges no nothing that's what i'm like what and it gets worse because they decided to get married after this and the baby was born okay so in november they were married they had like very small secretive ceremony they kept it away from their families and Fred ended up moving out of his parents house and he and Rena got an apartment in Coatbridge which is a small town about eight or nine miles outside Glasgow city center where Rena actually
grew up now the change in scenery was definitely like a big improvement for Rena like she felt like okay this is a new this is a new place I can start like meeting people you know like all this yeah but Fred found it very challenging he hadn't spend much time outside of where he had grown up and this like kind of jarring change because he was from a very rural place like this is Glasgow like right city and so this was very jarring to him and it made him feel uncomfortable and he got more and more irritable and aggressive and they have a new baby too which is a stressor and he also was getting
more and more aggressive about sex oh according to Soons his lovemaking was short and brutal and he wanted sex at the the most inappropriate times oh that's so disturbing which is really unsettling and she's recovering from having a baby like well and either it's just horrible no matter what oh but his behavior soon turned kind of like sadistic like he was fucked up um and he would honestly like do all of this against rena like she was he was physically abusing her physically harming her and at the same same time, he had become extremely controlling and demanded at the time that Rina go back to sex
work in order to support them as a couple.
What the fuck? But while he often bragged about how he, quote, made a lot of money from being a pimp, he would also complain about how much trouble her working in sex work would cause them.
But you put her in that position.
Yeah, forced her into it.
Right. So less than a year into their marriage, his personality was transforming rapidly.
I mean, getting worse and worse.
He was insatiable. He demanded sex constantly.
He was brutal. He was violent.
He was awful. He was fucking awful.
A nightmare. And she was not allowed to refuse.
Oh, I believe that.
She could not refuse.
And he was often, people like said that he would slap her in the head and the face.
Like he was really awful.
That's really sad. And it honestly took took very little to send him into a rage.
And like it all it really took was something very minor and he would get physically aggressive.
Now in March 1963 is when Rina actually gave birth to a baby girl named Charmaine.
And that's the baby that we're talking about.
But and Fred and Rina knew that everyone could tell that this was not Fred's child.
And so like that would normally not, you know, why would you care?
Like, you know what I mean?
I mean, like this isn't – but Rena was worried that the West family might be kind of awful about this.
Okay. Which, I mean, I don't blame her for thinking that.
Yeah, I don't either.
So they told Fred's family that Rena had miscarried, but because they still wanted a baby, they had adopted a baby of Asian descent to, quote, take its place.
Uh -huh. Even worse was that Fred immediately took a dislike to this baby.
Oh, no. hell because he said it didn't resemble him at all and so he didn't want anything to do with this why the fuck would the baby resemble you it's not your baby it's not your baby that's kind of how that works so poor charmaine took like immediately was the the bane of his existence just as a baby just coming into the world god and in the years that followed her birth fred's abusive behavior only worsened and he honestly would never form any kind of bond with charmaine at all.
Neighbors said of Reena later, quote, as far as we were concerned, she was just a single parent.
We never saw a man at the house at all.
Wow. During this period, Fred was driving an ice cream truck.
That's horrific. Isn't that the worst thing you've ever heard for the Walls Company?
And spent many of his nights off at the pub, just drinking and bragging and lying about what he was doing, saying he was connected to organized crime.
Like, no, no. In 1964, Reena became pregnant again and eventually gave birth to a second daughter they named anne marie um unlike his relationship or lack thereof with charmaine fred really doted on anna and would like fuss over her yeah and he would just completely neglect and ignore charmaine well and i'm sure it was almost a way for him to to mess with charmaine to punish her exactly and of course they needed like a bigger place to live at this point because they're expanding their family so fred and reena moved to a larger our apartment and this one had a large garden.
And while the other neighbors would kind of plant small gardens or grow, you know, some vegetables here and there, he kept his plot just raked over and he would tell Nick because neighbors would be like, what you doing over there?
Like, why don't you have like an actual garden?
And he said, I'm keeping it for something special.
Oh, I hate that. Because I don't know what his definition of special is and I don't know that i want to know after a while he would spend nights out in the garden and would take girls he picked up on his route there to have sex oh yeah and what's really frustrating is that this particular area eventually got demolished to make a way for a highway system so it's kind of impossible to dig up and that means it's unknown whether some of fred's victims could be buried in this particular garden I feel like it's pretty known yeah now as they entered 1965 it seemed that there was really no hope that this relationship
was going to get any better yeah it was just getting worse right um and it turned out that they were kind of bound to get worse and worse as we go at one point during the first half of the year Fred was driving his ice cream van in the Glasgow suburbs and he accidentally hit a small boy and left him dying in the road yeah and a crowd had gathered and fred was brought into the local police station where he was interviewed and was released after investigators determined that it really was a tragic accident and the child had been excited seeing the ice cream truck and had ran in front of the truck
oh that's so sad but who really knows if that's the case exactly and after what we know now what we know now and you accidentally get into collisions with two people yeah i don't know.
What are the odds of that?
Yeah. But despite having been cleared of any wrongdoing, the neighborhood definitely turned on Fred.
He was pretty much shunned by everyone.
So he couldn't make any money locally.
So he decided it was time to return to England where they could be closer to Fred's family.
Okay. Now, the couple's relationship continued to get worse and worse and worse.
And by 1965, Fred was carrying on affairs with several women, not trying to hide anything from reena he was just doing it right out in the open and by that time fred was barely home anyways and when he was he was just an abusive piece of shit it was probably preferable that he wasn't home so reena was responsible for raising two small children on her own which would be hard for anyone and working supporting the family because he's not working and sometimes when she i mean she rarely got time by herself but when she did she would go to one of the local cafes and that's where she met isa mcneil
um who was a young woman with whom she'd been kind of of like casually friendly.
Now Issa had recently lost her job at a clothing factory and was kind of desperate for more work.
So Reena was like, why don't you come on as a nanny and you can help me with Charmaine and Anna in exchange for a room and board. Oh, and she was like, sure.
It didn't take long for McNeil to begin to notice the strange and very tense dynamic that was in the West House.
That would be terrifying to walk into that.
She said when Fred was home, the girls were were left on the bottom bunk of a bunk bed where they were essentially kept penned in by metal bars and would only be allowed to be out when he left. What the fuck?
Yeah. And of course there was a horribly abusive relationship between Rina and Fred.
And they didn't, he didn't hide this at all.
He did it right out in the open.
Wow. And despite all of this, Isa introduced the West to her friend Anna McFall, who was a teenager with a history full of tragedies and trauma, kind of like Reena.
She had very little familial or social supports around her, and Anna began spending a lot of her time at the West apartment and soon became kind of a regular presence around the home.
Now, after the accident, Fred had told, like the accident with the little boy, Fred had told Reena they needed to move back to England where he would be able to make a living again.
But seeing it as an opportunity probably to get away from her her abusive husband, Reena was like, no, I'm not going with you.
But Fred took the girls and returned to Much Markle in the spring of 1965.
He took both of them.
This is what I mean.
I don't understand when people, like he obviously doesn't want to be a father.
No. In the, in the sense that you should want to be a father.
It's a way to punish Reena.
But he's just like taking these children, like what, so you can abuse and neglect them?
Like what? It doesn't make any sense to me.
And again, I don't know why he was allowed to take those children.
I don't know how any of that all happened.
But of course, Rina immediately began stressing and missing her children.
So she went back to England to live in Fred's parents' home again, because she really just wanted to be around the kids.
Yeah, to probably protect them.
Yeah. And now, of course, this living situation at the West became very uncomfortable.
It's very crowded. They're with his parents.
That's a lot. So Fred and Rina moved with their children to the Willows, which was a caravan site near or much Markle.
Now at first things like seemed like they might be like at least plateauing, you know, like getting a little better, I guess.
Rena found a job serving tea at a local cafe.
Fred got a job driving a truck for a local, um, uh, for like a local company, but their relationship was still very tumultuous and very unstable.
Yeah. And Rena was spending a lot of time away with her family in Scotland.
And on one of her trips to Glasgow, she ran into to Issa McNeil and suggested that the young woman return to England and stay with her since she had been having trouble with her parents at the time too.
And Issa agreed and also brought Anna McFall with her since Anna was also unhappy in Scotland and was looking for new opportunities again.
So she was like, why don't you guys just come back and live with us?
Like, it worked out before, I guess.
Kinda. No, it didn't take long for Issa and Rina to kind of regret that decision.
with four adults and two children the caravan was very very cramped and very uncomfortable and it was just making all the tension worse and the shift from Glasgow to the much more rural much Markle was a very tough adjustment especially for Isa and Anna yeah they were both struggling to find work they were spending a lot of their time just watching the girls for Fred and Rena and just kind of like hanging out doing nothing so after a couple of months with Fred and Reena, the situation became so bad and so tense and so uncomfortable that Reena sent a letter to her former boyfriend, John McLaughlin.
Okay. Or McLaughlin, I think it was.
And asked that he come pick up Isa and Anna and bring them back to Glasgow.
Okay. So John agreed.
I'm like, take the girls too.
I know. And Reena and John had actually coordinated things so that John and his friend would arrive while Fred was at work and he would actually take Issa, Anna, and the two children back to Scotland.
So that did end up being part of the plan.
I'm like, take Rena too.
Everybody just run away.
Exactly. Now, strangely though, Fred arrived home unexpectedly while they were all packing and the scene just exploded.
And it was like, at first everybody was like, why did he show up in the middle of the day?
but howard soon's the who we will link his uh his sources in our show notes he thinks that anna actually told fred about the plan a few days earlier what why now both isa and john mclaughlin apparently now believed that anna had told fred of their scheme and she had apparently she had become very friendly with fred in the recent weeks and in the end fred refused to let the children go oh and anna told what very calmly told everyone that she was gonna stay on as fred's nanny so they could all go what the fuck so john mclaughlin loaded up a few of reena's stuff and you know he and his friend and reena and isa all
left for glasgow oh my god if i was reena i would be livid yeah there's no way i could leave it's also like take your kids well and it's like i couldn't leave no i don't know though i've never been in that situation so i'm not gonna sit here it was only later after isa had returned to scotland that it became clear what had been happening between fred and anna yeah in letters to isa anna told her friend that she was quote unquote infatuated with fred and the two had been carrying on an affair during the periods that reena was away in glasgow yeah anna had loved to bury like i said led a very troubled
life up until till this point and naively believed Fred was going to give her a better life.
And at one point she even wrote to her mother that the two were going to be married.
Okay. Ignoring that little inconvenient fact that Fred was already married to Rena.
Right. Well, it seems pretty unlikely that Fred was going to go through with this whole thing.
He did give the impression that he might.
Not long after Rena and Issa had fled the caravan park, Fred just placed both his children in the care of social services in the summer of 1966.
You might as well have just let their mother take them.
Didn't allow their mother to take them and just put them into social services.
That's absolutely bonkers.
Now, when Rena learned this, she returned to England to get her children.
Of course. And began living at a different caravan park a few little ways away from this one.
And although she was happy to have her children back, Rena was surprised that she was kind of irritated and feeling a little jealous over Fred's relationship with Anna.
I mean, regardless.
I mean, that's on trauma.
Exactly. It makes sense.
And Fred had engaged in clearly many affairs in the past that she knew of.
But they were all like, in her eyes, they were like, at least...
Out of sight, out of mind.
People she didn't know.
Yeah. You know, and they were never serious in her eyes.
That's different when you bring on somebody to literally care for your children.
And that, I can't imagine.
No. And his relationship with Anna was like, it seemed like she was being replaced.
Yeah. As like the mother of, like, you know, the wife and mother.
Right. So for nearly a year after her return to England, Rina, Fred, and Anna were in this, like, weird, like, love triangle that was like this tense fighting, trying to, like, he was trying to tell both of them that he was going to be with them kind of thing.
And after suffering a great deal of abuse from Rina, obviously, Anna moved out and found lodging somewhere else.
Okay. But Rena remained pretty ambivalent and continued splitting her time between the caravan park with Fred and her family's home in Glasgow.
So things were just still going on this roller coaster of just trauma.
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things took a turn for the worse in the spring of 1967 when anna announced that she was pregnant with fred's child okay by then anna was still serving as a nanny for the west children and saw her own pregnancy as an opportunity to convince fred to divorce reena and marry her This is all so fucked up.
It is. And Fred was not interested in marrying Anna.
In fact, he was pretty uncomfortable with the arrangement since Rena found out about his affair and was now worried that, which none of this is going to make logical sense because nobody's logical in this situation, but now he's worried that if Rena found out about the pregnancy, she was going to leave him for good.
Suddenly he cares. Well, he enjoys toying with multiple women at the same time.
Yeah, and he doesn't like that it's going to be disrupted here.
And that Rena can take the power and say like, fuck you, I'm gone.
Exactly. But that April, very pregnant Anna McFall disappeared from the caravan park.
Oh, no. And she was never seen alive again.
Oh, no, Anna. No one ever reported Anna missing.
No one investigated it.
No one looked into it.
That's so sad that she didn't have anybody that like looked after her.
It's awful. To care.
Her own mother didn't report her missing.
That's so messed up.
It was later, after Fred's arrest in 1994, that details of her whereabouts were actually learned.
Throughout his multiple interrogations and interviews, Fred repeatedly denied killing Anna.
He said, nope, I didn't do it.
But, weirdly, he had no trouble directing them right to a cornfield where she was buried.
Uh -huh. He couldn't have known she was there.
unless he at the very least played a part in putting her there.
While investigators were never able to conclusively prove that he killed Anna, Pretty likely.
there were also rumors that he had admitted it to cellmates during his incarceration in 1994, telling them that he stabbed her one evening after they got in an argument.
Oh, God. Now, despite having been given a general sense of where the body was buried, It actually took authorities nearly two months to find her.
And when they did finally exhume Anna from her grave in the Muchmarkle cornfield 27 years after she was murdered, her remains were entirely skeletal, as were the remains of her unborn child.
Right. He killed not only her but their baby as well.
The body had been dismembered and there was a dressing gown type cord wrapped around her neck and wrists and then tied under the ribs as though she had been restrained.
Oh my god. Also found in the grave were two large plastic bags with several pieces of bloodstained clothing and what was either a large floral print sheet or curtain.
That's horrific. Terrific.
Absent from the body, though, were several small hand and foot bones, but no one can tell where they went or why they weren't there.
Interesting. So now it's like, did he torture her?
Yeah. Did someone torture her and remove fingers and toes?
Oh, man. Because he's a brutal fuck.
Yeah. We will find out.
And she was restrained.
right so it's like i mean i don't i can't think of another he did something awful i can't think of another explanation yeah now in the weeks after anna disappeared co -workers and others who knew him recalled that fred became very irritable very anxious very easily distracted noticeable difference yeah paranoid that changed a short time later when reena returned happy to find that fred and anna's relationship had ended because she had no idea what happened right and they started living together again and took the children out of you know completely because she was able to claim her children in social
services but they weren't entirely taken out oh yeah i don't know how that all works so i'm not going to speculate but they did take their children out eventually okay um and basically at this point reena looked at it as like maybe we can start over okay maybe all this can start over maybe it can actually work we can be a family It's so sad that she had that hope.
It's very sad. I think it's hard to understand from the outside how she possibly could, but again, we've never been in a situation like that.
So, I mean, hope must be really the only thing that you do have. Truly.
Truly. Now, not long after Rina returned to living with Fred, he found a new job as a laborer.
He was working at a local grain mill near the caravan park where they lived.
And at the same time, he was still spending all his nights at a pub, at cafes.
cafes and um he was spending it at mostly at this place called the poppin cafe which is a very seedy bar in glocester known to attract unsavory customers and petty thieves now according to soons it was the kind of place where quote pornographic photographs were circulated and stolen goods changed hands when the owner was not looking interesting now it was at this cafe that that Fred likely met 15 -year -old waitress, Mary Bastholme.
15. On the evening of January 6, 1968, Mary had plans to meet her boyfriend, Tim Merritt, who lived about five miles from her home, and she was last seen waiting for the bus on Bristol Road at about 7 .15pm.
Waiting at the bus stop at the other end, Tim was surprised when the first bus stopped and Mary did not get off.
And then he became alarmed when the second bus came and went, And Mary was nowhere to be found.
So Tim asked a friend to drive him to Mary's house.
And he was like, okay, maybe she just went home and we got our wires crossed and she didn't realize she was supposed to meet me.
So he was like – he went to her home.
But when he went there, he was kind of shocked and very alarmed when he found out that no one there had seen her either.
And they were like, I thought she was meeting you.
So the disappearance was very out of character for her.
She was a very responsible girl.
all yeah this this just wasn't her she wasn't floating around like right not knowing where she was so tim immediately called the police and reported her missing now especially back then even now police have met reports of missing teenagers with a little bit of like runaway they don't really want to expand expend their valuable resources on searching for someone just to learn that they'd run away right um or go on to stay with like friends and they're going to come back and that's kind of the that's usually what what we get in these situations but here luckily they did take it very seriously oh
wow i guess because mary i mean everyone in her life was like this no way isn't her she's never done this that's um it's just it's a gamble like you never know what you're gonna get in a situation you really don't that's the thing and you don't because there's some situations where the whole family's sitting there being like she's never ever done this she wouldn't do this and they're like I bet she didn't though.
So it's like this one just happened to be one that worked out where they immediately started looking.
Chief Constable HDJ Smith told reporters we're very concerned for the girl and I think part of this like I think part of this is just like honestly it's like a kind of like 50 -50 shot of what you're going to get from them in this situation but also it did help the case here that unfortunately several Several local girls at the time had been assaulted in the area over the last several months and years, and detectives were like, okay, this could be in the same vein.
So they did like jump at this because they wanted to stop it before it happened again.
Makes sense. Which is a good thing, but obviously it's awful that it was going on at the time.
So the search continued for several days for Mary with more than 125 officers combing the city, like all out for this.
But there were no clues, no leads.
They couldn't find anything on where she had gone.
So they were very frustrated.
And at this point, local police called on Scotland Yard for assistance.
And two detectives from the yard were assigned to the case.
The sudden assignment of yard detectives caused many to speculate that the case was now being investigated as a murder.
Because that's like a big switch. But Chief Inspector Kenneth Barker attempted to stop those rumors during a press conference on January 9th.
He said, the position has still not changed and we are still investigating a missing person, but obviously it could change to something else and it is much better that the yard be informed at this stage.
Time is going on. Nothing has been discovered.
Right. So he was basically just saying like, we're not investigating it as a murder yet, but it's better to enter this stage and have Scotland Yard enter than to wait for it to become a problem.
I'd rather them be in this and be looking for a live person.
Right. than do it too late, which I'm like, good job.
I know. Due diligence.
We love to see it. Now, despite the assistance of Scotland Yard detectives and the use of military search and rescue helicopter, weeks passed and nothing, no sign of Mary, no clues of where she could have gone.
This must have been so frustrating.
Yeah. After two weeks, nothing had changed in the investigation.
Investigators told reporters at that point they were, quote, waiting for something to turn up, and the possibility cannot be discounted that Mary might have gone off on her own accord because at this point they're like maybe she doesn't want to be found I don't know now of course Mary had not gone off on her own accord and unfortunately her body would not be found ever in 1998 Fred's son Stephen West told reporters he was convinced his father had killed Mary Bastholme he said his father had boasted in prison how her body and others would remain undiscovered.
Fred had always denied killing Mary, and while they strongly suspected he was very much responsible for her disappearance, investigators were never able to formally connect him.
Right, without a body it's like impossible.
Yeah, but Stephen claims his father admitted several other crimes to him in the months before his death, and alluded to the fact that Mary was one of those victims. During During one visit, Fred allegedly told his son, quote, they are not going to find them all, you know, never.
And I believe his son.
I do too, of course.
How are you that evil?
He's bottom tier. I mean, bottom tier.
Even in death too, to go to the grave, not ever admitting the full scope of everything.
He didn't give a shit.
And when Stephen asked if Mary was among those people, Fred replied, I'll never tell anyone where she is.
And he didn't. That's so evil.
A 15 year old girl.
That was just waiting at a bus stop probably.
Now, following his arrest, Fred frequently made references to other victims, but he was intentionally vague and he would never give details or names, just reference them, kind of like hint at them.
He loved that shit.
And years later, Fred's defense attorney, Howard Ogden, told police that Fred claimed to have picked Mary up at the bus stop that night that she went missing and after killing her he quote buried her in village in the village of Bishops Cleve near Cheltenham.
Although this is consistent with other references that Fred has made had made to Mary's death in the past without any more specific location or details.
You can just dig up the whole area.
Yeah there was no way that they could really go about trying to find her and she remains missing to this day.
Oh, that's awful. Which is fucking awful.
Like, that kind of shit, I can't...
Like, going to your grave and not giving closure, I'm just like, damn.
But it's your last imprint of evil.
It's your last power play, yeah.
Now, in the year that followed Mary's disappearance, Fred continued a very sharp spiral downward, was arrested several times for petty thefts, other minor offenses, and during this time, Fred was also let go from his job at the mill when the owners became suspicious that he'd actually been stealing money from them.
So now he's out of work, he's desperate for money.
And so he worked a few months driving a septic truck before landing a full -time position driving a delivery truck for a local bakery.
To not deliver my baked goods.
The wholesome jobs that he was holding at times, I'm like, I hate that.
Yeah. It's like akin to Ed Gein being a babysitter.
and unfortunately it was through this job that fred met rose setting him on a even worse path somehow that would end up with him killing himself him killing himself and we're going to end part one there wait he killed himself yeah he killed himself in prison what yeah oh man yeah Yeah.
All right. So that's where we're going to end part one.
Okay. It's going to get bad.
I just need, I need everybody to really understand that.
You mean worse. It's going to get much worse.
Okay. I'm going to do my best to, I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you what happened.
Yeah. But tastefully.
I'm going to do my best to not, you know, get too into the nitty gritty.
yeah that's not helping anybody but we're here it's an awful story it's awful for everyone involved well with all that we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird I gotta tell you I know I couldn't even get that weird out weird weird If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
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