Fred & Rose

by Howard Sounes

  Despite being cleared by the police, Fred was scared of the hostile reaction of local people, as he depended on their goodwill to make a living. Knowing he could stay in the city no longer, Fred gathered up his belongings and left Maclellan Street. But Rena would not go with him.

  Fred and the children arrived back in Much Marcle tired and short of money, with nowhere to live. Fred told his parents about the death of the boy and asked if they could stay. (Years later, Fred adapted this story to explain why he did not see his illegitimate son Steven, saying that this had been the boy run over and killed by the ice cream van. This was a complete fiction, as Steven is alive and well. He also later told his daughter Anna Marie that the family had been ‘thrown out’ of Glasgow because of Rena’s prostitution – yet another lie.) His brothers and sisters were still at home, including his recently married sister Daisy, who had brought her husband Frank Phillips home to live. Consequently there were only three bedrooms for ten adults and two children, and once again Fred had to sleep in the front room.

  Some time later he collected Rena from Gloucester railway station, and the reunited family went to live at The Willows caravan site in the village of Sandhurst. Rena worked serving tea from a café on the newly-built M5 motorway, while Fred was hired to drive a lorry for an abattoir, calling at local farms to collect the carcasses of animals and their offal, stored in forty-gallon steel drums.

  Fred and Rena’s relationship was very unstable, and she only stayed at the caravan intermittently, spending much of her time back in Scotland. On one trip home to Glasgow she asked her friend Isa McNeill if she would like to come back to England with her. Isa agreed, since she was not getting on with her parents and the idea of moving away appealed to her. Her friend Anna McFall also asked to come, because she too was unhappy at home and felt she was at a ‘dead end’. They also hoped to find work in England.

  The three women and Rena’s two children travelled south together, their destination being the bus station in Gloucester opposite the mainline railway terminal. They were met there by Fred, who invited them all to clamber into the cab of his blue abattoir lorry for the bumpy ride out of the city to Sandhurst. The lorry was loaded with bones and cow hides, and the stench was almost overpowering.

  The caravan was claustrophobic with four adults and two children. Fred and Rena shared the main bedroom, which had a view over the fields; the children slept together in a tiny room next to their parents; and Anna McFall and Isa McNeill had to make do with the U-shaped couch in the dining area, taking an end each. It was not comfortable, and living in the country was a big change for the three city girls. They could not find work, became bored and soon wished that they had not come south at all.

  The relationship between Rena and Fred continued to be tense and difficult. Before Fred set out each morning for the abattoir, he warned Rena not to venture off the site. Isa believes he was paranoid that Rena was going to leave him. While Fred was out at work, the girls whiled away the hours chatting and flicking through magazines. Isa looked after the children, leaving Rena and Anna with nothing to do other than occasional baby-sitting jobs for neighbours, for which they were paid in cigarettes and food rather than cash. When he returned home in the evening, Fred was still wearing his overalls and Wellington boots from the abattoir, by now splattered with blood and offal. His hands were scarlet and there was blood on his face where he wiped his brow.

  His temperament was unpredictable; he was either full of vulgar good cheer or in a black and dangerous mood. After a few weeks in the caravan, the women learned to be nervous of this volatile personality. If his food was not ready on the table when he came in, Fred did not hesitate to slap Rena around the face. Isa bravely tried to intervene, but Fred snarled that he would kill her if she did not get out of the way.

  Isa and Rena secretly planned to leave, and Rena sent a letter to John McLachlan’s neighbour in Glasgow asking him to pass on the message that John should come and collect them. Rena’s lover then telephoned the girls and said he would pick them up by the telephone box on the caravan site.

  After a long overnight drive south in a hired Mini, John McLachlan arrived at the site shortly after dawn. The girls took the children for a walk, and when they returned, they saw McLachlan’s car parked in the lane. McLachlan was with his friend, John Trotter. The plan had been to take the girls and children away while Fred was at work, but Fred returned home unexpectedly while they were still packing. Both Isa and John McLachlan now believe that Anna had told Fred of their scheme; she had become very friendly with him in recent weeks. When Fred saw his rival, a violent scene erupted. ‘Everybody screamed and bawled at each other,’ says John McLachlan. Rena went into the bedroom to put on her coat, and Fred went in after her. ‘I heard him at it again, giving her a couple of slaps.’ McLachlan asked Isa if she was coming with them and she said she was, quickly packing a bag. Rena turned to her young friend Anna McFall and entreated her to escape with them, but Anna was oddly calm. She said that she would stay and work as Fred’s ‘nanny’.

  As the others were about to leave, Rena decided she could not abandon her children, but Fred held Charmaine in his arms and, no matter how hard Rena tugged at the girl, he would not let her go. McLachlan punched Fred in the stomach, but still Fred hung on. He hissed at Rena, ‘I’ll kill you if you ever show your face again!’

  One of the neighbours had called the police because of the commotion, and as the Mini drove away, a police officer appeared on a bicycle. He called for them to stop, but the car kept going.

  In the back seat, Rena was sobbing, desperately worried about leaving her children behind. She turned to her friends, wailing, ‘But something might happen to them!’

  6

  THE MURDER OF ANNA McFALL

  The true nature of Anna McFall’s relationship with Fred was revealed in the letters she sent home to her mother in Glasgow. ‘Anna was infatuated,’ says her friend Isa McNeill, who read the correspondence. Anna’s affection was founded on the belief that Fred, who was eight years her senior, could give her a new life away from Glasgow. Fred encouraged these hopes, and although she stayed at the caravan as the children’s ‘nanny’, Anna soon became his lover. She wrote to her mother that she and Fred had moved out of the caravan into a beautiful house, that they were doing well financially and planning to marry. This was all fantasy; they were still struggling to make ends meet in the caravan.

  She tried to care for the children, taking them out on trips – including visits to Walter and Daisy West in Much Marcle – but Anna was only sixteen and not experienced enough to look after the girls properly. Fred placed both Charmaine and Anna Marie into the custody of Gloucestershire social services. They would be in and out of foster homes several times over the next five years, being sent away whenever Fred felt he could not look after them, or simply did not want them around.

  Rena was attempting to make a new life for herself back in Glasgow, but was unhappy without her children. She and Isa rented a flat together in Arden Street, Maryhill, and Rena found a job as a bus conductress, working in the same depot as John McLachlan. She went out with many of the depot workers and soon gained a reputation for promiscuity.

  During the summer of 1966 Rena gathered enough courage to confront Fred again and come back to England to reclaim her children. Before leaving Glasgow, she asked friends, including Isa McNeill, to accompany her for moral support – but Isa was about to get married to John Trotter, who had helped rescue them from the caravan, and said she could not leave Scotland.

  When Rena arrived back in Gloucestershire she discovered that Fred was conducting a relationship with Anna McFall. Rena took back Charmaine and Anna Marie and went to lodge on the Watersmead caravan site in the village of Brockworth, outside Gloucester. But even though she was reunited with her children, Rena was jealous of Fred and Anna; Fred was also uneasy that Rena had found out about the affair. Strangely, although both Rena and Fred had many affairs and Fred fathered at least two children by other w
omen during their marriage, they always tried to keep their liaisons secret from one another. They had learned that the truth inevitably caused trouble.

  Rena was so angry with her former friend that she spitefully stole some of Anna’s belongings. Rena went on to commit other thefts and, on 11 October, stole an iron, some cigarettes and cash from another woman. The theft was reported and Rena hastily returned to Scotland hoping to evade the police, but was arrested there in November.

  Gloucestershire police sent a young WPC named Hazel Savage to collect Rena from Glasgow airport and bring her back to Britain for trial. On the flight south Rena chatted readily to Hazel, who was a sympathetic listener. Rena demonstrated a strong dislike of her husband, saying he was having an affair and that she had committed the thefts ‘in spite’. The meeting was the beginning of Hazel Savage’s long involvement in the life of Fred West and his extended family: it culminated twenty-eight years later in 1994 when, as a Detective Constable, she fought to convince senior officers to excavate the back garden of 25 Cromwell Street.

  Back in Gloucester, on 29 November 1966, Rena was convicted of house-breaking and stealing. Her defence counsel, John McNaught, pleaded for leniency, saying, ‘This offence was the action of a jealous woman. If she goes to prison, her children must go into care.’ Fred gave evidence, admitting to the court, rather guiltily, that he was still living with Anna, but that he intended to pay her fare back to Scotland immediately. Rena was put on probation for three years.

  Following the trial, Anna moved to the Timberlands caravan park in Brockworth. Meanwhile, Rena came back and forth to Gloucestershire. She sometimes stayed with Fred, and sometimes lived on her own at the Watersmead site. Juggling relationships with Rena and Anna McFall was becoming overwhelmingly difficult for Fred to cope with.

  It is likely that Fred was involved in crimes committed during this period that have never been solved. There were a number of attacks on women at this time, and other mysterious events, that are of particular interest and have been looked at by detectives working on the murder inquiry. Eight violent sex assaults were committed on young women in the Gloucestershire area between December 1965 and January 1967 by men fitting Fred’s description. These include a girl in Cheltenham who was struck on the head when walking near her home, a fifteen-year-old who was grabbed in Gloucester and a nurse who had her jaw broken during an attack.

  Also, a fifteen-year-old boy named Robin Holt died in bizarre circumstances during this period. Fred became friendly with Robin at the Wingate factory plant in Gloucester. The factory built farm machinery and had a large order in 1967/68, which meant that a number of extra men, including Fred, were hired as casual labourers. Robin, an amiable young boy who worked at the plant, also knew Anna McFall. On 20 February 1967, Robin failed to return to his home on the outskirts of Gloucester. The next day he was seen in Much Marcle. Nine days later Robin’s half-naked body was found hanged in a disused cow-shed on a farm near his home. On a manger next to his body were pornographic magazines; nooses had been drawn on the necks of the models. The verdict of the inquest was that the boy had committed suicide. In 1994, police working on the West case became interested in Robin’s death, but could not establish a definite link.

  By the spring of 1967 Anna McFall had become pregnant with Fred’s child. She was very excited and wrote to her mother saying how wonderful Fred was; that she loved him and wanted to marry him. At the same time she was still looking after Anna Marie and Charmaine, when they were not in the care of their mother. This situation came to the attention of a probation officer in July of that year, when Anna McFall was six months into her term; the officer wrote a report expressing concern about the situation. It read in part that the officer was ‘extremely worried about these children, who are being looked after by Annie McFall who is expecting Mr West’s baby’. A copy was filed with the social services.

  Although Anna was no longer living full-time with Fred, it seems she was trying to persuade him to divorce Rena and marry her. This was not what Fred wanted. He was particularly concerned about the situation because Rena was living in Gloucestershire intermittently and he did not want her to find out that Anna was having his child. It seems the stress of dealing with these problems became insupportable for Fred, and reached a crisis as Anna’s pregnancy entered its final weeks. Fred probably decided he simply could not allow Anna to have the child: it would give her too strong a claim over him, would cause more problems with Rena, and he could not afford to support another baby.

  Anna McFall was last seen in July 1967. She went missing from the Timberlands caravan site, where she had been living on her own for some time.

  During police interviews in 1994, Fred denied he had murdered the girl he called his ‘angel’ (even though he knew where she was buried), and there has been a suggestion that he was not responsible for her death at all, and that Rena and another person killed her. However, Fred did discuss Anna’s murder in private prison visits and it seems more likely than not that he was responsible. It is not known for certain where Fred committed the crime, but he later told one prison visitor that he had killed Anna at her caravan, stabbing her to death after an argument. It is quite possible there was a sexual element involved: when Anna’s remains were finally discovered, there was a long length of dressing gown-type cord wrapped around the wrists and coiled under the rib bones in her grave, and this cord must have been used to restrain her. Perhaps Fred and Anna had been indulging in some form of bondage before she died; perhaps he tied her up so he could take pleasure from torturing her before committing murder. It is even possible that Fred got carried away as they performed a bizarre sex act, and killed Anna by accident.

  Little of any certainty is known about her death. Although it comes first in the story of Fred’s career as a murderer, it was one of the last crimes that he talked to police about, and by then his mental state had degenerated so badly that little of what he said made sense. Forensic examination was among the most difficult in the whole investigation. There are also hardly any witnesses to Anna’s relationship with Fred in the last months before she died.

  What is known is that Fred dismembered Anna’s corpse.

  To cut up a human body requires an enormous physical and mental effort. Dismemberment is not only extraordinarily unpleasant, but physically tiring and technically difficult. The corpse of the pregnant woman would have been heavy and unwieldy, literally a dead weight. It would have oozed large amounts of blood when Fred started cutting. Everything that Fred wore, and any clothes that Anna still had on, would have been sodden with blood (a round-necked, long-sleeved cardigan, coloured blue and black, was later found within two clear plastic bags in Anna’s grave. There were also various pieces of blue and floral-patterned material, including a large sheet, or curtain). Human remains would have covered the floor, making it slippery. Blood may have got on the walls. For all these reasons, Fred must have carried out the dismemberment at a place where he felt confident he would not be disturbed – probably inside his own caravan. He would also have needed tools, several different knives, and facilities to wash himself, clear up the mess, and change his clothes afterwards.

  Fred probably worked on the body for at least half an hour, but could have taken very much longer. It seems that he enjoyed the process; it was like performing an operation. Fred did not hack at Anna’s body like a madman, but carefully disarticulated her limbs using the skills he had observed working for the abattoir.

  The main task would have been the removal of Anna’s legs. Fine knife marks found on the femur bones of her skeletal remains show that Fred mostly used a sharp, delicate blade for this.

  He later said that he cut up his victims so that it would be easier to bury them. He explained that he only needed to dig a relatively small, square hole for a dismembered body, whereas an intact corpse would necessitate him digging a coffin-length grave, and would consequently involve far more work.

  But this explanation does not tally with the mystery of the miss
ing bones. When Anna McFall’s remains were eventually discovered, a considerable number of small hand and foot bones, known as phalanges, were absent, as were ankle and wrist bones. It seems that Fred had sliced off Anna’s fingers and toes. Possibly this was to make her body difficult to identify in case the corpse was discovered: there would be no way of taking fingerprints from a body with no fingers. But it is more likely that Fred mutilated, or dehumanised, Anna in this way because it sexually excited him and made him feel powerful. He also wanted a reminder of an act he had greatly enjoyed, so it seems he kept her fingers and toes as trophies.

  When Anna’s remains were finally found, the skeleton of her unborn child was nestling by her side. The foetus may have been cut from her womb; it was not possible to know for sure from the forensic examination of the remains. It is known, however, that Fred had developed a bizarre interest by this time: he claimed to conduct abortions, and there is some evidence to back this up. Fred kept a collection of odd implements that he led friends to believe were used to carry out terminations. These included an oxyacetylene burner, a large knife, bottles of antiseptic and a ten-inch tube with a corkscrew at the end. He boasted to male acquaintances that he offered his services to teenage girls he met in pubs such as the Full Moon in Cheltenham. If anybody knew of a young girl in trouble, said Fred, they should refer them to him. He said he used a garage near the caravan for the work.