Fred & Rose

by Howard Sounes

  And more, 100 more,

  Mr and Mrs West for ever

  Again Fred writes as if they are husband and wife, although they would not marry for some time.

  Rose wrote another letter to her ‘husband’ on 22 May, putting ‘FROM NOW UNTILL FOR EVER’ with a heart across the top of the note, which read:

  To My Dearest Lover,

  Darling, I am sorry I upset you in my previous letters I didn’t mean it (NO joking). I know you love me darling. It just seems queer that anyone should think so much of me. I LOVE you. Love I don’t mind what you make me, because I know it will turn out beautifull. Darling I would like to get a horse for our caravan & put it in a showcase. We’ve got a lot of things to do darling in the next couple of years. And we’ll do it just loving each other. Well Love, see you on the 31st, Better not write to much incase I go putting my big foot in it. (Ha! Ha!) Sending all my love & heart your worshipping wife,

  Rose

  Then there are a number of crosses representing kisses, and:

  PS. Love I’ve got the wireless on and it’s playing some lovly romantic music. Oh! how I wish you were hear beside me. Still remembering your love & warmth, Rose

  Rose, Anna Marie and Charmaine made another visit to the prison on 15 June, and Fred told Rose excitedly that he might be granted parole in a few days.

  It was on a day shortly after this visit, while Fred was still in prison, that Charmaine went missing. The girls usually walked to St James’ Junior School together, but one morning Charmaine was kept back by Rose. While Anna Marie was at her lessons, Rose murdered Charmaine in that squalid little flat in Midland Road.

  Rose has never said what she did that day, but the explanation is not difficult to imagine: it seems likely that she finally lost her temper with the spirited but sad eight-year-old girl who wet the bed at night and dreamed of being rescued by her real mother, the girl whom Rose could not wait to get rid of and who had already been to hospital with a curious injury. It seems likely that she lost her temper, and either battered or stabbed to death the child who Rose believed liked to be ‘handled rough’.

  After the murder, Rose began to face questions about what had happened to Charmaine, questions which would be asked again and again until they were ultimately asked in a Crown Court. They started that very day, when Anna Marie returned home from school and wanted to know where her half-sister was. Rose already had the story prepared, the same story she would doggedly tell friends, neighbours, family and the police for the next twenty-four years. She told Anna Marie that, while she was at school, Charmaine’s real mother, Rena, had come to the house and taken Charmaine away to live with her in Bristol. Anna Marie was pleased for her half-sister, because she knew she had wanted to go back to her real mother and thought that maybe the ‘smacking and hitting would stop now and Charmaine [would be] happy’.

  A variation on this rather flimsy story was also sufficient for Charmaine’s school. St James’ was informed, probably by Rose herself, that Charmaine had left the area to live with her real mother – but the school did not check that this was true. In the school register, the reason for Charmaine having left was given as ‘moved to London’.

  Amazingly, under a system still in effect to this day, schools have no obligation to verify that a child leaving their care has arrived safely in a new area and been properly registered at a new school. St James’, like all state schools then and now, simply waited for the child’s new Head to write requesting the file. If nothing is heard, the file, including the child’s attendance register, is kept for the statutory three years and then destroyed. This is exactly what happened in the case of Charmaine.

  Easter brought more awkward enquiries, and some awkward visitors. Rose was not pleased to see her former neighbours Shirley and Tracey Giles smiling in the doorway of her flat one day. They had dropped by because Tracey was missing her ‘first best friend’ Charmaine so much. Could they see her, if it was not inconvenient? Rose told Tracey coldly that no, it was not convenient, because Charmaine had ‘gone to live with her mother and bloody good riddance!’ Tracey was so upset by the news that she sat down on the hall stairs and cried. Anna Marie comforted Tracey, while Mrs Giles spoke to Rose. She discovered that Fred was still in prison, and asked if he could make her a caravan like the model Rose had displayed in the living room.

  Fred was released from prison on 24 June. One of the first pieces of news Rose gave him was that she had murdered Charmaine. There is no evidence that Fred was angry with her; after all, Charmaine was no blood relation of his – she was only the child of his estranged wife, fathered by another man. He had never liked Charmaine, and besides, Fred had committed murder too, so he was reconciled to the idea of killing as an expediency. It is likely that Fred told Rose about his other crimes at this time, explaining that he had killed Anna McFall because she was a threat to him, and possibly telling her about the other girls, such as Mary Bastholm.

  Now both Fred and Rose knew terrible secrets about each other. Sharing those secrets brought them closer together, because provided they covered up for one another, they knew they would be safe from justice. It was a pact made in blood, more binding than any marriage ceremony, and one which would keep them together for over twenty years.

  But first they had to dispose of the body. Rose led Fred down to the cellar, where she had kept Charmaine’s body dumped among piles of coal. He carried the corpse of his stepdaughter up the stairs and dug a grave for her in the yard near the back door of the flat, similar in size and shape to the one he had dug in Finger Post Field for Anna McFall. He laid Charmaine on her back in the pit with her arms stretched out. After his arrest in 1994, Fred told police that he could not bring himself to dismember Charmaine because she was so ‘young and pure’ – it would not have been an easy job in any event, now that rigor mortis had set in. Yet he may still have cut up this tiny child.

  When the Home Office pathologist Professor Bernard Knight came to reassemble Charmaine’s bones in the mortuary of Cardiff Royal Infirmary in 1994, he was faced with a considerable problem. The skeleton had collapsed inwards, leading him to believe that her grave may have been disturbed by building work in years past. (Some time after Fred and Rose had left Midland Road, Fred was hired to come back to the house and build an extension for the landlady. He used the opportunity to conceal Charmaine’s remains further, under the foundations of what became a new kitchen.) When Professor Knight attempted to place the bones of her skeleton in the correct order, many were unaccounted for, just as in the case of Anna McFall. Small finger and toe bones, in particular, were missing, as were her patellae, or kneecaps – an odd detail which would be repeated in later crimes. Parts of her wrists and ankles were also absent. It is possible that Fred had removed these body parts for a special purpose, even though Charmaine’s corpse must have been stiff by the time he set to work. It is also possible that Fred had cut Charmaine’s legs off at the hip.

  Despite their pact of silence, Rose began to feel the strain of her crime as people continued to ask after Charmaine. The pressure became too much for Rose and she decided to leave Fred – one of only two occasions on which they ever separated.

  She picked up baby Heather, walked out of Midland Road and travelled to Bishop’s Cleeve, a difficult journey for a young mother with a baby in her arms, involving catching two buses. When she arrived at 96 Tobyfield Road, Rose told her father that she was finished with Fred and wanted to come home. But Bill was still angry that she had ignored his orders in the first place – he told her she had ‘made her bed’ and now must lie in it.

  Later that same day, Fred appeared at the back door. In his excited way, he beckoned to Rose and repeated the same coaxing sentence: ‘Come on, Rosie, you know what we’ve got between us.’ He also added that unless Rose came back within ten minutes her place in his bed would be occupied by another woman. This seemed to unnerve Rose. When he stopped talking, she spoke to her parents with a passion and self-possession that was entirely new. Pointi
ng to Fred, she declared, ‘You don’t know him! You don’t know him! There’s nothing he wouldn’t do – even murder.’

  Having revealed the truth, and fundamental secret, of their relationship, Rose allowed her lover to lead her away from the house. She had tried to escape, but it was no use.

  When she had gone, Bill and Daisy discussed what Rose had said and decided that she was simply ‘highly-strung’ – a woeful misunderstanding of the situation. Rose had turned to her father for sanctuary and forgiveness, but he had failed her dismally, as he had all her life.

  9

  CROMWELL STREET

  The man on top was West Indian and the woman was white, very young with wavy brown hair and large breasts. She urged her lover on until he reached a bellowing climax; then they fell back and relaxed on the bed. Rose turned to face the wall of her shabby room, focusing on a detail in the pattern of the paper. There was a quick movement, something like the scuttling of an insect. It was perceptible to Rose only because she knew what it was: the blink of a startling blue eye, Fred’s eye, leering at her through a spy-hole in the wall.

  Rose regularly entertained men at their flat in Midland Road in this way, and Fred derived great pleasure from watching her, only complaining if he thought she had not been enthusiastic enough with the customers. He liked her to yell out and scream her enjoyment. If she had sex with a man while he was out, Rose had to tell Fred about it when he returned. Voyeurism stimulated him far more than the act itself.

  He referred to sex with Rose as ‘going off to bunny-land’, because rabbits ‘did it all the time’ and their couplings were bestial. They had sex almost every day – brief episodes in which Fred penetrated Rose for a few moments and then ejaculated.

  Normal sex did not stimulate him greatly. He only became truly aroused if a fetish was involved, like bondage, defecation or sadism. He was excited by Rose’s developing interest in lesbian sex and threesomes, where he would usually be happy to watch. Fred also liked to use a vibrator on Rose, and was extremely excited either by being tied up himself, or by tying her up. It was bondage, above all else, that turned him on.

  On the other hand, however, there were certain ordinary activities in which he would not take part. Rose often complained that there was never any foreplay with Fred – he just mounted her and came. Also, he flatly refused to perform cunnilingus and was squeamish about her period.

  Many of Rose’s customers were from Gloucester’s large West Indian population. Thousands of Caribbean islanders had settled in Gloucester in the 1950s and early 1960s, tempted by advertisements for work placed by the British government. A typical advertisement in Jamaica’s Daily Gleaner enthusiastically invited ‘Come to England!’, and went on to promise good jobs and homes. The reality was very different. Many found Gloucester a hostile city where life was depressingly hard. There was a deep prejudice against blacks and an unofficial colour bar preventing them from finding work, renting homes or even drinking in the pubs. ‘For Sale’ boards on houses sometimes had the words NO BLACKS added.

  One of the few landlords to welcome the West Indians was Frank Zygmunt, the owner of 25 Midland Road, who was himself an immigrant from Eastern Europe. And one of the few English families to make friends with the new arrivals were the Wests, who often had coloured men as guests in their home.

  In fact, Fred’s closest friends were Jamaicans: he trusted and respected them more than white men. One such friend was Ronalzo Harrison, a house painter, who came to Britain from Jamaica in 1958 at the age of twenty-two. They met when Fred carried out some repairs on Ronalzo’s car, and went on to work together on building sites, often borrowing tools from each other and helping with home improvements. The bond between them was strengthened because Heather West and Ronalzo’s daughter, Denise, had both been born in the same month at the same hospital and were growing up together.

  Fred had much in common with the immigrants. He was a countryman from a little village in Herefordshire, and therefore an outsider in the city. Fred’s neighbours and colleagues often laughed at him, calling him a ‘country bumpkin’, just as they mocked the blacks, thinking them slow-witted. As Ronalzo puts it, ‘Fred was different to Gloucester people.’ Also, like many of the immigrants, Fred had limited reading and writing skills. He did not like paperwork and always preferred to be paid in cash. Fear of being conned was an insecurity which Fred shared with many West Indians.

  Rose liked West Indians for a different reason. She was sexually excited by coloured men and considered them to be the best lovers. Many of her customers were coloured, and these were the encounters that Fred most enjoyed spying on through the hole in the bedroom wall.

  After Fred had disposed of Charmaine’s body and settled back into a domestic routine with Rose, he turned his attention to the problem of his wife. Rena was becoming an intolerable threat to his well-being because of her natural desire to see her eldest daughter. She had always worried about Fred mistreating the girl, and had kept in touch with Midland Road in case anything was wrong. It is therefore probable that Rena quickly found out that Charmaine was missing. This must have alarmed her and caused her to ask Fred and Rose questions about Charmaine’s whereabouts. It was, of course, of the utmost importance that Rena did not discover the truth: that her daughter was in fact dead and buried behind the back door of the flat.

  The air was scented with the smell of cut hay when Rena knocked at the front door of Moorcourt Cottage in August 1971. She was met by the jolly figure of Christine West, who had recently married Fred’s youngest brother, Doug, and who was now living at home in Much Marcle with her husband and father-in-law. Christine had her baby son, Christopher, with her – he had been born the previous year – and was pregnant with her second child, due the following January.

  It was very unusual for Rena to turn up unexpectedly at Moorcourt Cottage; indeed, Christine had never met Fred’s wife before, understanding them to be separated. Rena explained to her sister-in-law that she was looking for Walter. It was harvest time, and the old man had been down at Moorcourt Farm since dawn, helping to bring in the corn. He would not be back home until the evening. Rena said she would go down and see him at work, but did not explain what she wanted to talk about. Later on that day she came back to the cottage, and, because she had helped with the harvest, had a bath before leaving again. Neither Rena nor Walter offered any explanation for the meeting, or what she had wanted, but it is likely that she asked Walter if he knew where Charmaine was. It is an indication of her extreme anxiety and desperation that she turned to Fred’s father for help: after all, she hardly knew him.

  Some time later, in an apparent attempt to placate her, Fred agreed to take Rena to see Charmaine. She got into his car expecting to be reunited with her daughter. But first Fred took her to a pub, where he made sure she got staggering drunk. Then, when she was incapable of resisting, he strangled her to death.

  It is not known exactly where Fred murdered Rena, but he probably killed her in the car, while she was helplessly intoxicated. Strangulation was the most likely cause of death; it was also an aspect of sadistic sex that excited him. He may have constricted her breathing by inserting a pipe in her throat: a short length of narrow chromium tubing was later found with her remains, together with a child’s toy – a small red plastic boomerang. It is also possible that both these items were used to abuse Rena’s body in other ways. Eventually she died. Fred then wanted to dismember her body, just as he had Anna McFall’s. To do this, and to be able to enjoy it, Fred needed a place where he would not be disturbed, a place where he could take his time, wash afterwards and change his clothes.

  Fred probably took Rena back to 25 Midland Road, where he could make as much mess as he wished. He cut up Rena’s body carefully, exactly like Anna McFall: disarticulating her legs at the hip, removing her left kneecap and a total of thirty-five finger and toe bones. When Fred had finished, he put her remains into bags and put the bags into the car.

  Late at night, Fred drove out toward
s Moorcourt Cottage. He stopped the car a few hundred yards away by Letterbox Field, so-called because a red mailbox is attached to the fence. Fred was near to the spot where he had crashed his motorcycle into Pat Manns when he was a teenager, and next to Finger Post Field, where he had buried the remains of Anna McFall. Letterbox Field is on a slight hill, so Fred could see the lights of Much Marcle in the distance, and, with the engine switched off, could hear crickets chirruping in the fields.

  Once he had negotiated the five-bar gate, Letterbox Field rose up ahead of him in the gloom. He struggled a little under the weight of the sacks containing Rena’s remains as he climbed towards a cluster of trees known as Yewtree Coppice. He chose a spot next to the hedgerow, where he felt he would not be disturbed, and dug a deep pit, placing sections of her corpse into it together with pieces of her clothing. He then refilled it and crept back to the car.

  In the months following Rena’s death, nobody reported her to the police as a missing person, and, just like Anna McFall, there is no record of anyone looking for her – not even health visitors, who should have known about Rena and checked on her welfare, because of her children being fostered and the struggles she had experienced with Fred in trying to get them back. It might also be expected that Rena would have appeared on the ‘At Risk’ register, if only because of her criminal history. Yet her disappearance, if noted at all, was never seriously investigated at the time.

  Fred had got away with another extraordinary crime.

  In November 1971 a young mother named Elizabeth Agius moved into a flat at 24 Midland Road, the house adjacent to Fred and Rose. Elizabeth Agius was married to a Maltese man, but was bringing up their child on her own. Fred first saw this pretty young woman as she struggled to get a pushchair up the steps to her flat next door. He gallantly offered to help, and had soon charmed her into coming in to meet Rose and have some tea, adding, ‘My name’s Fred.’