by Ray Black
Fred decided he needed to enlarge the cellar of the house and started to demolish the garage to build an extension to the main house. He worked very strange hours on these improvements, sometimes into the early hours of the morning.
Over the next few years their killing and sexual perversions continued with many more bodies buried under the cellar. In the year 1977, Fred decided the upstairs of the house needed to be redesigned to allow for some lodgers. One of these lodgers was eighteen-year-old Shirley Robinson, a former prostitute who had bisexual inclinations. Shirley had relationships with both Fred and Rose and she eventually fell pregnant with Fred’s child. At the same time Rose had fallen pregnant to one of her black clients. Fred was delighted that Rose was carrying a child of mixed-race, but Rose was not happy that Shirley was having Fred’s baby. Shirley very foolishly thought she could take Rose’s place in Fred’s life, but the three of them together did not work and Rose had Fred murder the very pregnant woman.
The cellar was by this time full and Fred had to bury Shirley in the garden. After he had killed and dismembered the body, Fred removed the unborn baby and then buried it alongside its mother.
In November 1978, Rose and Fred had another daughter, Louise, which made a total of six all living in the House of Horrors. It was a very unsavoury existence for children, and especially as Fred was already incestuous with his eldest girls. The children were aware of some of the things that were happening in the house, they knew that Rose was a prostitute and that Anna Marie was being raped by her father. When Anna Marie eventually moved away from home to live with her boyfriend, Fred turned his attentions to Heather and Mae and if Heather resisted her fathers advances she would be beaten into submission.
In June 1980, Rose gave birth to Barry, their second son. Then again, in April 1982, Rosemary junior was born, but she was not Fred’s daughter. In July 1983, she gave birth to another half-black child who they named Lucyanna, just like Tara and Rosemary junior. The stress of so many children was certainly taking its toll on Rosemary and she regularly lost control of her temper, taking it out on her offspring. In 1986, Heather broke the code of silence and told her girlfriend about her father’s advances, her mother’s prostitution, and about the regular beatings she received. Her friend in turn told her parents, who happened to be friends of the Wests, and this put poor Heather’s life in jeopardy. She was murdered along with all the other victims, and then her mutilated body was buried in the back garden.
THEIR LUCK RAN OUT
Rose’s prostitution business was built up by putting advertisements in pornographic magazines. They were always on the lookout for women who were prepared to participate in their bizarre and perverse sexual activities. But the Wests’ run of luck was about to run out. One of the young girls that Fred had raped with the assistance of Rose, had told a girlfriend what had happened. The girlfriend subsequently went to the police and the case was given to an experienced Detective Constable named Hazel Savage. Hazel knew Fred from old when he was married to Rena, and had learned from his ex-wife all about his perverse sexual preferences. On August 6, 1992, the police arrived at 25 Cromwell Street with a search warrant to look for pornographic material and any evidence of child abuse. They found far more pornographic literature than they expected and they arrested Rose for assisting in the rape and Fred for the rape and sodomy of a minor.
Hazel started a full-scale investigation and was more and more disturbed when she heard about the disappearance of Charmaine, Rena and Heather. The younger children were taken away from Rose and put into care, and with her beloved Fred in jail Rose attempted suicide by taking an overdose. Her son, Stephen, found her and managed to save her life. Fred, meanwhile, was not doing much better in jail. He was feeling depressed and very sorry for himself, until, that is, the case against the Wests was dropped. Two of the key witnesses were not prepared to testify against them, but Hazel Savage was not prepared to leave it there. Were the rumours true that perhaps their missing children were buried under the patio at 25 Cromwell Road?
Finally the police managed to get a search warrant and they started the unenviable task of digging up the garden at number 25. To make it even harder Fred had already built an extension over part of the garden, so it was going to be a very long and expensive search. Things started to go better for the investigation after Fred confessed to killing his daughter. Meanwhile back at the excavations they were starting to uncover bones that were other than the Wests’ missing children, and they started to realise the enormity of the crime.
As Fred started talking freely about his murders, the police had the difficult job of trying to piece together the evidence. Lining up the various bodies with the names was not an easy task. More bones were discovered in the cellar, and Fred was not much use to them because he couldn’t remember the names of the women that they had picked up. To protect Rose, Fred claimed full responsibility for the murders himself, and as the case developed Rose distanced herself from Fred to save herself. She tried to say that she was the victim of a murderous man, however, the police were not very convinced.
As Fred continued to co-operate with the police telling them of his burial places, the bodies of Rena, Anna McFall and Charmaine were discovered.
When they attended their joint hearing, Rose continued to reject Fred, telling the police that he made her sick. It appeared at last the great criminal partnership was over. Fred was totally devastated by Rose’s rejection and on December 13, 1994, he was charged with twelve murders.
It was just before noon on New Year’s Day at Winson Green Prison in Birmingham, that Fred ended his life by hanging himself with strips of bed linen.
Rose went on trial on October 3, 1995, and several witnesses testified to her sadistic sexual assaults on young women. The jury did not take very long to find Rose guilty of the murders of Charmaine, Heather, Shirley Robinson and the other girls buried at the house. She was sentenced to life imprisonment on each of the ten counts of murder. And then the House of Horrors was demolished.
Fred and Rosemary were perfect partners in crime. Their combined obsession with sex made a lethal combination. It has been suggested that perhaps they were working for a witches’ coven because they use human digits as sacrifices, but there is no real evidence to back up this theory. Again, but it is only supposition, that perhaps it was Rosemary who was the driving force behind the team, but in my eyes I think they were both just as evil, and goaded each other into their evil acts.
The Papin Sisters
Surely something had gone terribly wrong, these were not hardened criminals, these were not even psychopaths. They were two ordinary housemaids. So what on earth had driven them to hack their employers to death?
The date was February 2, 1933, and the place was the town of Le Mans, in France. Two respectable, middle-class women, a mother and daughter, had been brutally murdered by their maids. The maids were sisters, Christine and Lea Papin. Christine was twenty-eight and Lea only twenty-one, and they lived in the same house as their employers Madame and Monsieur Lancelin, and their daughter Geneviève.
Monsieur René Lancelin was an attorney who had been away on business all day. He had arranged to meet his wife and daughter for dinner at the home of a friend, but when they didn’t turn up he was concerned and returned home. When he arrived there the front door was locked and the house in darkness with the exception of a faint light coming from the maids’ room upstairs. Monsieur Lancelin was unable to get into his house and so he called the police.
When the police entered the house the ground floor was empty, but on the first floor landing lay stretched out on the floor the frighteningly mutilated bodies of both Madame and Mademoiselle Lancelin. The body of Geneviève was laying face downwards with her coat pulled and and her knickers around her ankles. There were deep wounds on her buttocks and multiple cuts on the calves. Her mother’s body was lying on its back. The eyes had been gouged out, her mouth was no longer visible and all her teeth had been knocked out. The full force of th
e attack seemed to have been directed at their heads and the victims were left literally unrecognizable.
The surrounding walls and doors were covered with splashes of blood to a height of more than seven feet which showed the height of frenzy of the attack. Surrounding the bodies were fragments of bone and teeth, one eye, some hair pins, a handbag, a key ring, an untied parcel, numerous bits of porcelain and a coat button. There were even more gruesome discoveries in the kitchen. A knife covered in blood, a damaged pewter pot and lid, and a blood-stained hammer. But the maids were nowhere to be found.
Added to this bizarre and horrifying scene, is the fact that the two maids had made no attempt to escape and were found huddled together in bed, naked. This added even more dimension to the weird case – were the maids having an incestual sexual relationship?
The two sisters, Christine and Lea, became famous overnight. The public were incensed by the brutality of the attack, while the tabloids started calling them colourful names like ‘Monsters of Le Mans’ and ‘The Lambs Who Became Wolves and the Raging Sheep’. The name Papin became infamous throughout the land.
TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE CRIME
What was so hard to understand was how two sisters with such a reserved demeanour could resort to such an horrific crime. They had worked for their employers for seven years and had always been quiet, hard working and very well behaved. They had no criminal record and at no time had their employers had cause for complaint. They always spent their spare time together, appeared to have no vices, and were both regular church-goers. And yet, seemingly overnight, these two honest, industrious and righteous young women had turned into monsters. It just didn’t make any sense.
While most of the French population wanted to lynch the Papin sisters, others were intrigued to find out exactly what had happened. There was a gap of almost eight months before the trial, and so there was plenty of time for both speculation and fact finding. Psychoanalysts were called in to see what lay beneath the calm exterior of these two young maids. During their time in jail waiting for the trial, the eldest sister, Christine, spent much of her time crying out for Lea. She begged to be reunited with her sister and rolled around on the floor in sudden outbursts of sexual frenzy using sexually explicit language at the same time. She also used to experience hallucinations and visions, and during one such attack even attempted to gouge her own eyes out and had to be placed in a straightjacket.
For her part Christine tried to take the whole blame for the murders, saying that Lea took no part. She said that she had committed the acts during a kind of ‘fit’ which had come over her. But this theory was dismissed as just a sister’s love trying to set the other one free, and anyway Lea had already admitted to taking part.
THE TRIAL
The trial started in September 1933 and was by now of national interest. It was attended by vast numbers of the public and press. The police had to be called in to control the crowds outside the packed court; and on several occasions the Judge had to threaten to clear the court when the crowd went out of control. The girls both denied any form of sexual relationship, but never made any attempt at denying the murders.
They were found guilty and Christine was sentenced to death on the guillotine. Lea was sentenced to ten years hard labour as they felt that Geneviève had been killed prior to the younger sister taking part. The jury also felt that Lea had been totally dominated by the very overpowering Christine. Christine’s sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment, which was the normal procedure in the case of women.
Christine’s condition deteriorated rapidly after the sentencing, and she became profoundly depressed at being separated from her beloved Lea. She refused to eat and was eventually transferred to an asylum in the town of Rennes. She never improved and she died in 1937, the official cause of death was cachexie, which means wasting away.
On the contrary, Lea continued to be her normal, quiet, mild-mannered self and was released after eight years for good behaviour. Lea settled in the town of Nantes, south of Rennes, with her mother, Clemence. Lea worked as a chambermaid, using the name of Marie. As of December 2000, Lea Papin was said to be still alive in a hospice somewhere in France. She was half paralyzed and unable to speak as a result of a stroke, and would have been eighty-nine years old. Although this has never been confirmed, there has been no further news since that time.
PSYCHOANALYSIS
The Papin case is as much a psychological one as a criminal one, and it has already been said that psychoanalysts had a field day with the sisters while they were waiting to come up for trial. In the modern day, Christine Papin would definitely have been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. In the 1930s there would have been no effective medical treatment for her condition, but these days would probably have been treated with major tranquillizers and had a much better quality of life.
However, her sister Lea showed no signs of being psychotic and there is no reason to believe otherwise. She always appeared to be timid, a little anxious and rather prone to panic attacks, and may have suffered from a few anxiety disorders. She was definitely dominated by her sister and this may have been due to her rather low intelligence. Doctors who testified at the trial said that they felt Lea’s personality had completely disappeared into Christine’s own personality, so Lea’s tragedy was that she was so overpowered by her elder sister. It is felt that if she had been separated from Christine at an earlier stage she would undoubtedly have led a much happier, and trouble-free life.
If we take a look at their family history, perhaps it will explain why the sisters had major problems. Their paternal grandfather was given to violent outbursts of temper and also suffered from epileptic fits. Other relatives had either been committed to asylums or taken their own lives. Their father, Gustave Papin, had had a severe drinking problem and was known to have raped their sister Emilia when she was only nine years old. It was this rape that had caused the rift in their parents’ marriage, ending in divorce. Christine and Emilia were sent to live in an orphanage at Le Mans for several years, while Lea was looked after by an uncle until he died. Then she too was placed in an orphanage until she became of an age where she could work. Their mother had always paid them regular visits, but it was clear that there was some friction between her and Christine. About two years before the murders, there was a complete rift in the relationship between the girls and their mother, which was apparently caused over disagreements regarding money. Over the years their mother wrote trying to patch up their differences, but the letters were always ignored.
It seems that the one constant thing in the girls’ lives was their devotion for one another. They always tried to work in the same place which was why they both ended up in the Lancelin household in 1926. It was Christine who started to work there first and then she persuaded her employers to take on her sister. Christine was employed as a cook and Lea as a chambermaid, and they shared a room on the top floor of the house. They went to church every Sunday but apart from that the girls seemed to have no other interests.
The girls seemingly shared a paranoid disorder, as the French would call it folie a deux, literally translated as ‘madness in pairs’. This is a condition that occurs in small groups or pairs who become isolated from the outside world but who have a paranoid view of what it is like. It is also typical of this disorder that one partner dominates the other, and of this the Papin sisters were a perfect example.
Apparently, leading up to the months before the murders, Christine had become increasingly agitated and even manic in her behaviour. She gradually got worse until on the evening of February 2, 1933, her madness finally took the form of violence. She attacked the mother first and then the daughter, gouging at her face with her fingers like a woman possessed. At some stage during this outburst Lea joined in and they continued the attack with a hammer, a knife and a pewter pot. The killing frenzy appears to have lasted for around thirty minutes, at the end of which time the victims were beyond recognition. Then the sisters washed the blood
from themselves, retreated to their room, took their clothes off and climbed into bed and waited to be discovered.
David And Catherine Birnie
No one would have believed that this couple could be capable of multiple murders. It was only when their murderous campaign was uncovered did people really know the truth about Mr. and Mrs. Birnie.
The last story in this book takes us back to Australia. Killer couples were very rare, but the typical folie à deux has now become quite a common type of murder. Since the Birnie murders there have been several husband and wife teams, for example Fred and Rose West in England, and their case history was discussed earlier in this section. With couple killers, that is a man/woman team, the woman was always used to lure the victims to their death. Hitchhikers would gladly accept lifts from a friendly looking couple, feeling safe in the knowledge that there was a woman in the car. Unfortunately, women like Catherine Birnie are different from most women, and they loved to join in with the rape, torture and eventual killing of their victims. In most cases the capture of the couple is the undoing of their relationship, but this was no to be in the case of David and Catherine. Even to this day, although they are separated by law, they are still soulmates, they still love each other, and perhaps the most loyal act was the fact they never once tried to blame one another.
HOW THEY MET
Catherine and David had known one another since childhood, and at one time their families had lived next door to each other. David Birnie was born in 1951 in Wattle Grove and was the eldest of five children. His parents were both alcoholics and over the years one by one the children were taken away and put into foster care. David was a sickly child and was always being picked on at school. David left school at the age of fourteen and went to work as an apprentice jockey. Being of short stature the job suited him well, but he was sacked when he was caught stealing from his boss.
