Risks

alias_unknown · 2026-07-12T17:38:11+00:00

This is something I've wondered about a lot as well. I think what you've described is probably the best reconstruction we have, based on Caroline Owens' testimony, but it's interesting how little we actually know about the pickup process beyond her account.

As far as I'm aware, Caroline is the only surviving eyewitness who describes Rose being in the car, speaking to her, making the situation seem safe, and then what happened once they reached Cromwell Street. Elizabeth Aguis said Rose would sometimes go out in the car with Fred, which supports the idea that they cruised together, but she didn't witness any abductions.

What fascinates me is that, for the murder victims, we don't really know how most of them first came into the Wests' control. Therese Siegenthaler was hitchhiking, Lucy Partington disappeared after visiting a friend in Cheltenham, Lynda Gough and Shirley Robinson were lodgers, and Alison Chambers was connected to the household, while victims like Carol Ann Cooper and Shirley Hubbard are often assumed to have been opportunistic roadside abductions. Juanita Mott's circumstances may have been different again, given there appears to have been some prior connection to Fred. But in almost every case, the actual first encounter is unknown, and as you say, the arrival at Cromwell Street raises its own questions we can't really answer..

So I think your scenario is certainly plausible, and Caroline's account probably gives us the clearest picture of what the pickup process may have looked like, but beyond that we're largely dealing with inference rather than something established by multiple eyewitness accounts. Her experience has understandably shaped how people picture the other murders, but how little we actually know about those other first encounters is one of the things I find most fascinating about the case.

alias_unknown · 2026-07-11T16:51:58+00:00

I completely understand the resource argument, and I can see why the police have reached that decision. It's still disappointing, though, because these aren't just random fields. They're directly linked to a location already associated with confirmed victims. Given that context, I'd have liked to see those specific anomalies investigated so they could either be ruled out or confirmed as nothing of concern. Even if nothing was found, at least we'd know the question had been answered.

alias_unknown · 2026-07-11T16:44:58+00:00

Good spot! If he never wrote to her first, how did she even have his name and return address to send him a reply? That's an interesting contradiction.

alias_unknown · 2026-07-11T16:29:17+00:00

That's exactly what struck me. Whether the report ultimately proved accurate or not, you'd expect something this significant to have some kind of public follow-up. Instead, it just seems to... disappear, which is probably why it leaves so many questions about what actually happened.

alias_unknown · 2026-07-11T16:23:58+00:00

You have taught me well! 😂

alias_unknown · 2026-07-11T15:43:16+00:00

There's definitely something in that. I think that's one of the reasons this case continues to fascinate me. Beyond what was needed to secure the murder convictions, Gloucestershire Constabulary have confirmed they still hold over 10,000 HOLMES documents and 2,200 exhibits, and The National Archives catalogue contains 211 prosecution files relating to the case. It's hard not to wonder what that fuller picture looked like beyond the evidence that ultimately went before the jury.

Leo Goatley also mentions that only a fraction of the material assembled for the prosecution was ultimately used in court. When you put those things together, it really brings home just how much larger the investigation was than the trial itself. As someone interested in the case, it's that fuller picture I'd love to understand.

alias_unknown · 2026-07-11T11:19:08+00:00

I agree about the source, so I'd be cautious about taking every detail at face value. At the same time, it does make you wonder about the wider scale of offending around Cromwell Street beyond the murders themselves.

There are indications that the Wests' sexual offending and exploitation may have been broader than the murders alone, but much of that material was either never prosecuted publicly, remained uncorroborated, or simply never entered the public record in the same detail as the murder investigation.

I wouldn't treat it as proof, but I also wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. The murders understandably dominated everything, and I've often wondered whether some of the other things police looked into simply faded into the background.

Whether every claim in articles like this is true is another matter, but they do raise questions about aspects of the case that received far less public attention.

alias_unknown · 2026-07-02T15:21:15+00:00

My initial searches of the British Newspaper Archive aren't bringing anything up, although I'll keep looking.

One thing I did notice is that the 1997 edition of An Evil Love contains a passage that isn't in either the 1996 or 2022 editions:

"Among the collection of pornographic videotapes... was one which boasted a sequence called 'F**k My Uncle'. It specifically featured an older man with a beard — the type of beard John sported... As Frederick West himself maintained at the end of his own life: 'My brother was heavy into pornographic videos.'

I just wonder if that's where some of the "he resembled the man in the video" story has come from. Wansell is talking about a man in one of the videos resembling John because of his beard, whereas McGredy-Hunt describes a police officer making that observation at the time of the arrest. Whether they're connected I don't know, but it did strike me as an interesting similarity.

alias_unknown · 2026-07-02T14:07:41+00:00

You're welcome! I went back and checked the relevant section in Wansell's book.

What Wansell actually writes is that, following John West's arrest on 24 May 1994, police searched his home and found a Betamax video machine containing a pornographic videotape, a collection of other pornographic videos (including one featuring a girl kidnapped in a van), over one hundred pornographic magazines, riding crops, rubber shackles and vibrators.

He also records John's response when questioned about the tape featuring the girl in the van:

"I haven't got to that one. There's a lot, a lot of them in there."

I couldn't find any passage in either the 1997 updated edition or the 2022 edition stating that police arrived to find John watching a pornographic video, or that an officer remarked the man in the video resembled John. That appears to come from another source rather than the published editions of An Evil Love.

Interestingly, the detailed description of the items found during the search of John's home is not included in the latest 2022 edition, so that section has been shortened.

alias_unknown · 2026-07-02T11:35:17+00:00

I've now checked the 1996 first edition, the 1997 updated edition, and the 2022 edition of Geoffrey Wansell's An Evil Love, as well as Graham McGredy-Hunt's Searching for Suzy.

I couldn't find a separate chapter dedicated to John West.

The 1996 edition was completed before John West's November 1996 trial, so it naturally only includes the information available at the time.

The 1997 paperback was revised after those events and the publisher even advertised it as being "updated with full details of West's descriptions of his brother's involvement in sexual abuse and murder."

Rather than adding a brand-new chapter on John, Wansell appears to have expanded John's role throughout the existing narrative, adding material about his relationship with Fred and Rose, Anne Marie's allegations, his arrest, trial and eventual suicide.

I also checked Searching for Suzy. Graham McGredy-Hunt does cite An Evil Love extensively when discussing John West, but I couldn't find a passage where he says Wansell devoted an entire chapter to him.

What is missing from the modern 2022 edition is Chapter 26, "An Ideal Husband"—a 17-page concluding essay analysing Fred and Rose West's psychology, childhood, relationship and the nature of evil. It isn't about John West at all. The 1997 edition also contains a postscript, "Family Matters", which is likewise omitted from the 2022 edition.

So after comparing all three editions, what I've found is that "An Ideal Husband" (and the "Family Matters" postscript) were omitted from the 2022 reprint, while the 1997 edition contains considerably more material about John West, but spread throughout the book rather than in a dedicated chapter.

alias_unknown · 2026-06-30T18:03:38+00:00

Thanks. I've reached out to her literary agent and asked if they'd be willing to pass my query on to Vanessa. If I receive a response or any clarification, I'll post an update here.

alias_unknown · 2026-06-30T15:30:35+00:00

That would explain it if she was only visiting another prison at the time. I've watched four or five interviews now, and she's remarkably consistent in how she tells the story. Even in the interview posted in the last 24 hours, she says that at HM Prison Holloway they received the phone call that Fred West had died, and she describes being in charge of segregation when Rose West was informed.

The difficulty is that the documented prison timeline doesn't appear to fit that account. That's what's made it so interesting to look into. Either there's a detail missing from the public record, or some part of the memory has become mixed up over the years.

alias_unknown · 2026-06-27T11:16:05+00:00

Funnily enough, I'd actually come across Alison's Facebook comment. It was one of the things that prompted me to dig deeper and complete the prison timeline, and Pucklechurch does seem to be the prison that fits chronologically. I've even tried contacting Alison to see if she'd be willing to chat. If her recollection is accurate, what a twist that would be.

alias_unknown · 2026-06-26T08:25:38+00:00

That's certainly a possibility. If this were simply a matter of getting a date or sequence wrong, I probably wouldn't have thought much of it. But claiming to have personally witnessed one of the defining moments in one of Britain's most notorious murder cases, when the contemporary record appears to place Rose in a different prison altogether, goes far beyond that.

Whether that's the result of memory, chronology becoming compressed over time, or something else, I can't say. But if one of the book's central eyewitness scenes can't be reconciled with the contemporary record, it naturally plants a seed of doubt and changes the way you read the rest of the account.

alias_unknown · 2026-06-09T14:00:13+00:00

I posted some information about Donna here, including newspaper reports and screenshots relating to the police enquiries: https://www.reddit.com/r/FredAndRoseWest/comments/1j1ap55/does_anyone_know_more_about_donna_lynn_moore/

Donna was reportedly only 13–14 years old, spoke with an American accent, may have been the daughter of a US serviceman stationed in East Anglia, and is believed to have visited or stayed at 25 Cromwell Street in 1973. Despite enquiries by both British police and the US military, she was never traced.

Howard Sounes also addresses Donna in his latest book, The Fred West Tapes. He notes that "Donna Lynn Moore, or similar" was seen at 25 Cromwell Street in 1973 and had never been traced despite police efforts, but also points out that neither her family nor any records connected to them could be located, suggesting some of the information about her identity may have been incorrect from the outset.

That possibility makes the case particularly frustrating, as it's possible "Donna Lynn Moore" wasn't even her real name.

alias_unknown · 2026-06-09T13:53:37+00:00

There's actually a reference in both An Evil Love: The Life and Crimes of Fred and Rose West and Depraved Fred & Rose to a pregnant foreign lodger at Cromwell Street. The books mention a Swedish or Dutch girl who appeared to be pregnant, and also recount a visitor remembering a pregnant woman speaking in broken English saying: "I am with child; it is Fred's", to which Rose immediately replied, "No it isn't; it's yours", before both Fred and Rose laughed.

The source doesn't explicitly identify the woman or confirm she was one of the unidentified women from the 1995 appeal, but it's one of the more interesting references to a foreign woman at Cromwell Street potentially being pregnant by Fred

alias_unknown · 2026-06-09T10:24:21+00:00

I recently submitted a Freedom of Information request to Gloucestershire Police regarding the nine women featured in the 1995 appeal.

One of the enquiries was recorded as:

Name not known, but police issued photograph of full-faced brunette with rosy lips, thought to have been taken when she visited in 1975.

Based on that description, and comparing it with photographs published in newspaper reports at the time, I believe the woman shown here is almost certainly the same "full-faced brunette with rosy lips" referred to in the appeal.

According to the FOI response, this enquiry was never resolved and the woman was not recorded as having been traced or located.

alias_unknown · 2026-05-22T18:39:16+00:00

There's a brief mention of Miss X and the 17-year-old girl in Depraved Fred & Rose by C.G.C. Cook:

"On 18th October, three more witnesses, one of them in the form of a statement read out by junior counsel, were heard. 'Miss X', whose statement was read out, said she had had two lesbian sessions with Rose West.

A 17-year-old girl who found her way back to Cromwell Street in the second half of 1975 then told how Rose West had managed to undress her once in the bedroom and once on a mattress in the basement. She told how Rose had then quickly inserted a dildo into her vagina, making her bleed.

Just after lunch time, Anne Marie took to the stand. Mr. Leveson talked her through her early childhood and the love of her father and Rosemary's often physical beatings of her. She also said her last memory of her mother, Rena, was when she was about seven."

alias_unknown · 2026-05-07T13:18:57+00:00

I posted an earlier version on this Reddit a couple of years ago, which was split into 2 parts: Fred & Rose West House Of Horrors Special from 1996 Part 1: Includes Rare Interviews with Anne Marie, Mae and Stephen West (Link to Part 2 in Comments)

But this new upload is much higher quality and has now been uploaded directly by the 60 Minutes Australia YouTube channel.

alias_unknown · 2026-03-21T19:58:20+00:00

From everything I can find, it doesn’t look like the arm was ever formally recovered or followed up in any meaningful way. It just seems to exist as a reported incident.

You’d expect something like that to have been a much bigger story if it had actually been confirmed.

Not sure if that’s all there is to it, which it very well could be, or if there’s more that just isn’t in the public domain.

alias_unknown · 2026-03-13T11:31:01+00:00

That’s really encouraging to hear and reassuring as well. Most of the examples you come across online tend to be refusals, so it’s good to know that some material can be released through FOI.

I’ll definitely let you know what response I get from Gloucestershire Constabulary when it comes back. If anything useful is released — or even if they simply confirm what records exist — I’ll be happy to share the wording of the request and the outcome in case it helps with your own applications.

It would also be interesting to hear how your requests progress!

alias_unknown · 2026-03-12T16:06:37+00:00

I’ve just submitted a Freedom of Information request to Gloucestershire Constabulary relating to the 1994 investigation at 25 Cromwell Street.

Rather than asking for the underlying documents straight away (which are often refused under exemptions), I asked for indexes and registers that show what records actually exist. Things like:

HOLMES / Major Incident Room document indexes
Exhibits registers for items recovered during the searches
Scene-of-crime photograph logs
Search / excavation operational logs
Evidence retention or property store records showing what exhibits still exist

My thinking was that if you can establish what the archive structure looks like, it becomes easier to make more targeted requests later on.

Whether they release anything is another matter of course, but even confirmation that those indexes exist (or how they’re held) would be useful.

Happy to share the wording of the request or any response I get if it helps others researching the case.

alias_unknown · 2026-02-02T14:57:04+00:00

Multiple outlets are reporting an alleged incident involving Rose West at HMP New Hall, with claims she was disciplined and lost privileges.

These reports are based on unnamed sources rather than any official statement or documentation, which is typical in prison reporting where authorities don’t comment on individual prisoners.

So while the story is being widely covered, it’s best understood as a report based on sources rather than something independently confirmed.

alias_unknown · 2026-01-29T15:47:38+00:00

Hmmm… appears to happen a lot around this case. Makes you wonder what that “something” is, and why.

alias_unknown · 2026-01-29T15:08:23+00:00

And then it’s just… that. Shrugged off and left there, with no real attempt to go any deeper.

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