Two of Fred and Rose West's Victims Were Their Own Children — The Stories Are Gruesome

When it comes to serial killers, people tend to focus on the heavy hitters whose hunting grounds were in America. There are countless documentaries about Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Aileen Wuornos, to name a few. Their crimes are the stuff of nightmares and could fit easily into any horror movie. In an attempt to understand them, criminal profiling was developed by two FBI agents who worked in their Behavioral Science Unit.

Long before John Douglas and Robert Ressler were interviewing convicted murderers like Edward Kemper to see how he ticks, England had a few notable killers of its own. Jack the Ripper terrorized the Whitechapel district of London in the late 1800s. Peter Sutcliffe was active in the 1960s and 1970s before finally getting caught in 1981. Then there is Fred and Rose West, whose depraved actions are still talked about to this day. Their victims — including two of their own children — were tortured.

After the Wests were arrested in 1992, police excavated their home and later charged Fred with 12 counts of murder while Rose was convicted of 10. Before Fred could go to trial, he took his own life in January 1995, leaving Rose to deal with the consequences of their horrifying actions entirely on her own.

In the Netflix documentary Fred and Rose West: A British Horror Story, 107 police interview tapes covering over 50 hours of interrogations shed more light on the decades-old murders of at least 12 women. "I trained Rose to do what I wanted," said Fred in a recording. "She just blended into my way of living." When they met, Fred was 27 and Rose was only 15. He already had two daughters from a previous marriage and was living with 18-year-old Ann McFall, who looked after his children.

McFall was Fred's first victim in 1967. Her body would be found along with Fred's first wife, Catherine Costello, buried in two fields at Kempley, near Much Marcle, per the Australian Broadcasting Company. While Fred was briefly in prison in 1971 for motoring offenses and theft from his employer, Rose killed his daughter Charmaine and then buried her at their first home.

The couple moved to 25 Cromwell Street in 1972, which was later called the House of Horrors by the media. It was there that they sexually abused, mutilated, and killed Alison Chambers, Thérèse Siegenthaler, Shirley Hubbard, Lucy Partington, Juanita Mott, Lynda Gough, and Carole Ann Cooper. Fred and Rose also killed their own daughter Heather as well as a tenant named Shirley Robinson, who was carrying Fred's child.

Fred and Rose West's reign of terror finally ended in August 1992 after their daughter Louise confided in a friend about being raped by her father. Police launched an investigation which resulted in a thorough search of their, as well as the backyard where some of their victims were buried.

On Jan. 1, 1995, Fred was found dead in his jail cell after hanging himself. Before he took his own life, he verbally admitted to killing 11 of the victims. Though he never confessed to murdering McFall, he did tell police where he believed she was buried. Rose pleaded not guilty to all 10 charges, claiming she was manipulated by her husband. She was found guilty and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. The house on Cromwell Street was demolished in 1996.