Rosemary West, convicted of murdering 10 young women and girls, showed no emotion when told of husband Fred West’s death in prison
The depraved couple turned 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester into a “House of Horrors”(Image: PA)
A former prison governor who supervised Rosemary West while she was incarcerated has characterised the killer as a “manipulative psychopath” whose reaction to her husband’s death showed no discernible emotion.
Vanessa Farke-Harris oversaw West during her detention at HM Prison Holloway. Speaking about that period on the Daily Heretic podcast, she recalled: “I looked after Rose for about three or four months, something like that. Yeah. She was at Holloway. And I was in charge of the SEG at that time, the segregation unit. So the segregation unit was exactly that. It was for prisoners who were segregated for their own protection or under punishment.”
West, among Britain’s most infamous killers, was awaiting trial at Winchester Crown Court, where she would later receive life sentences for murdering 10 young women and girls, among them her daughter Heather and stepdaughter Charmaine. When passing sentence, Mr Justice Mantell declared: “If attention is paid to what I think, you will never be released”.
Her husband, Fred West, had also faced multiple murder charges but took his own life in his prison cell in January 1995 ahead of his trial. The pair had been arrested in February 1994 during an investigation into Heather’s disappearance and were accused of killing 12 people over more than two decades.
Fred and Rose West(Image: SWNS.com)
Farke-Harris said that while in custody, West presented a strikingly ordinary demeanour. “We used to call her Auntie Rose because she just looked like somebody’s auntie. It was very hard to look at her and think of all the dreadful things that she’d done. I mean, we didn’t call it to her face, obviously. You know, she had thick milk bottle glasses. She knitted all the time. And we never knew quite what she was knitting. She was very quiet,” reports the Mirror.
Behind that unassuming façade, she suggested, lay something far darker. “Manipulative psychopath. No emotion whatsoever,” she said.
She recalled the moment she and a duty governor told West that her husband had died by suicide at HM Prison Birmingham, formerly known as Winston Green. “I mean, I told her when her husband topped himself in Winston Green that – I told her with the governor on duty one New Year’s Day. We’d had notification that Fred had committed suicide and the governor phoned me and said, ‘I’m coming down to tell Rose.’ I said, ‘Right, well, I’m here.'”
The two officers entered West’s cell together. “We opened the door and the governor said, ‘I’m really sorry, Rose, to tell you that your husband Fred has taken his own life.’ Not a flicker. Not a flicker of emotion. In fact, to me, there was almost a glint in her eye like, ‘Huh, well, they can’t they can’t pin it all on me now, can they?'”
She gave a single-word response to that thought: “Wrong.”
Rose West’s face “nearly exploded” when she was asked a question about her crimes(Image: PA)
According to Farke-Harris, there were no visible signs of grief, shock or distress. “There was no flicker. I said, ‘Are you all right, Rose? Would you like a cup of tea?'”
West’s reply was brief and controlled: “No. No, I’m fine. Thank you.”
“That was it. Typical psychopath.”
The crimes committed by the Wests shocked the country. Officers searching the couple’s home at 25 Cromwell Street — later dubbed the “house of horror” — uncovered the remains of nine girls buried at the property. Three additional bodies were discovered at other locations.
Jurors heard harrowing evidence of prolonged sexual abuse, torture and dismemberment carried out over many years. Fred West has been described as the “epitome of evil”, targeting vulnerable girls and women to satisfy sadistic desires. Together, prosecutors said, the pair raped, tortured and killed an unknown number of victims.
