Fred and Rose West: A British Horror Story gives an overview of the life and crimes of the serial killer couple, but what happened to Rose West after the UK trial isn’t shown in the Netflix docu-series. Warning: some may find this content distressing.
The new true crime title is three episodes long, first focusing on Fred West, then Rose and their relationship, and finally the trial and the scandal surrounding Fred’s appropriate adult Janet Leach.
If you’re unfamiliar with the case, Fred and Rose West were a married couple with 10 children who, quite literally, had secrets buried at their Gloucestershire “house of horrors”. Together, they would prey on, torture, sexually assault and, in some cases, murder young women.
Their reign of terror lasted for decades, until the police were alerted to a sick family “joke” about the couple’s daughter, Heather West, being buried underneath the patio. They were finally arrested in 1994, with detectives uncovering 12 murders between them.
What happened to Rose West?
After Fred died by suicide in prison on January 1, 1995, Rose was found guilty of 10 murders and sentenced to life in prison. She’s still alive, aged 71 now, but what Fred and Rose West: A British Horror Story doesn’t reveal is her life behind bars – including her twisted relationship with fellow UK serial killer, Myra Hindley.
Yes, that Myra Hindley – one half of the Moors Murderers, who, alongside Ian Brady, lured, tortured, and killed five children in the 1960s. Hindley was widely seen as the most hated woman in Britain.
She recorded the cries of a girl she helped murder and then posed smiling near a victim’s grave. Much like the Wests, the Moors Murderers’ crimes embodied evil. Before Hindley’s death in 2002 while behind bars, she was locked up at Durham Prison alongside Rose.
In the 2020 true crime documentary Rose West and Myra Hindley: Their Untold Story with Trevor McDonald, former inmates said the pair formed a bond during their incarceration, which they claimed developed into a romantic relationship.
Ex prisoner and crime author Linda Calvey described how the fellow child killers would share breakfasts, have tea, and go to the chapter together. “They’d go into each other’s cells and they became really, really close,” she said.
“I think the majority of the wing all thought there was an affair of sorts going on between them. Everybody went, ‘What a weird combination, they’ve become thick as thieves.’”
Meanwhile, Rose’s former attorney, Leo Goatley, said she would speak about Hindley with admiration. He also wrote in his book Understanding Fred and Rose West that they were in a “flowering, albeit short-lived, lesbian relationship”.
However, their bond was said to have broken down shortly after, with Calvey alleging that Hindley said of Rose, “Yeah, well, I thought about it. She killed her own children. Do I really want to mix with someone like that?”
These claims have never been confirmed by either Hindley or Rose, but we know that whatever friendship they did have would have ended indefinitely when the former was transferred from Durham to HMP Highpoint in Suffolk in early 1998.
Rose West’s life in prison
As for the rest of Rose’s time in prison, her life behind bars has been marked by isolation and controversy. In 2019, she was transferred from HMP Low Newton to HMP New Hall in West Yorkshire due to security concerns.
The move aimed to ensure her safety after threats from fellow inmates, including serial killer Joanna Dennehy, who had expressed intentions to harm Rose.
Prior to this, former Low Newton prisoner Catherine Jones claimed in 2018 that Rose had turned to religion, saying, “She really believes she’ll be forgiven when she dies. Will she? She put her own daughter under the patio.”
However, Jones went on to claim that Rose still hadn’t taken responsibility for her crimes. “Rose blamed Fred for everything. She said he bullied her and made her do things.”
In Rose West and Myra Hindley: Their Untold Story with Trevor McDonald, Calvey described an incident whereby Rose’s cell was set on fire, causing her to be “foaming at the mouth” with rage.
“There were about three arsonists on the wing. There had been a spate of three or four cells being set on fire. Her budgie was left in, so they brought the budgie out and it was all sooty and black,” said Calvey.
“Well, Rose was absolutely hysterical about her budgie. She said, ‘How could anyone be so evil to light a fire and leave the budgie in a room?… Suddenly you saw this switch to this absolutely raging creature, like a demon.
“She was foaming at the mouth, she was so enraged. Nobody should hurt an animal. But they can murder a child without blinking their eyes yet get hysterical over animals. I don’t get how their brains work.”
Following the release of the new Netflix docu-series, Goatley – who was Rose’s lawyer for 12 years – said her life behind bars has been, from what he can gather, up and down. “If she wrote to me, it was normally about things happening in the prison where she was,” he told Cosmopolitan UK.
“They would have these routine cell searches, and she’d have to move all her things out of her cell, which she found very disruptive. Also, the prison regime changes over time. Initially, she was on a wing, and they were all lifers, so they felt fairly settled and had routines.
“They then brought younger women prisoners in, who were in for 12 months, 18 months, who were pretty wild and were out for fights to show who had the bragging rights, this sort of thing. Some people were trying to set fire to Rose’s cell and she had problems in the kitchen.
“Beyond that, the regime stopped giving classes. She liked to go and do sewing or whatever. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was a model prisoner, but when someone else kicks off, I have no doubt Rose would stand up to them. She wasn’t frightened. I think it’s probably more settled now.”
Goatley continued, “I did write to her a couple of years ago, maybe three years ago, to say that I concluded that she was clearly guilty, because I hadn’t said you’re guilty. I was kind of on the fence, I suppose, with that for many years, but I concluded that she was guilty.
“She must have known what Fred was doing. In some of the cases, because of all the damage in her childhood and abuse, she may have taken a lead in some of the violence. So I did confront her in this letter and say that. I didn’t say all that, I just said, ‘I think you’re guilty.’ But I didn’t get a reply.”
How to watch Rose West and Myra Hindley documentary
Rose West and Myra Hindley: Their Untold Story with Trevor McDonald is available to stream on-demand on ITVX. Since this platform is geo-blocked, anyone outside the UK will need to use a VPN to watch it.
To do so, set your VPN to a UK location, sign into or create a free ITVX account, and start watching. As per the official synopsis for the true crime title: “This is the extraordinary untold story of how the two most notorious women in British crime, Rose West and Myra Hindley, became lovers in jail.”
Additionally, Fred and Rose West: A British Horror Story is available to watch on Netflix now.
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