‘He was the epitome of evil’: Fred West biographer sheds light on notorious killer and new police probe

As police continue to excavate a Gloucester cafe in the search for missing Mary Bastholm, West’s official biographer Geoffrey Wansell answers your questions about the killer and the investigation

(The Independent)

Police have been excavating the cellar of a cafe in Gloucester in the search for a missing teenager who may have been a victim of serial killer Fred West.

Investigators have been drilling inside The Clean Plate since Wednesday after new evidence uncovered by a TV documentary crew came to light.

They are looking for the remains of 15-year-old Mary Bastholm, who was working as a waitress at the cafe - then called the Pop-In - in 1968 when she disappeared from a bus stop.

Author Geoffrey Wansell was given access to West’s police interviews, prison diary and even his clothes when he was appointed as the killer’s official biographer after he took his own life in jail in 1995.

You can watch the full recorded live stream below

Here, he answers readers’ questions about the notorious killer and the current police investigation as part of an ‘Ask Me Anything’ Q&A on The Independent:

Q: Before they were found out...what did their neighbours think of them? How did they manage to control their family unit and others so much as to keep under the radar so long?

Crazydays

A: One way they controlled the family unit. I mean, there were eight children – they weren’t all Fred’s, Rose had a number with some of her clients as a prostitute – but Rose ran the house with a rod of iron. She was quite happy to beat her children and there was no question that…her oldest child with Fred was Heather who Fred killed.

And Heather was the reason that in the end police came to the front door of 25 Cromwell Street with a search warrant to dig up the garden because the children had a joke, it was a family joke, ‘you better not misbehave because if you do you’re going to end up two down and three across’ he’d laid out the patio like a crossword and so that’s where Heather is.

It’s very difficult to see back now but in the end what brought the police to the front door was also the fact that another of West’s children asked a local policeman, believe it or not a bobby on a bicycle, ‘what would you say if your dad had been assaulting one of his daughters’ and that was another way this whole incredible thing began to unravel.

Fred could charm the birds off the trees. He would groom policemen, social workers, anyone. When Linda Gough the first major victim after Heather, when Linda’s parents arrived at the door of 25 Cromwell Street, Rose opened the door wearing her cardigan and slippers, Linda’s, and said she left them behind and in the end it was a very plausible excuse. He was a very plausible man and I think that makes him more horrifying, not less.

Q: With Fred West being active for so many years, how many other Fred Wests could be out there in the UK today?

LeeAS

A: The stain that West cast across the British civilisation is so grotesque I can’t believe there’s another British serial killer in that mould but yes there are certainly serial killers out there I’ve never, ever doubted it and some of them go undetected but not for very long.

One thing I will say is we are much more aware now than we ever were.

Q: I read an article about this killer yesterday which said he likely started by killing his first wife who disappeared and the nanny of his kids at that time. Then while he was in prison for something (not murder?) he got his second wife to kill his daughter from first wife.

I don’t understand why police did not catch/suspect him when so many close to him were dead or disappeared?

Shoolin

A: Fred was an expert at spinning webs. Rena and he when they got married, they went to Glasgow where she worked as a prostitute, she was pregnant by a bus driver but she was a good cover, but then of course Fred comes back to Gloucestershire and Rena stays in Glasgow so every time anyone from social services turns up he says oh she’s gone back to Glasgow so he’s now got a child with her and he’s got her child and so they’re taken into care and then back from care and still time after time he would say ‘Oh Anne McFall’s looking after the children now’ and when Anne McFall disappears he says she’s decided to go back home to Scotland. And eventually you have Rosemary West who comes in as the cover and she presents to the rest of the world like an agreeable, if highly sexualised woman, who was always pregnant.

The thing is, he never had a black cloak or a tail or horns, if you came across Fred West you would think he was the most harmless man in the world. If you listened to his voice, that little sing song Herefordshire accent.

He hides in plain sight.

Q: I heard a TV interview where West was described as being very controlling and I believe the word to describe him was "neurolingual" presumably meaning psychologically undermining, persuasive, having the gift of the gab or being convincing. Presumably there is a scientific dimension exploiting our weaknesses, instincts, thinking patterns and comprehension as studied by psychologists ad-men and criminals etc.

Children and teenagers are obviously naïve and though you’d not wish to burden the syllabus with psychology should they not be taught the dangers of psychological persuasion, auto suggestion and covert messaging to equip them for life. Possibly exemplified by West and similar criminals, politicians, conmen, fakers and advertisers.

Scarlotti

A: It would be very difficult. I contribute to all kinds of crime documentaries on television which seem to be watched by millions of people and time after time I find myself saying one must be very careful. I have a true crime podcast and I end it every week saying be careful because bad things happen to good people but if you’re looking at someone like that if you’re looking at disappearing young women who is honestly going to think a nondescript semi-detached house in a pretty rundown street at the side of Gloucester about 10 minutes from Marks and Spencer is actually going to be a charnel house?

How do you teach someone about that? You can describe it and yes these days we are all very concerned, obviously quite rightly, about domestic violence and coercive behaviour but Fred didn’t coerce them – at the start he charmed them, he groomed them, got them into the house and then of course things were very different.

Q: Some readers find the media coverage of the investigation inappropriate and insensitive towards West’s victims and families. As his biographer, do you get any negative reaction from people who find it inappropriate?

A: Well when I did the book I wrote a paragraph about that and I said: There will be those that say no book should ever have been written about the life of such a man but I do not believe we can afford to forget or ignore Frederick West. For just as great beauty illuminates the whole of our lives, so great evil reminds us that beauty is to be cherished. To try to push West away, to deny he existed, is to close our minds, not only to the possibility of evil, but also to the redeeming power of good.

And I will say that to anyone and I try very hard in everything I do to see it from the victims’ point of view and even more important now the victims’ families because the people who suffer dreadfully, yes the victims of course, but the victims’ families are destroyed often by the actions of a serial killer and I have the deepest sympathy for them.

Q: What was your reaction when you found out police were investigating The Clean Plate cafe in connection to Fred West and Mary Bastholm’s disappearance?

A: My reaction was then as it is now that I’ve always believed that West had indeed killed Mary Bastholm, I’ve never doubted it, the only thing we didn’t have was any remains whereas for the 12 other victims there were remains for each and every one of them but none for Mary.

When Mary disappeared on the 6 January 1968 from a bus stop not very far away from the cafe, the Gloucester police mounted a considerable search. They put divers into the dock they absolutely searched for her up and down but there was no sign of her.

I’ve always found it interesting that precisely one month later Fred West’s mother Daisy West died at the age of just 44 of a sudden heart attack.

Now do you think perhaps that West might have confessed to his mother? I’ve always wondered. Because I’ve always believed and I’ve never doubted it that West killed Mary Bastholm.

I just hope and pray we might finally find some remains if only to give the family closure. Her mum and dad are now sadly dead but there is a little bit of a family left and I think it is only right and proper but it is 53 years ago.

Q: Fred West never admitted to killing Mary Bastholm, but he is thought to have told his son Stephen West?

A: In his police interviews, West specifically said ‘I didn’t kill her, I don’t know anything about it’.

Yes, I’ve no reason to specifically disbelieve Stephen West, although I wouldn’t call him the most reliable of witnesses, but Fred told a lot of people an awful lot of lies over a long period of time. Did he tell his wife Rosemary about Mary Bastholm?

He may have done, but again it’s speculation and I profoundly doubt that Mrs West will tell anyone in authority anything about her late husband, she is in profound denial and doesn’t want to know anything about Fred and about what he may or may not have done.

Q: Why do you think he would have targeted Mary Bastholm?

A: I think Fred had always had an appetite for young girls and Mary would’ve been one of his earliest victims, remember he didn’t really start collaborating with Rose until at least 18 months later, and the victims in Middle? Road and Cromwell Street were later still, so you’re talking about the early days but by that point he’d already killed his first wife Rena, his nanny Anne McFall? Who was seven months pregnant with his child and I believe Anne McFall and Fred probably went to the café, Fred was doing bits of building work, Anne McFall may well have gone in chatting to Mary Bastholm, Anne wasn’t much older, and she disappeared in August 1967 just a few months before Mary Bastholm disappeared. I think you can see a pattern there if you’re looking for it. Just as I believe there were other victims we don’t know about.

Q: You never went inside the cafe, but you know a little bit about it from the time Mary Bastholm disappeared?

A: I never went inside the Pop-In as it was called in those days – it was just a basic greasy spoon on a little street in Gloucester. Very much the sort of place Fred would have felt at home in. He didn’t like anything smart, he was always grubby, a tiny little grubby man with curly hair and a twinkly smile.

He would’ve enjoyed the company, particularly if there was a young part-time waitress. Mary Bastholm would have been to Fred West a tasty morsel to be consumed.

He had no respect for young women, not respect for women pretty much, except I think sometimes Rosemary terrified him.

West did not go by any conventional standards whatever; he had completely devoid of any kind of compassion.

I think Dick Ferguson QC who defended Rose put it very well at Rose’s trial he said ‘he was a man devoid of compassion, consumed with sexual lust, a sadistic killer and someone who had opted out of the human race, the very epitome of evil.

Q: Do you think investigators will find anything linked to Mary Bastholm inside the cafe cellar?

A: Yes, I think it’s highly possible. I don’t think we can say at this stage what’s going to appear but to be absolutely clear, you’re not talking about excavating a coffin-sized hole.

West, and this is unpleasant to say, not only did he torture and kill his victims but he dismembered them and he buried them in squares. It will be a small hole but that’s what he did to the other victims, I can’t believe he wouldn’t have done that to Mary Bastholm.

Q: What was Fred West like as a person in your opinion?

A: West was everybody’s friend. Talk to anyone who lived in Cromwell Street beside him. Talk to the people he worked with, he was this funny little man 5ft 6 curly hair clear blue eyes always grubby, always hands dirty, he would eat raw onions, but he was everybody’s friend. He was always sorting things out for people. ‘Oh that’s a nice cardigan you’re wearing, would you like to come meet Rose, she’s got one just like it’.

He had this magnificent neuro linguistic skill. He could barely read or write but he had absolute touch when it came to convincing people. If you like, he was an archetypal groomer. So he was preying on young people, young women, who were naïve, vulnerable, and he would appear to be their best friend.

And Mary Bastholm would have been exactly the same. I can hear Fred in my mind. He would have drawn up at the bus stop in the van or car, whatever he was using, and he would’ve wound the window down and said ‘Oh Mary, nice to see you, where are you going? Can I give you a lift?” And Mary Bastholm already knew him from the café would not have worried for a minute because he seemed to be the most harmless little man.

The truth of course was that he was absolutely the opposite, he was the epitome of evil and wickedness. He was a devious, manipulative, cruel serial killer – but she wouldn’t have seen that.