Full Breakdown
The West Couple’s Two-Decade Murder Campaign at 25 Cromwell Street
By Drooid · · How we work
Core Event
Between the late 1960s and the late 1980s, Fred West and his wife Rosemary West jointly tortured, raped and killed a series of women and girls at their home at 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester. The pair’s crimes spanned roughly twenty years and involved the concealment of bodies in the house’s cellar, garden and other hidden spaces.
Chronology of Identified Victims
- May 1967 – Anne McFall, 18 and pregnant, vanished while living with Fred; her remains and those of her unborn child were later recovered in a field at Kempley.
- 1969 – Catherine “Rena” Costello, Fred’s first wife, disappeared; her body was found nearby in Kempley.
- 1971 – Charmaine West, Fred’s eight-year-old daughter, disappeared; skeletal remains were uncovered beneath the kitchen window at the Gloucester house.
- April 1973 – Lynda Gough vanished; her body was located in a former car-inspection pit converted to a bathroom at the property.
- November 1973 – Carole Ann Cooper disappeared after boarding a bus; detectives concluded the Wests abducted her, and her body was later found buried in the cellar.
- December 1973 – Lucy Partington, 21, disappeared while waiting for a bus; her remains were recovered under the cellar floor.
- Easter 1974 – Therese Siegenthaler, 21, vanished while hitch-hiking to Ireland; her body was also found in the cellar.
- 1975 – Shirley Hubbard, 15, and Juanita Mott, 18, disappeared; both were recovered from the cellar, which was subsequently concreted over and turned into a bedroom.
- May 1978 – Shirley Anne Robinson, a lodger and Fred’s lover, was found pregnant; her body and the foetus were discovered in the garden.
- August 1979 – Alison Chambers, 16, disappeared; her remains were located in the garden.
- 1987 – Heather West, Fred and Rosemary’s 16-year-old daughter, was murdered; her body was the first found at the house but the last victim overall.
Scope and Victim Profile
The Wests are linked to twelve identified victims ranging from 15 to 21 years old, plus an “unknown number” of additional victims suggested by the breadth of the burial sites. Victims included acquaintances, hitch-hikers, a pregnant daughter and a former lover, illustrating a pattern of opportunistic and domestic targeting.
Official Findings
Investigators determined that the cellar at 25 Cromwell Street was used to store bodies in a clockwise arrangement before the floor was concreted over. The garden also served as a burial site, with some victims interred beneath a patio. The systematic concealment points to coordinated planning by both Fred and Rosemary West.
Impact and Legacy
The case remains one of Britain’s most notorious serial-killer investigations, prompting extensive reviews of missing-person protocols and the handling of domestic abuse disclosures. The discovery of multiple bodies within a single residence highlighted failures in early detection and has shaped subsequent law-enforcement training on hidden-victim investigations.