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Kalaroga Shark Media. Good morning, It's Tuesday, June thirtieth, and
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this is Daily Crime and Justice. I'm Garrett Fisher, and
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this is day two of Crown Versus Colony, our Independence
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Day week, putting the United Kingdom's worst on the stand.
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Yesterday we were in the fog of Victorian Whitechapel with
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a killer who was never caught and five women the
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world chose to forget. Today there's no fog and no
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mystery about who did it. Today we're in a quiet
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English city, in our own modern era, in a house
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you could walk past without a second glance. And what
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happened behind that ordinary front door is, in my honest opinion,
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about as dark as this show ever gets. So let
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me say this plainly before we start. This episode deals
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with the murder of women and children, with sexual violence,
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and with abuse inside a family. I'm going to handle
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it the way we always do here, which means I
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am not going to dwell on the worst details for
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shock value. The victims were people, not props. But if
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this is not a story you're in a place to
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hear today, that is completely okay. Step away, come back tomorrow.
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No judgment from me. For everyone staying with me. Here
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we go. It started to unravel because of a joke.
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The West children, the one still living at twenty five
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Cromwell Street in Gloucester, had a grim little family saying
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if you misbehaved, if you stepped out of line, you'd
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end up buried under the patio like Heather. Heather was
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their older sister. She'd vanished in nineteen eighty seven when
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she was sixteen years old, and the family was told
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she'd run off to find work. The younger kids didn't
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really understand what they were saying. To them, it was
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just the thing you said. But a social worker heard it,
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and in nineteen ninety four the police came to that
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house with a warrant and they started to dig up
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the garden. They were looking for one missing teenager. What
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they found instead was a graveyard the house on Cromwell Street.
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Fred West was a builder, a Gloucestershire man, all crude,
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charm and grubby hands and a relentless predatory appetite that
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he barely bothered to hide. Rose West born Rosemary Letts
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was much younger than him. She was just fifteen years
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old when they met together. Over two decades they became
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one of the most prolific killing partnerships in British history,
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and the house was the engine of it. Twenty five
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Cromwell Street was a three story place near the center
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of Gloucester. The West rented out the upper floors as
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cheap bedsits, which meant a steady stream of young people, lodgers,
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drifters came and went through that front door. The family
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lived downstairs. Fred was forever building, renovating, pouring concrete, digging.
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Nobody thought twice about a builder digging in his own cellar.
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And underneath all that di why the bodies went down
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one by one, sometimes with a kneecap or a fingerbone
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kept back as a trophy. That detail is grim, I know,
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but it matters because years later it was that exact
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signature and the remains that let investigators link the victims
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to the same hands. Here's the part that I think
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gets lost. This wasn't random. There was a playbook for this.
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The West targeted young women who were vulnerable, runaways, hitchhikers, lodgers,
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girls who'd left home and whom nobody was reliably watching.
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Rose would sometimes sit in the passenger seat when they
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cruised for victims because a woman in the car made
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a frightened young hitchhiker feel safe enough to climb in.
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That's not a detail, that's a strategy. That's two people
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who understood exactly which women's society wasn't keeping track of
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and went hunting in that gap on purpose. At least
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twelve victims were eventually identified, and the youngest two never
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had a chance to grow up at all. So let's
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do the part of this show that matters most. Let's
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say their names, every one of them. Ann McFall eighteen
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years old and pregnant, killed back in nineteen sixty seven
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before Rose was even on the scene. Catherine Costello known
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as Rena, twenty seven years old, Fred's first wife, Charmaine
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West eight years old, Fred's stepdaughter, a little girl who
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was killed while Fred was actually in prison, which is
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part of how we know Rose was no bystander in
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this story. Then come the young women drawn into the
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orbit of Cromwell Street through the early and mid nineteen seventies.
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Linda Goff nineteen years old, a lodger. Carol Ane Cooper
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fifteen years old. Lucy Partington twenty one years old, a
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university student, intelligent and gentle and full of promise, who
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disappeared one cold night after visiting a friend. Teres Siegenthaler
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twenty one years old, a Swiss student traveling through. Shirley
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Hubbard fifteen years old, Juani de Mott eighteen years old,
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Shirley Robinson eighteen years old, who was a lodger in
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the house and was eight months pregnant with Fred's own
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child when they killed her. Alison Chambers sixteen years old,
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and then finally the murder that started the whole thing
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falling apart, Heather West sixteen years old, their own daughter,
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killed in nineteen eighty seven and buried under the patio.
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Her younger siblings would later joke about never knowing they
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were standing on their sister's grave. Read those names and
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ages again in your head and notice something. Eight years old, fifteen, sixteen, eighteen.
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These were children and barely grown young women with entire
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lives in front of them. Lucy Partington should be a
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woman in her seventies right now, maybe a grandmother. Heather
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should be approaching her fifties. They got nothing, They got
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that house instead, And I want to stay with Lucy
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for a second because of what her family chose to
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do with the worst thing that can happen to a person.
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Lucy Partington was thoughtful, religious, the kind of young woman
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who wrote and read and cared about the world. Her
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sister Marian spent years afterward writing about Lucy, not as
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a true crime headline, but as a sister, a whole
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human being, and writing about the long, almost impossible work
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of trying to find some peace after that. That is
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the exact opposite of what we talked about yesterday with
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the Ripper. Yesterday, the killer became the brand and the
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women became scenery. The families of the West victims fought
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like hell to make sure their daughters stayed people. We
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should honor that by following their lead. The one who
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got away, And here's the thing that should make you furious,
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because it makes me furious. The system had the West
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years before most of these murders. In nineteen seventy two,
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a young woman named Caroline Owens, who'd worked as a
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nanny for the family, was lured into their car, sexually assaulted,
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and held against her will by both Fred and Rose.
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She managed to escape with her life. She went to
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the police, and the West were actually prosecuted for it.
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You know what happened. They were fined. The case was
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treated as a minor sexual offense, the kind of thing
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you pay a penalty for and walk away from. Two
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people who had already begun killing, who had already buried children,
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were standing in front of the justice system, and the
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justice system find them and let them go home to
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that house to keep going for another fifteen years. I'm
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going to be honest with you. Caroline Owen survived something
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most people did not survive, and she did the brave thing,
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the right thing. She told and nobody connected the dots.
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The system was paying attention for exactly one afternoon in
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a courtroom, and then it looked away. That is the
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whole tragedy of this case. In one moment, the war
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was right there, signed and filed, and it changed nothing,
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the reckoning. When the digging started in nineteen ninety four,
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the truth came out of the ground in pieces. Remains
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beneath the cellar floor, beneath the bathroom which had been
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built over an old inspection pit, under the garden. Nine
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bodies at Cromwell Street alone, and more elsewhere. Fred West
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was arrested and eventually charged with twelve murders in more
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than one hundred hours of police interviews. He talked, and
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he lied, and he shifted, sometimes claiming he'd acted entirely
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alone to protect Rose, sometimes hinting there were other girls,
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other graves that he never named. And then Fred West
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did the most cowardly thing a man in his position
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can do. On New Year's Day nineteen ninety five, while
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on remand awaiting trial, he hanged himself in his prison cell.
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He never sat in a dock, he never faced a jury,
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He never had to look the families in the eye
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and answer for a single one of those young women.
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He just checked out and left his wife to face
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all of it alone. So Rose West went to trial
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by herself at Winchester Crown Court in the autumn of
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nineteen ninety five. She pleaded not guilty. Her defense was simple,
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Fred did everything, I knew nothing. I'm a victim too,
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But the evidence said otherwise. Charmaine had died while Fred
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was locked up, so someone else killed that eight year old. Survivors,
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including Caroline Owens, testified to Rose's own cruelty. After seven weeks,
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the jury convicted Rose West of ten murders. She was
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sentenced to life and a whole life order was later confirmed,
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meaning she will die in prison. Her appeal was refused.
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When we come back, Rose West is still alive tonight,
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and after thirty years, she is still telling anyone who
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will listen the exact same thing. And there's a teenage
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girl who vanished in this same city, whose family is
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still waiting for an answer the ground has so far
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refused to give. Stay with me, Welcome back to Daily
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Crime and Justice. Before I get to Rose, here's something
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I find quietly powerful. Twenty five Cromwell Street does not
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exist anymore. After the trial, the authorities tore the house down,
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and they didn't just demolish it. They destroyed it completely,
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crushing every brick to rubble so that not one piece
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could ever be taken as a souvenir. The land was
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turned into a simple landscape walkway between two streets. You
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can walk right over it now and not know that
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was deliberate. They had watched what Whitechapel became, the tours
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and the trinkets, and they refused to let Cromwell Street
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turn into a shrine for the curious. There's a kind
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of wisdom in that some places don't deserve to be
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remembered the people do. Rose West is in her seventies
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now serving her life sentence in a women's prison in
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the north of England, and in three decades behind bars,
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she has never admitted a single thing, not one. She
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still maintains to this day that she is innocent, that
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she knew nothing that her dead husband did at all.
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The families have had to live three decades with a
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convicted killer's flat denial as the last word on what
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happened to their daughters. And accountability, as I keep telling
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you on this show, doesn't have a legal department. It
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doesn't accept a not guilty plea from a woman a
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jury saw straight through. It doesn't let Fred West off
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the hook just because he found a rope before the
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trial could start. The verdict of an honest jury and
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the testimony of the people who survived these two that
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is the accountability. The denial is just noise. Do not
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let it be the loudest thing in the room. And
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there is one more name I want to leave you with,
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because she does not have a grave. Mary Bastolm, fifteen
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years old. She vanished in Gloucester back in nineteen sixty eight,
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waiting at a bus stop in the snow he'd worked
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at a cafe that Fred West was a regular customer
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of a cafe where he'd done building work down in
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the cellar for more than fifty years, her family has
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wondered if she was one of his. In twenty twenty one,
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police excavated that cafe cellar searching for her. After weeks
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of careful work, they found no human remains, nothing that
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brought her home. So Mary Bastholm is still out there, somewhere,
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still fifteen years old in every photo her family has
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still waiting, and she may not be the only one.
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Police have always believed the true number of victims could
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be higher than the twelve week and name. So that's
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the weight of this one. Twelve we can name at
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least one more. The ground won't give back. Two killers
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and only one of them ever stood in a courtroom.
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Say their names anyway, Anne, Rena, Charmaine, Linda, Carol, Anne,
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Lucy Terrez, Shirley Hubbard, Juanita, Shirley Robinson, Alison, Heather, and Mary,
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wherever you are, somebody has to a few honest notes
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for the record. Fred West was charged with twelve murders
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but was never tried or convicted of any of them.
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He died by suicide before his trial, so legally those
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remain charges. Rose West was convicted by a jury of
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ten murders in nineteen ninety five and has exhausted her appeals.
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She has always maintained her innocence, and we report her
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conviction as the finding of the court, not as something
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she has ever admitted. Investigators in many who've studied the
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case believe the couple killed more people than the twelve identified,
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but any further victims remain unproven. Exact dates and the
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precise ages of some victims very slightly across sources. Mary
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Bastholm has never been confirmed as a victim of the wests.
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She remains a missing person, and the twenty twenty one
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search of the cafe in Gloucester found no human remains.
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We've named what we're confident of and flagged what we're not.
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That's Crown versus Colony. Day two Tomorrow. We stay in
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England and meet a man who looked like nobody at all,
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a mild, soft spoken civil servant who lived alone, who
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killed quiet, lonely men for company, and who kept the
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bodies in his own home until the smell, and the
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drains finally gave him away. Dennis Nilson, the man some
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called the British Jeffrey Dahmer tomorrow on Daily Crime and Justice.
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If this episode meant something to you, do me a
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favor and share it. Tell a friend we're doing the
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UK's worst all week and send them this. One word
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of mouth is genuinely how this show finds new ears
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and it costs you nothing. And if you're listening on Spotify,
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drop a comment down there today. Instead of telling me
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your theory, just tell me one of those names you'd
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never heard before tonight. Say it back to me. That's