Jury hears killer's voice describe how victims were strangled, dismembered, and buried. Monologue of murder

four tapes played at the trial yesterday.

West, speaking quickly on the 38-minute recording made on February 25,

1994, at Gloucester Central police station, said: ''What happened was

Heather was going to leave home the day before and we stopped her.'' He

had asked her to stay the night to ''talk it over''.

He went on: ''We talked it over for most of the night. Heather went

down to bed because she slept with Mae and Stephen in the same room.

Heather cried all night because she wanted to leave home.

''Rose said: 'Let her go. I will go out and draw money out -- #600 --

and give her, and let her go'.

''I said: 'All right, then'. Rosemary went to get the money. I said:

'Don't hurry back, and give me a chance to talk to Heather'.''

Later, Fred West told the detective that Heather was standing in the

hallway, where they then kept the washing machine.

''She's standing there with her hands on her hips like this, against

the washing machine -- you know, the big lady business.''

Heather, he said, had told him: ''If you don't f...ing let me go, I

will give all the kids acid and they will all jump off the church roof

and be dead.''

Fred West said he knew Heather had given acid to his son, Paul, who

had then jumped off the church roof.

''I lunged at her and grabbed her round the throat, like that. I held

her for a bit, how long for I don't remember. I can just remember

lunging for her throat and the next minute she has gone blue.

''I put her on the floor. I blew air into her mouth and then I pumped

air into her chest, but she just kept going bluer. At this stage, I

didn't know what to do. Rose was due back and anyone else could walk in.

I tried to get her to breathe again.

''I tried to put her in a dustbin. I put her back on the living room

floor and tried to breathe into her mouth again. But then she started to

go cold, and by then she had already wet the floor. I thought 'What the

hell's gone wrong. I never intended this'.''

Fred West said he would have smacked his daughter ''across the face''

but he was ''nervous'' about doing that because some years earlier

Rosemary had a dislocated jaw after he slapped her.

He considered putting Heather's body ''in the Wendy house'' but it was

too big.

He tried to put his daughter into a dustbin, he said, adding: ''At

that time, we used to have this big ice saw for cutting ice blocks and I

cut her legs off with that.''

He was then able to put the body into the bin, which he rolled down to

the bottom of the garden and placed behind the children's Wendy House.

He collected Heather's possessions and took them to an area nearby

where people disposed of rubbish, where he ''stacked'' her things,

knowing it was bin day and confident they would be removed.

''Then Rose came back -- it must have been an hour or more later. She

said: 'Didn't you persuade Heather to stay?' I said no, she decided to

go.''

Heather's body stayed in the dustbin all that day, Fred West said.

That night, he said: ''I sent Rose out with a coloured bloke that night,

to stay with him that night.''

He said he went to the foot of the garden where a wooden fence hid him

from view. ''I dug a hole and buried her behind the fence,'' he said.

He said it stayed that way for around a couple of months. He recalled

there was a lot of cold and wet weather at that time and nobody went

down to the bottom of the garden.

Shown a number of photographs of the garden and asked ''where is

Heather now'', Fred West began to give some detail of where the Wendy

House had stood, saying it was close to a barbecue.

The officers noticed he had some difficulty in viewing the photographs

and volunteered to get his spectacles for him.

Fred West then began to detail where he said he buried the body. He

gave the detectives details of the layout of the back garden and where

they could find Heather's grave.

Asked what police would find, Fred West said Heather would be in three

pieces -- ''two legs, head and body''.

''Clothing?'' -- ''No''.

''Material. Covering?'' -- ''No, nothing,'' said Fred West quietly.

Pressed further, Fred West said he put the main part of Heather's body

in the middle of the hole, with her legs at the side, and the head in

front. He had covered it with earth topped by two two-foot slabs.

Asked who else knew about Heather, Fred West said firmly: ''Nobody at

all. That's something I have had to live with. It's not easy, I'll tell

you.''

He added: ''Rose knew nothing about it at all.''

Detective Constable Hazel Savage told Fred West that there were now an

awful lot of questions they would have to ask him to resolve the matter

quickly.

He replied: ''Over the past eight years there has been quite a few

times I have actually decided I will come down and see you personally

and do something about it, but then I backed off for some unknown

reason.''

He referred to the ''patio business'' and said he did not know where

it had come from.

But he thought that Anna might have started it off, saying that

Heather was under the patio. He thought she had mentioned it in a

statement in connection with earlier proceedings.

Fred West maintained that his daughters Mae and Anna did not know

about the patio statement. He added: ''All I am worried about is Rose. I

am not going to get any backing from Rose at all. Once Rose finds out

about this, I am finished.''

The jurors then began to hear the second interview -- 44 minutes long

-- which was conducted on the evening of March 4.

Fred West's lawyer, Mr Howard Ogden, said his client had prepared

drawings of the basement at 25 Cromwell Street. There were now matters

which Fred West wished to admit regarding the deaths of various women.

Detective Constable Savage asked Fred West how many bodies there were

in Cromwell Street.

Mr Ogden said: ''I think we are talking of an approximation.''

Fred West began to describe the basement area of 25 Cromwell Street.

The court heard his recorded voice detail where bodies could be found

beneath 25 Cromwell Street, as they referred to a sketch plan during the

recorded interview.

The builder agreed it would not be difficult for police to reach the

remains of Lynda Gough, who, he said, was buried in what had been a

car-repair pit beneath a garage now converted into a bathroom.

There were no other bodies beneath the ground floor of the house, he

said.

''The reason was because they would have been too close to Rose,'' he

told police.

Other bodies were under the cellar, he said, explaining how he had

altered the access to the cellar over the years.

The first spot beneath the cellar, where he indicated that a body

would be found, had been used for ''a girl from Newent'', he said.

But when detectives asked if this was a girl they had mentioned to him

before, he said this was a different one, and the girl they had

mentioned was ''safe''.

Fred West went on: ''All these girls I had affairs with and that's why

they ended up this way -- because they threatened to tell Rose.''

Asked how many of the girls were pregnant, he said he did not know.

After being told that the girls' bodies were being numbered, he said:

''Body one is right in the fireplace of the basement. As you go down the

stairs there's a fireplace straight in front of you.''

He said of the victim: ''She and I had an affair. I think she was

Dutch or something. She was having a holiday over here, and then she

threatened to tell Rose.

''Every one of them did exactly the same thing -- 'I love you, I'm

pregnant, I'm going to tell Rose and I want you to live with me'. That

was the problem,'' Fred West went on.

DC Savage asked: ''What was the very first body?''

Fred West, quietly: ''That was Rena.'' (His first wife, Catherine

Costello).

Rena had threatened Rosemary and had gone round to 25 Midland Road to

collect their daughter, Charmaine, Fred West said. He took Rena out to a

pub and got her ''absolutely paralytic''. Charmaine was in the back of

the car, asleep.

West drove them out to Kempley, near his former home on the

Gloucester-Herefordshire border, strangled Rena, and buried her there.

''I strangled Rena, cut her up and buried her,'' Fred West told the

officers. He returned to the car and, on seeing Charmaine, thought to

himself ''What am I going to do now?''

Fred West added: ''Charmaine must have been about six or seven, little

for her age. I strangled her while she was sleeping. No way I would have

touched her in any way.''

He wrapped the dead child up and drove her back to 25 Midland Road,

where he hid her in a basement area. Later, he buried her at the house.

When he had to return to the house in later years to build an

extension for the owner, he put the remains even further down in the

footings ''to make sure of it''.

West said they were sitting near a bus stop when Lucy Partington

started to talk about him meeting her parents. She also spoke about

having his home telephone number.

West said he believed she lived near Bishops Cleeve but he had never

gone there. They never met at her place, always in the park. He claimed

his relationship had been going on for about three months.

An interviewer suggested West thought it was getting serious. He

replied: ''I reminded her, I have told you no messing with my home or

you are in deep trouble, kid, or hen or chick or something. I used to

call them that. I still had the Scottish thing then.''

He claimed the girl ''got nasty'' and he just grabbed her by the

throat. It was then early in the morning and he drove back to Gloucester

in his green A35 van. He told how he had a ramp on the pavement was able

to drive the van to the side of the house.

He cut the engine and the lights as he ''cruised'' down to the back.

At that time, the basement was reached by a ''hole'' and by a flight of

steps.

He then indicated to the officers where in the basement he believed

the body was buried.

And, looking at a plan, he told them that ''Rose was asleep'' above

numbers 5 and 6.

DC Savage asked him: ''Are you responsible for killing all these

people, Fred?''

West: ''Yes.''

DC Savage: ''Can you tell me whether the way you killed them is

different?''

West: ''No, all exactly the same, strangled and then cut up.''

DC Savage: ''Are you responsible for burying them?''

West: ''Yes.''

Fred West maintained that all the bodies were dismembered as far as he

could recall and nobody else was involved.

Fred West said the girls who died were aged 18 to 20, apart from

Charmaine.

Asked if he had known a girl called Lucy Partington -- one of the

alleged murder victims -- he replied simply: ''Yes, she's there.''

He went on: ''I met her in Pittville Park one day when I was with the

kids. It was all secret, hush-hush, because she had a boyfriend besides

that.''

Pressed for more information, he said ''It was an awful long time

ago.''

When DC Savage asked why he could not remember Lucy Partington, when

he remembered seeing her (DC Savage) as a policewoman years before, Fred

West said: ''When I first met you, you had to be the beautifulest woman

in Gloucestershire.''

Asked how Lucy Partington ''came to meet her end'', he said he had

taken her back to a bus stop near the park in Cheltenham.

He went on: ''What she had done, she had found our phone number. It

was when we had the phone put in. She wanted to give her boyfriend up

and come to live with me and all this rubbish. We had a row, the same as

Shirley and me had rowed over it. It was always made clear to these

girls that there wasn't an affair. It was just purely sex, end of

story.''

The jury then heard a third tape, made on March 5, 1994, in which Fred

West was further questioned about bodies in the basement. He told

detectives he now thought two of the girls were from the Worcester area,

and said he was earlier mixed up about whether another victim was Dutch

or German.

The detectives concentrated their questions on the second Worcester

girl mentioned by the builder -- body number four on their list at that

stage of the interview.

Fred West said he had picked the girl up while out in his lorry near

Worcester, saying he believed she was a prostitute.

''I was driving along when the next minute she was messing about with

me. I stopped and that was it. We made love and that was it.''

They were almost into Tewkesbury when the girl demanded ''a fiver or

something''. ''She said: 'Don't forget to pay me','' he said.

He refused to pay and the girl told him that he could either pay up or

she would report him for rape.

''I stopped the lorry. I slammed her up against the window and she

just dropped. I strangled her, or put my hands around her neck. She just

slipped down to the bottom of the seat in the lorry. I just went home.''

He ''could not be 100% sure'' if he cut the girl up before burying her

in the cellar.

He was asked: ''Did you take their clothes off? Were they naked when

you buried them, or not?''

There was a long silence and he was reminded that he had seemed to

suggest the day before that his daughter Charmaine was the only victim

who was not mutilated.

Fred West said: ''She was young, she was seven, she was pure.''

West then referred to the ''Dutch girl''. He told detectives: ''It was

exactly the same thing, coming out of Worcester one night I picked her

up.

''I gave her a lift along and the same thing happened. She started

messing about. On the lorry you get a lot of girls like that.''

Fred West then had a discussion with the officers about a German girl

he was involved with but who had since ''gone''.

He then referred to another girl in the basement who, he claimed, he

had also picked up in Worcester.

''The next minute she is sitting on the engine, and the next minute

she has got my flies undone and she is messing about.''

He pulled into a layby and they twice made love. She then said ''That

will be #10,'' he claimed.

He said he told her he did not carry money and would not pay for a

prostitute anyway, and then told her to ''get lost''.

''And then she said: 'You are the sort of person that goes with

slags', or something to that effect. I lost the head with her. Whenever

she said that I thought of Rose and Rose is no slag so far as I was

concerned. I went for her and the same thing happened with her.''

He indicated that the ''same thing'' had happened to three of the

girls in his basement plan.

In a fourth and final tape lasting 45 minutes, a police officer

referred to the attack on Mrs Caroline Owens and Fred West agreed he had

picked her up as it was an opportunity to get Rose involved in lesbian

affairs.

He said: ''I had no intention of going too far with Rose that night.

Anyway, it was just to try her on lesbianism and see how she would react

to it. That's all it went, it really went wrong after that. After that

Rose was not involved in anything.

''But Rose did not want to know about it. Never mind what the girl

said, Rose did not want to know.''

West maintained Rose never had anything to do with bondage. He added:

''We tried it in later life but no way did Rose have anything to do with

it.

''It was just a thing that I was trying out with Rose, this bondage

thing with this girl. But once Rose touched her and she screamed, then

that was Rose finished. Rose just said: 'Drop her home,'.

''I said: 'I can't. Not just like that.' I couldn't just take her and

drop her at the door like that.''

He was questioned about the allegations Mrs Owens had made to police

that after the attack in the car she was taken to 25 Cromwell Street and

subjected to an overnight sexual ordeal, which included oral sex and

rape. She had told them that for some of the time she had been gagged

and bound with tape.

Asked about the rape, he said Mrs Owens had been just lying there and

had not tried to stop him. Asked by a police officer if she had just

''laid there and thought of England'', he said: ''I don't know what she

did but she just lay there, she wasn't tied up then.''

He said Rose was not there at the time. ''Rose backed out completely

of it,'' he said.

Rose had gone out in the morning to get breakfast for Caroline Owens,

he said. It was then that he had sex with her. Asked again if she had

agreed, West said: ''Well she didn't do a lot about it. She wasn't taped

up then. She could have screamed, the whole house would have heard.''

He added: ''Rose looked after her and felt sorry towards her.'' The

claim that his wife had oral sex with their victim was rubbish, he said.

Asked why Mrs Owens should have made up such a claim when she clearly

felt embarrassed talking to police about it, West said: ''Rose never

touched her sexually apart from her hand up her skirt. That's all Rose

did to her.''

DC Savage then showed him a silver buckle ring and West said he

recognised it as one of a pair that came from Scotland. He believed his

son, Stephen, had the other one.

West told the officers that Rena Costello had bought him a silver ring

in Glasgow's Barrowland as that was a place where jewellery could be

bought cheaply.

Fred West was reminded that people had made statements about being

abused by Rose, using vibrators, at his house.

West replied: ''No, that was voluntary.'' He said there were two girls

involved on a couple of occasions. The officer suggested that there was

no doubt it appeared that Rose was ''very heavy'' into lesbian

behaviour.

West retorted: ''Only when I persuaded her and if I was there with

her. These girls will always tell you I was actually there with her, and

they were lesbians anyway.''

Detective Constable Darren Law told the jury that police recorded 145

tape recorded interviews with Fred West with a total playing time of

more than 110 hours.

He had been present during 80 interviews but was aware of what West

was saying in others. The officer said it was correct that at no time in

any of the interviews did Fred West implicate Mrs West in any of the

killings.

DC Law said Fred West gave different versions for each of the victims

found at Cromwell Street. He said Fred West told ''lie after lie'' when

the detective was able to demonstrate he was not telling the truth. In

the main, Fred West's response to accusations of lying was to change his

story, he said.

DC Law read out a transcript of an interview with Fred West. In it,

West told officers how he had strangled Shirley Robinson in the hallway

of 25 Cromwell Street. He claimed that Shirley had been supplying drugs

to Heather to supply to schoolchildren.

West claimed Rose was in hospital having a baby at the time he

strangled Shirley. ''I don't think Rose ever had anything to do with

Shirley,'' he added.

Detective Constable Geoffrey Morgan said West had told him that Lynda

Gough, another alleged victim, was heavily into kinky sex and bondage.

Fred West had given an account of how Lynda Gough had died. He told

the officer the girl had been in the basement where her hands were

secured to a ceiling beam. West had claimed that the girl had wanted her

''massive'' bust tied up. He claimed that the girl was roped to the beam

and was making weird noises.

''She was tied up across this hole and she had a rope around her neck

and her arms,'' he said. West said the girl's arms were underneath the

beam and she was holding herself against it.

''She was just hanging there and she was enjoying every minute of

it,'' he said.

He said he heard a doorbell ringing. He realised he would have to go

up and answer the door because whoever was calling knew he was there.

''When I get back down the flipping rope that was holding her legs was

away. It moved or something. It snapped and she was killed. She was

hanging there, strangled, hanged by the neck into this hole,'' he said.