Rose West’s very middle class life behindbars
With reports of serious illness, we reveal she’ s in rude health, enjoying yoga, baking cakes, foot massages—and The Archers
NEXT year she will celebrate her 65th birthday. And like anyone approaching that landmark, she finds keeping up appearances takes a bit of extra effort. So as well as visiting the gym to hit the treadmill, she has embraced the ‘wellness’ craze, attending yoga classes several times a week.
Heeding warnings from doctors that she risks developing diabetes, she managed to lose a few pounds — which isn’t the only thing that has changed about her look.
Having taken a hairdressing and beauty therapy course, she now cuts her own hair in a short, feathered style, dyed dark brown. When the occasion allows, she swaps her grey tracksuit for fashionable trousers and ‘glitzy’ tops bought from catalogues.
No doubt those of a similar age, stretched by the demands of work and family or struggling to get by on a pension, would like to be able to devote as much effort to themselves. But then, if there is one thing that the subject of this story has on her hands it is time — because this is Rose West, Britain’s most notorious female serial killer.
In 1995, she was convicted of the ‘depraved’ murders of ten young women and girls mostly at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, the terrace house she shared with her husband Fred.
Lodgers, babysitters, children, as well as strangers they picked up off the street, were tortured and abused before being buried in the cellar or under the patio of their home.
The victims at the ‘ House of Horrors’ included the couple’s eldest daughter Heather, who was killed in June 1987, aged 16.
While her husband cheated justice by hanging himself in prison as he awaited trial, next Wednesday marks the 22nd anniversary of the day Rose West was sentenced to life in prison.
In the words of the judge that day: ‘If any attention is paid to what I think, you will never be released.’
With her sentence subsequently confirmed as whole-life tariff, and with her having long ago decided not to appeal, it means the only way West will leave prison is in a coffin.
Which is why the news that spread earlier this week that she was suffering from a mystery, lifethreatening illness caused such widespread interest.
‘The rumour is that it’s very serious, and could even finish her off,’ a source at HMP Low Newton, County Durham, where West is held, was reported as saying. But it was, it seems, a case of wishful thinking.
With the prison authorities dismissing the story as ‘completely untrue’, the Mail has been told that West was in fact seen walking around the prison fit and well just days ago.
‘There’s nothing wrong with her, more’s the pity,’ said the source. ‘But it’s hardly surprising, is it? She’s treated like royalty in there.’
In 2008, Rose West was moved from Bronzefield prison in Ashford, Surrey, to top-security Low Newton.
It was reported that shortly before the move, prison staff had discovered a plot to attack her. Five balls had been stolen from the pool table — to be placed, it was feared, in a sock or stocking which would then be used to bludgeon West.
SINCE her transfer the 63-year-old — her birthday is at the end of this month — has spent most of her time on F-Wing, along with other women prisoners serving life and long-term sentences.
She has her own en- suite cell, complete with curtains at the window, a ‘fluffy rug’ on the floor and a coffee machine, TV and radio.
Hers is undoubtedly a comfortable set-up and one that she makes the most of.
There, listening to The Archers, she entertains other prisoners, teaching them how to cross- stitch (an elaborate form of embroidery), playing Monopoly, or giving one another foot massages. According to sources in the jail, West likes to see herself as the prison matriarch.
‘She is always very welcoming to new convicts and often befriends some of the harder cases coming into the prison,’ said a second source.
‘ Despite her years in prison, she has always maintained her innocence and encourages others to fight their cases if they also claim they are not guilty.
‘She sees herself as a barrack-room lawyer and will spend a lot of time helping people with legal problems.’
West, who has had a number of lesbian flings while inside, currently counts inmates Carole Fishburn and Myra Wood among her friends.
FISHBURN was jailed for 16 years for a catalogue of vile sex offences against girls. The 43- year- old was convicted of rape, sexual activity with a child, taking indecent images and cruelty.
A court heard Fishburn was ‘obsessed’ with sex involving young children. She gave one of the girls alcohol during one of the offences and made another watch pornography while she abused her.
As for Wood, 50, to whom West is said to be particularly close, she was jailed in June for nine years for her role in the brutal killing of a vulnerable man, Jimmy Prout.
The 45-year- old was tortured for months before being found dead on a patch of wasteland in North Shields. A trial at Newcastle Crown Court heard how he was forced to eat one of his testicles and had his teeth knocked out with a chisel during a campaign of sickening abuse by a gang of which Wood was part.
As well as showing new inmates the ropes, West likes to share with them the skills she has learned while attending courses run at the jail.
‘She often cuts other inmates’ hair and does their make-up, something which is encouraged by the guards,’ said the source.
‘A lot of the lifers suffer from depression and they go to her, and others, for a makeover to give themselves a bit of a boost.
‘She is allowed to cut hair but it must be under strict supervision and only safety scissors can be used — the blades are sharp but the scissors have no points — which is the same process for all inmates.’
Another passion is cooking. West has access to a kitchen and is able to request ingredients from the prison canteen which she then uses to create her own meals.
Her meat-and-potato pie is said to be something of a speciality, and a particular favourite with inmates and prison staff alike.
West has earned many of the privileges she enjoys through good behaviour, once telling a penpal: ‘Being a model prisoner is the only
thing that has afforded me any kind of dignity over the years.’
And, given the avalanche of criticism heaped on the prison authorities following Fred West’s suicide on New Year’s Day, 1995, no effort has been spared to ensure the same fate does not befall her.
Of course, given the treatment she receives, it is hardly surprising that resentments fester among other prisoners. Some also dislike the fact she appears to get on well with prison staff, and that she continues to enjoy a certain ‘ celebrity’ status. Despite the nature of her crimes, she receives ‘fan’ mail in prison.
West is aware of these tensions and the risk of physical attack. Sources say that when she is mixing with the general prison population she is accompanied at all times by two prison guards, primarily for her own protection.
Not that they can always prevent attacks directed at her.
One such incident happened in October last year when West used the prison’s dining hall, instead of eating on her wing. On that day they were serving fish and chips — a dish to which she is said to be particularly partial.
Despite guards being close by, 39-year-old inmate Julie McAllister was able to attack West, punching her and leaving her with a black eye and bruised face.
‘They were all talking about what cakes she’d been making for the guards and laughing and joking,’ McAllister told me this week. ‘Bearing in mind we didn’t even have a kitchen, never mind the pleasure to cook cakes, it was the final straw.’ McAllister, who was serving a twoyear sentence for arson but has since been released, says that as she was escorted from the room she was applauded by the other prisoners.
However, she claims a guard warned her that she would have to ‘watch her back’ because other inmates whom West had befriended might seek revenge.
McAllister was subsequently placed in segregation for two weeks before being transferred to a different p prison, a six-hour round journey a away from her home in Newcastle Newcastle. This meant her children were unab unable to visit her.
Despite this, she says she does not regret what she did and says that peop people would be horrified if they knew the lifestyle West enjoys in prison.
‘I think all criminals should be punished, that paedophiles who rape and k kill children should not get yoga and an be on best terms with prison guards,’ gua she says.
‘ The oth other girls just think to themselves themselves: “I’ll make the most of my senten sentence, keep my head down and be civ civil to her.” But I am a mother, I just can’t live with someone li like that. I hate her.’
West no longer has any contact with any o of her surviving children.
She cut ties with them in 2006, telling them the (in something of an understat understatement) that she could never be a good parent.
Not that the shadow of Cromwell Street does doe not continue to haunt the West fa family.
Last wee week, her nephew Steven Letts was jailed for 18 years after abducting a girl and raping her.
THe39-year-old was found guilty of pouncing on a 12-year- old and plying h her with drugs before the sickening attack. He was also convicte convicted of the terrifying aggravated burglary of a house in Glouceste Gloucester when a young couple and thei their two children were threatened with a knife.
Letts is the son of Rose West’s younger brother Graham. A decorator decorator, Graham helped Fred West to lay concrete on the floor of the cellar of 25 Cromwell Street, unaware some s of West’s victims were burie buried beneath.
Sentenci Sentencing Letts, Judge Jamie Tabor QC said he had studied the defendant during the two trials and found ‘he i is a very volatile man, he is a comp compulsive liar and a man steeped in the use of drugs’.
The cour court also heard that Letts should be classed as ‘dangerous’ — meaning he will not be released from his rape sentence until the Parole Board rules he is safe.
But while he at least has some distant prospect of release, his aunt does not. It is a fate she has come to terms with, confiding to those close to her that she is happy to die in jail and make the best of the rest of her life there.
Given the conditions she enjoys in prison — at a cost of £50,000 a year to the taxpayer — that is perhaps hardly surprising.