Body hunt: Rose used same cafe DID WESTS MURDER MARY?
Serial killer’s links to teen snatched from Gloucester bus stop in 1968
A YOUNG Rose West was seen at the Pop In cafe where police are now planning excavation work searching for the body of missing teen Mary Bastholm.
Mary worked at the Gloucester cafe, now called the Clean Plate, before she disappeared, aged 15, in 1968. Yesterday, we revealed Mary could have been Fred and Rose West’s first victim as a couple.
Police are making plans to dig under the floor of the cafe, where Anna McFall is also thought to have worked before becoming Fred’s first victim, aged 18, in 1967.
Rose West’s former solicitor, Leo Goatley, told the Mirror: “I know Fred did some jobs at the Pop In.
“Of course, Anna McFall worked there, as did Mary Bastholm, and I have also heard reports from people that a young Rose West was seen in there, too.”
Mary vanished 53 years ago from a bus stop in Bristol Road, Gloucester, in January 1968 while she was on her way to visit her boyfriend, Tim Merrett.
Fred West’s son Stephen has repeatedly said that his father confessed to him that he had killed Mary, while awaiting trial in 1994.
Stephen said yesterday: “My dad told me that he’d been working on the cafe at the time she went missing and that one day the police would find her there.
“He begged me not to go to the police, but I went to them with the information the following day.
“I’m left with that burning question, why? Why did he not want anyone to find Mary?
“We know he kept trophies of all the women he cut up, like body parts. Is it that what’s down there?”
Mr Goatley believes Fred and Rose lied to police about when they had first met and were already a couple when Mary went missing.
He said: “Mary Bastholm was abducted from a bus stop on a cold, wintry evening and there must have been a struggle because Monopoly pieces were the only thing found at the bus stop the following day.
“She would have been bundled into a car, so if Fred was driving, who was doing the bundling?
”He could not have had his hands on the steering wheel while controlling a girl that did not want to get in the car.”
Anna McFall, who knew Mary, is believed to have been Fred’s first victim. She was strangled, dismembered and then buried with her fingers and toes removed.
Mr Goatley said that while Fred may have confessed to killing her, Rose had always stayed silent.
He said: “I did ask her about Mary Bastholm and she simply responded, ‘Well I wasn’t on the scene then.’
“She was just 14 at the time, but there are a lot that links them. Fred West said in a taped interview that they were in a car going along Bristol Road when the police were doing spot
He kept trophies of all the women. Is that what’s there?
STEPHEN WEST SON OF SERIAL KILLER FRED
checks at the time, but this was retracted as it was thought they were not together at that point.
“From my research I believe Fred met Rose long before they claimed, when he lived in a caravan in Stoke Orchard, near to where Rose lived with her family near Bishops Cleeve.
“Fred West had young girls back to his caravan and went out looking for them.
“I think Rose West was a prime candidate for him to pick up. I have spoken to people that have told me they knew each other a lot earlier than we think.”
Mr Goatley said Fred West may have offered to do odd jobs at the cafe. He said: “There is a suggestion he was laying a floor there in 1968. I think it’s very unlikely Mary Bastholm was actually murdered or dismembered at the cafe.
“My concern is that she was abducted in a car, sexually abused and then killed and dismembered somewhere else.”
He said police found it hard to deal with “fantasist” Fred West. He said: “They had to try and work their way through the blatant lies and fantasies
KILLER
UNDER COVER Police tent around cafe entrance
to get to the facts. He did at times make admissions, but he certainly did not make an admission about Mary Bastholm.” In police interviews, Fred West denied any knowledge of Mary Bastholm. According to his biographer Geoffrey Wansell, Fred said: “I’ve never known the girl, never spoke to the girl.”
But Mr Wansell said Fred would have known Mary, who fitted his type of “young and naive” victim. He said: “She was only 15,
and she would have been lulled into a false sense of security. He would have charmed Mary.”
Mr Wansell said although West never admitted to police that he had killed Mary, he allegedly confessed to his solicitor, who was then sacked.
Police were called to the Clean Plate cafe on May 7 by a production company filming a documentary there.
Yesterday, a statement from Gloucestershire Police said Fred West was questioned about Mary’s disappearance, but had “denied any involvement’.
It said: “The Constabulary’s current focus is the potential evidence discovered by the production company at the Clean Plate cafe.”
“Forensic assessments” would go on at the cafe until Monday, “before a more considered decision around the extent of excavation can be made”.
Fred West committed suicide in 1995 before he could be tried for 12 murders. Rose West is serving life for 10 murders.