Episode 566: Fred & Rose West (Part 3)

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I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. What's the answer, and what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

Hey weirdos, I'm Alayna.

I am Ash.

And this is morbid.

Dot com.

No, it's just morbid.

I don't think morbid.

No, I don't think it does.

And if it does, it doesn't belong to us. So what's up, brothers? It's Vanderpump Rules finale night.

Yeah, that's how I feel.

The season was hard and interesting, but but I'm very worried it's going to be the last season of Vanderpump.

I feel like it might be.

Yeah, you know, I want them to go out on a higher note personally. Yeah, like this just feels so sad.

Yeah, I think it was just like, you know, they had to ride the wave of Scandaval.

Yeah.

And then I feel like there was like, only so many places you can go after that.

Uh-huh, yeah.

None of them are really positive.

No, it's very true.

I feel like I do feel like there was a cosmic shift, though after that, that I was a little confused about.

I felt a cosmic shift myself, actually, when I just I didn't even talk about this. This is now like a Bravo podcast.

There we go.

You know, sometimes it doubles, yeah, but when I went to SUR, I felt a cosmic shift.

I think a lot of people feel that way.

So many people commented on the pictures that I posted and were like, Oh my God girl, did you go to Sur? And I was like, Yes, yes, I did. And no photos exist of it, yeah.

It was just an experience.

Yep, you could call it that. But on the way to Sur, I had this Uber driver who was the coolest lady ever. Her name is Pauline, and she was like, Oh, you guys are going to Sur.

That's why we're going to Sur.

That's why I live and breathe. That's why we're going to SUR. And it turns out she has a podcast called Tender Loving Care Question Mark, and it's wicked good. And she also had so much tea that like, she had so much tea that like. I can't even share all of it here. But she has some that, like the tea, then goes into her podcast.

Oh, look at that.

And I told her, I was like, I'll shout you out, girl. Yeah, I love that, it was so good.

Well, speaking of podcasts, I have a podcast. Shout out to you. I think I've shouted out this person's podcast before, but like, I've been listening to it lately. And she's just delightful and does such a good job. It's the Hello Sydney podcast.

That's such a good name for a podcast.

It's so good because her name is Sydney.

Yeah, how do you like that? You're? Just you have to have a podcast, yeah.

It's horror. Chronicles on TikTok. She's amazing, she's a great follower, we love her.

That's good to know. I could probably use that for screen because our podcast screen. Usually like, whenever I pick my movies, I'm just like googling something.

Like, yeah, you're just trying it out.

Yeah, like, giving it a try, because, you know, to Sydney, I'm new to the horror world.

Yeah, go to Sydney, she'll steer you in the right direction, I will. She just covered all four Hell House LLC movies in one episode.

And you've only shown me one.

No, I've shown you two. No, I've only watched one. Oh, I think I've watched one, two, I don't think I've watched three, and I watched part of four.

But the ending of the first one fucked me up.

Hell, House LLC is such an underrated movie, I agree, I think it's so good.

No, I, Oh, we're halfway.

I know, and it's got that in houses. October bill always make me just in the Halloween mood.

I feel like Halloween is like last year, we had like, a really good Halloween, but there was a lot going on. Yeah, personally, and I like, was I had to, like, postpone my wedding? I was like, yeah, in the thrust of wedding planning.

Oh yeah, you can just concentrate on Halloween.

Yeah, because I loved my wedding, obviously, like it was absolutely fantastic. But once you're done with that, you're like, Hell, we love being married. Let's celebrate the shit out of Halloween.

Oh, and that reminds me that, sorry, we're just like saying, I need a minute before we get into part three.

So this is called.

Yeah, this is like delaying the inevitable is what this is called. But we did a live stream show at Black Craft Cults in Salem.

It was so fucking cool the other day.

And it was we covered the Salem Witch Trials and the story of Martha Carrier, and it was so much fun. That, I mean, Black Craft cult is so amazing. I love that story, I love that brand.

No, I'm so fucking excited.

Guys, when I tell you I can't wait, this haunt is so elite.

No, it's on another fucking level.

Every room we walked in, I kept being like, This is my Disney, this is my Disney.

No, that's a direct quote of what she was saying.

I kept turning around and just being like, this is beautiful, I love this so much, like they did such a good job. So if you happen to be in Salem during the spooky season this year, definitely go to their Haunt because they're awesome people, awesome brand, and the haunt is fucking top tier.

No, it's so good.

So just had to say that.

Also, one more thing, just while we're at it, we have a lot of new merch over on the Wondery store. We have new drink wear, we have new t-shirts, and we have key chains that are really cute. So if you guys want to go grab those, go ahead.

Yeah, and if you know if you don't want to, you don't have to. yeah, if you want to go right ahead.

If you want to go for it.

We're not pressuring you.

We would never pressure you.

Do what you want, be your own person, live your own life. They're really comfy, though, but yeah, I think.

The butcher game. I'll always pressure you into that.

No, I won't pressure you, only if you feel like you want to.

I will pressure you, you have to.

But it's coming out September 17th and you can preorder it. And there's a playlist to go along with it on Spotify. So you can search the Butcher Game playlist that Zando has on their thing and I've shared, so it's a cool playlist that I listen to while I was writing it.

Not even just like in the act of writing it, she listened to that like throughout the entire writing process. Like when we would go get coffee in the morning together, that would be on, and it's a baller playlist.

It's like, I have to do that for each thing that I write, it just puts me in a place. But so that's fun and you can preorder, and preordering is really fun.

I like preordering.

We're going to be sneaking some peeks out there, little quotes from the book that we're going to be popping out onto social media every now and then. So you can get a little taste of what you're getting into, yeah, and it'll be fun. So you can go to the Butcher Game dot com and that'll give you links to all the places you can preorder the book.

And that's like a national holiday.

That's really fun.

I already finished it and I'm like, really excited to read it again. I love that, I feel like I have to before it comes out.

Like, you got to the earth, to the earth.

Which I kind of feel like even reading it, like for the first time. Like with my my, my arc, my advanced reader, I'm an advanced reader, and I am a copy. Like, I feel like that was like my second go through because I was read it while you're writing it, too.

But it's like bits and pieces.

I also can't wait to listen to the audio book.

Yeah, it's all very exciting.

It is all happening Sheena Shea tonight on Vanderpump rules and here in this office.

And you know what, I guess, we've gotten through all the fun stuff I know, talked about all the frivolous stuff.

You don't think there's anything else.

Talked about all the exciting stuff, yeah, and shouted some, some podcasts out.

Which we love to do.

Which we love to do, and now we have to get into part three of Fred and Rosewood.

OK, part three means seventy five percent.

Yeah, we're, we're getting there. This one's going to be tough. But all of them are so in their own again. A blanket statement over all of them, I'll give before each one.

And she saw all her clothes.

Yeah, she saw all her clothes hanging on a line in the backyard, and Rose just told them, Yeah, I don't know.

She said she was going to a hotel and said that and like, told everybody else that she, like, hit her kids.

Yeah, that she had to let, they had to let her go because she hit one of the kids.

Like, shut the fuck up, Rose.

It only gets worse from there. After the murder of Linda Goff, they waited seven months before finding their next victim. They did go long periods of time, sometimes between victims.

You wonder what they were doing in the middle of all that, though.

That's the thing I'm like. Was all their ire on their children at that point?

Like, or are there? I mean, I'm sure there's victims that we don't know.

Oh, I'm positive. There's victims we don't know about, for sure. The details of this one, the abduction and murder are kind of murky, you know, like many of them. Because we're kind of going off of their account, Fred and Rose's account. And also, you know, the evidence that they could get from these things. But you just kind of have to piece it together.

I mean, I think if my mom died at eight years old, I might feel similar, yeah.

So by the fall of 1973, Carol's father lost patience with the entire thing, and she was placed at the Pines Children Home in Worcester. This was about 25 miles from Gloucester now. On November 9th, 1973, Carol was given permission by the staff at Pines to go on an overnight visit to her grandmother's house. Which, like, this whole thing is just really sad, yeah.

Just going to ask.

I don't know where that comes into play, but that is what most sources are saying. They believe. She was brought back to the house where she was tortured, raped and murdered, then dismembered by Fred and buried in the cellar.

My god.

When her remains were excavated from because she was buried in the cellar and then moved so she was excavated from her grave. And they found the tape mask was still wrapped around her skull, and pieces of rope and braided cloth were also found in the grave. And like the others, there were several tiny bones missing from her hands.

And feet, which is just so disturbing.

And that seems to be a thing.

Yeah, because you mentioned that in the last part with a couple of the bodies.

And there was also a cervical vertebrae and breastbone that were missing. Whoa, yeah. Investigators believe they were kept as trophies.

Oh, that's heinous.

While Carol appeared to have suffered the same fate as their previous victims, what they did find was something a little unusual with her. Yeah, they found, quote, an unusual gouge mark in the skull, which suggested that Carol May had been stabbed in the head. What, yeah?

Oh my God, yeah.

And again, she had the same like masking tape mask over her face and head, like that one piece of their pathology.

It's so disturbing, I'm not kidding you. In the middle of the night last night, I woke up and it's all I could think about.

It just, yeah, I can't stop thinking about it. It's just because it's like, So there's so many layers to it, like, it's. They're inflicting such terror and panic.

And to think of even doing that.

Well, and they're also there's also clearly some kind of thing where they're dehumanizing this person, they're taking away their face.

Yeah, they don't want to see them.

Like you think about it, like you remove the head from somebody's body, they don't feel like a human anymore. You know what I mean? Like, it takes away a little bit of the humanity there, yeah.

It's really a lot to think about, yeah.

We'd like to thank Embarkvet.

She struck him with her motor vehicle, she had been under the influence, and then she left him there.

In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask. Was it a crime of passion?

If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia.

Or a corrupt police cover up?

If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover up to prevent one of their own from going down.

Everyone had an opinion and after the 10 week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision.

To end in a mistrial. It's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is.

Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus. join Wondery Plus in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Now, up until this point, we've said it many times. Most, like all the West's victims had, you know, a few things in common. And one of the biggest things they had in common was that they had very difficult or traumatic backgrounds or home lives. Like that's that's been like across the board, and, you know, as goes oftentimes the case with serial killers, personal histories really makes like, like these ones can make it easier for them to groom, easier for them to manipulate.

Of course.

Easy to make them get into a car with a stranger, accept a ride. And unfortunately, sometimes, and this is why they choose people that have difficult backgrounds. Sometimes they believe they're going to be less likely to be missed, yeah, because people are going to believe that they ran away. Oh, they always disappear.

Like, that's it's, it's sad.

Fucked up, Yeah, yeah, I don't even know. But their next victim came from a very different background.

Maybe they got her, like, near the bus stop.

Now, when she didn't return that evening, Lucy's mother called the police immediately. Because, again, this is not, this isn't a case of she could be coming later, maybe she got held up. No, like, Nope, this isn't her. The following day, a massive search began.

20 fucking years.

20 years they had no idea what happened to Lucy and Carol, and even when they found it out 20 years ago, we're still getting vague details here, right? Lucy, unfortunately, was among the bodies exhumed from the West Cellar.

Oh, that's so sad.

She her body was dismembered, and they described it as being quote crammed into a shaft between leaking sewage pipes. Along with a rope, a knife, a section of masking tape and two hair grips. My God, like the others. There were several small bones missing from her skeleton. And although the details about what she must have endured while she was in that house are unknown, probably thankfully. Detectives believed she was held captive in the West's home for nearly a week.

Oh wow, yeah, so do you think, because obviously this is now like a pattern of, like, the missing bones. Do you think that was torture done while these girls were still alive? Or do you think it was when he, when Fred dismembered them? A trophy kind of thing?

I could see it, unfortunately, both ways.

Yeah, I feel the same.

They are sadistic, right? they're sadistic.

And just like she was there a week, like, What were you doing to her for a week?

And they, I mean, they tortured, and they took great pleasure in torturing people.

So, and they think she was there for a week because, like Fred, admitted that she was.

Well, this that belief is actually based on the fact that. On January 3rd, Fred checked in at the Gloucester Royal Hospital with a serious laceration on his right hand. And they believe he'd sustained this injury while he was dismembering her body.

Oh ok, yeah, wow.

Now, when he was interrogated later, Fred claimed that he and Lucy had been having an affair.

Girl bye, which I'm like, she wouldn't touch you. With a ten foot pole, he said. I really thought people were going to buy that.

And he said, Purely sex. End of story. OK, nobody, nobody, nobody. Fred, No. And according to Fred, Lucy had become pregnant and started making demands of him.

Meanwhile, it's like, Dude, we have her body, we can tell if she's pregnant or not.

And also she got pregnant within a week like, and also she has close bonds to everyone around her, right? She wasn't gone like they didn't. She never met you.

It's such a ridiculous story.

And he said, She said, I want to come and live with you and all this crap. And I just grabbed her by the throat. Her wanted me to see her parents, her wanted me to do bloody everything. Given that Fred lied about literally everything in his life, his background, his victims, everything about.

It makes absolutely no sense.

We know enough about Lucy, we know about enough about people she knows, her family, her friends, everybody around her. To know that. This is absolute horseshit, and not only is it horseshit, but how fucking dare that piece of shit?

It makes so much sense, though, because it's one more way for him to, yeah, fuck with her living relatives and degrade her.

Yeah, and it's like, No, you snatched her, you kidnapped her, you abducted her, like, fuck you.

It makes sense.

Once they got her back to the house, she went through, you know, a similar fate as the rest of the victims. And four months passed before Fred and Rose went out to get another victim. So they go through big periods of time.

But it seems to be after like a rather intense, very brutal, awful.

Yeah, on the evening of April 15th, 1974. 21 year old Therese, I hope I say her name right, she's from Switzerland, so I want to make sure I say it right. Therese Siegenthaler.

Which I can understand that confidence, of course.

So the following morning, Therese returned to her apartment to grab a few personal items and then went to catch the ferry from Wales. Now, assuming she had managed to get the boat to her destination, no one even realized Therese had gone missing. Until she didn't return to school the week after Easter break. Oh so, they just were like, Oh, she made it to the boat, they just assumed, yeah.

Yeah, she had plans, she had plans.

She had paid in advance, so it was very unlikely that she would just decide not to return and give up that money right now. A search was mounted, but there was really again no evidence to work of. She vanished.

And you're filling in the blanks for all those years.

And just wondering what? And probably having the littlest sliver of hope that maybe maybe they did just go off. And they're living a life and everything's OK, and they just needed to be themselves. Who knows? And then it's like, and then you find out that they've caught these two fucking horrific serial killers and they're digging up their home. And your loved one is one of those people.

Like, your loved one has just been buried in their cellar.

That you had no idea that they were in the clutches of these people at any point in their life. That must just be the biggest punch to the face.

Absolutely like, Oh, it's now, it's beyond.

She was found in an awful way. OK, I just want to be clear about that. There were no clothes found with her remains, but she had a scarf folded and rolled and formed in a loop around her head and tied in a bow.

That's the most haunting detail, yeah.

And unfortunately, Fred said very little about Therese during his interrogation. But during Rose's trial, the prosecutor pointed out that Therese had no connections to the area. And Like, was likely pitched up, picked up, hitchhiking to the boat, right? And they said the only reason to abduct her must have been so that she might be abused, either sexually or physically, or both. Yeah, and I believe it's so.

I'm Dan Tabersky. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York.

I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like, stuttering, super bad. I'm like, stop around. She's like, I can't.

A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls with a diagnosis. The state tried to keep it under control.

Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, well, yeah.

Now it's hysteria, it's all in your head, it's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since the Witches of Salem?

More than seven months passed before they found another victim, and this one is 15-year-old Shirley Hubbard.

15 years old. Yep.

So Shirley, unfortunately, was, like some of the other victims. Led a difficult life for someone so so young. Yeah, and had a history of, you know, getting into trouble, running away, that kind of thing. After her parents separated, when she was just two years old, she actually was put into foster care.

Yeah.

Like several of the other victims, Shirley had been in and out of trouble in the months before her disappearance, and had even run away just a month earlier. So that's why it was tough when she disappeared, because she had been in this like phase, you know, yeah.

When you wonder, like, you don't know what she was experiencing in foster care.

No, you have no idea. Like, Oh, and again, she had been through a lot, so it's like she was. They act out, you know?

Absolutely.

That happens now. A few weeks later, after she was found after running away, she had started dating a boy named Daniel Davis, whose brother coincidentally had dated Carol Cooper.

What the fuck?

Isn't that wild?

Yeah, yeah, but it just shows you what an area this is, yeah.

Like a smaller.

Yeah.

A bus station and waited with her until the bus arrived. Wow, good boy, good job, Daniel. They had plans to meet back at the bus stop the following day, but Shirley didn't show up.

What?

Because the wallpaper in that section of the room was all Marilyn Monroe.

What?

Which I don't know why that, just like, gives me the.

Oh my god.

That part has been sticking with me.

So they just kept her alive like that for however long.

Yeah.

Oh my god, how are people this sick?

That's.

Like, how are people this absolutely fucked in the head?

Humans.

And she's human. I like, literally want to...

Yeah, it makes me sick, like I literally feel sick to my stomach in this one, like sick to my stomach, like that part. I mean, all of it is just....

No, I could never.

And I will not be doing that. But the image my brain has conjured of that mask is bad enough.

Yeah, I just I genuinely like, how does your mind go there?

That's the thing.

I'm like, who thought of that? And how the fuck did they find each other? Dude? Yeah.

That's the thing. And procreated.

And to think that Shirley is in that state, while there's what? Three, four kids, around four kids, yeah.

Yeah, like, honestly, like, I'm not kidding you, it makes my stomach turn.

No, it's just a wild thing to imagine.

Now, by this point, a pattern appears to have emerged where Fred and Rose are kidnapping and killing at least one young woman every five or six months at least.

Yeah.

And with the exception of Lucy and therese, most have come from, you know, dysfunctional upbringings, like trauma upbringings. Unsurprisingly, the victim profile is almost certainly what allowed them to continue killing for as long as they did.

Yeah.

In fact, of the victims that went missing at the time, the murder of Lucy was described as quote the one that attracts the most anger, right?

Which is sad.

And it was the one that received the most coverage, and part of that was because of her uncle's fame as a novelist. Yeah, I wondered that. So, had people slash the media expressed as much outrage over the other victims, it would have been different.

Right, and there's not like a there's not a ton of family members. Like contacting the media or like getting in touch with anybody. Because unfortunately, some of these girls just didn't even have anybody.

Exactly, they either didn't have anybody or the people they had had been through these moments of them disappearing for a little while, exactly. So they were just like, Well, you know, and then the media is like, Well, they're a runaway, what's the story?

A missing person should always be a story.

Absolutely, and if they, if. Again, if people or the media had made or expressed any outrage about these victims, it's possible that connections could have been made. Yeah, more connections and connections to the West themselves. I mean, maybe some of this carnage could have been avoided, which is really frustrating.

Why would you think there's any danger? You've literally lived in this house?

You lived in their house.

Like, these are not strangers you're getting in a car with.

I know them, I know them. So she would have no reservations about getting into a car with them. And probably wasn't even alarmed when they returned to the West's house, rather than going where Juanita was headed.

Yeah, I'm sure they explained it away, like, Oh, I just have to grab this, or, you know, whatever.

And she's like, Okay, I know you guys, it's fine.

Yeah, like, no worries.

The prosecution said during Rose's trial, the conclusion is perfectly clear. Juanita was brought to Cromwell Street almost inevitably, having been picked up while hitchhiking. She died while she was being degraded, either as being part of what her attackers found doubtless fun, or because she could not be released afterwards.

Doubtless fun.

Because they had fun, they said. they admitted that they found enjoyment.

That's the other thing. It's crazy to come across a story like this where people do these things. And it's even crazier when they admit how much joy they got out of it.

That they had fun with someone in the most horrific terror you can ever imagine.

Like, your brain just doesn't comprehend how that's even possible, like, how are their brains capable of having fun when people are dying at your hands? Like, I don't, obviously, I don't get it.

No, I just. And that's why it's such a out of reality kind of thing. When you look at it, you're just like, I don't connect with this as another human being. Even because, and this is like a silly example, but it's just it's just a way. When even on like TikTok, when like you know, like, like, you know, stupid like parent influencers will like, scare their child for likes.

Yeah, I hate that.

Like, that's fucked up, like, fuck you. If you do that, agreed and I will get like, so angry seeing that I'm like, No, not interested.

Like, and that's because that's how we're designed as humans, like you're supposed to feel empathy and compassion.

Seeing someone in fear. genuine fear. seeing someone in pain. genuine sadness. seeing someone sad, seeing someone upset.

To think of some, and to think of one person completely void of that, finding another person completely void of that and teaming up is so.

Well, it's honestly it feels like it just feels like existential, otherworldly, you know, like it just feels like totally outside. I can't. It doesn't feel like we're on the same plane of reality, which, like, I don't think we are.

No, we're definitely not.

Like, I really don't. I don't feel like we are all on the same plane of reality that Fred and Rosemary west of the world are on. I feel like there's just some disconnect there, I mean, there's many disconnects, but like there is, I don't. Someday we'll know, but like someday we'll find out what that that disconnect is.

And it still absolutely blows my mind.

And it still will, never, it will never fail to turn my stomach, these kind of stories.

And these specific kind of cases like these, really gruesome ones, they.

Like the Meyer-Henleys, and especially it's the couples that, like, for some reason, really get me.

And even like the Albert Fish one, I think because I was kids and like, this one obviously has kids. It just it really sticks with you.

People that are like just the sadists who find enjoyment, yeah, you know, those are the ones that you're just like that. I don't even know if psychiatry can explain you, I don't think anything can explain you.

Like, let's just go fully paranormal.

Honestly, like this, this, this is tough, this one's been tough, but don't worry, we are going to....

I'm kidding.

We're going to take a little, I'm going to need a.

A paranormal moment.

That's not as heavy. I think, Yeah, hopefully I can do it. I always say that and then I end up being like, Sorry, I'm doing a really awful case now.

Yeah, you've been hella brutal lately.

So maybe I'll, I'll find, maybe I'll do, like a Spooky Road or Spooky Castle, something something you know, or a survival tale. There you go.

Sometimes those are, like, even so gruesome, though sometimes those can be tough, too.

We'll find something that, you know, I can, I can take a second for the next one.

Yeah.

But now, out of our any sense of being humanity here, once they got back to the house. Investigators believe that Juanita was sexually assaulted and then was gagged with a ligature made from two of Rose's nylon socks. And she was hogtied with plastic covered rope, similar to that used on the washing line in the backyard. They were both. They were all found in her grave with her remains.

That's awful. It's so weird to think of these people, even like having socks and a washing line.

Yeah, they're just like having having human things, that's so human, yeah.

Oh my god.

But the angle at which it was inflicted would have prevented the amount of force necessary to kill her.

So that was just.

So that would have not been her the fatal blow.

Oh my God, yeah. So she went through that fully alive.

Oh, yeah, she went through horrors. Oh yeah.

Huh.

They remind me of the toolbox murders a little bit.

Yeah, yeah.

They did shit like this, like torture now. During their most prolific period, in the early to mid 1970s, local police were not entirely ignorant to Fred and Rose West, like they were known, for sure.

They had that whole fucking court case where the judge was like.

I think it's fine, yeah, it's fine. And in fact, throughout this period, police often visited the house at Cromwell Street to interrogate Fred about petty thefts or minor drug offenses that he was regularly committing at the time.

To think that they were just one floor above all of these missing girls.

And I'm, like, no one questioned if that was a safe place for children. I can't imagine that, that that these people came off as stellar parents. Like no one was thinking, maybe just throw a report in.

Right, like, I mean, these kids had already been dropped off and picked up from CPS or foster care. How many times?

Nobody wanted to make some kind of wellness check on those children if he's committing offenses all the time.

And even young, 20-something-year-old nannies are like, Yeah, the children seemed really completely different when the parents were around. It's like you would think someone in law enforcement would notice that.

Well, and given the frequency with which young women were disappearing at the time during this time period, it's pretty fucked up. That they never suspected the Wests of being involved, especially considering their histories, which we've already gone over. That they got totally scot-free away with one, and they had known connections to some of these missing girls.

Yeah.

Like, it's not like they were entirely not all of them, for sure, like some of them really did. Just vanish into thin air, by all accounts, and then were found later. But there were a couple that, like, at least, had connections.

I mean, lived in their house, rented a room from them, worked for them as a nanny.

Like, there were ones that you could victims, that you could sit there and say, Okay, well, there is a connection. No one looked into it.

Do you think they did? And it was just that they just didn't have the evidence? I don't know, but it's, I mean, fucking do a search warrant. It seems like shit was everywhere.

Well, and it did seem that the increased attention on Fred's, you know, petty crimes at the time did seem to act as like somewhat of a deterrent for them. At least for a little while. Because after the murder of Juanita, three years passed before they killed again that we know of.

I was going to say.

Now, Fred and Rose may have put a hold on the murders between mid-1975 and, you know, the middle of 1978. But that didn't mean that they stopped victimizing girls entirely. Yeah, we just don't know if they murdered anyone. With an increased focus on missing women in the area, it would have been unwise on their part, if you're looking at it from their point of view, to keep abducting girls. Yeah.

Nice.

It was established in 1970 as kind of a last stop for teenagers who'd been kicked out of every other institution and foster home. Right? This home was less of a care facility, and it was kind of like borderline juvenile detention center. Oh, for Fred and Rose, these were precisely the type of vulnerable and emotionally fragile young women that Fred could manipulate.

Yeah.

In the summer of 1976, a 15-year-old resident, referred to only as Miss A, moved into Jordan's Brook after two years spent bouncing around between other placements. Before that, she had lived with her biological parents, but was removed from the home once authorities learned that she was actually being sexually abused by both her father and her brother.

Oh my god.

I mean, these poor girls, yeah, like you hear, like, again, just a life of knowing nothing.

Just going through it.

But awful shit.

Yeah, and like, not having any home.

And by that point, Fred had made a habit of offering these girls rides whenever he saw them on the street. I'm sure, so he was like, Yeah, he was using this.

How philanthropic?

And he would quickly become a shoulder to cry on for some of these girls, and included Miss A. Now, a few months after moving in, Miss A ran away from the school and went right to the West House.

Because she probably had built a relationship with Fred, like, not like a romantic one, yep.

But she was met at the door by Rose, who was dressed quote only in her bra and pants and made sexual advances towards Miss A.

Gross.

It's unclear whether anything occurred at the time. But, according to a court testimony given at Rose's trial, Miss A returned to the house a little over a month later. And that's when she was talked into where she was sexually assaulted by Fred and Rose.

Yeah.

According to that testimony, she was taken into a room where there were two other naked girls who she did not know. After being undressed by Fred, the girls were secured with packing tape and sexually assaulted by both Rose and Fred.

Oh my god. mm-hmm.

Next, they taped Miss A to the bed and quote Frederick West had sexual intercourse with her, while Rosemary West fondled her thighs.

I hate that. They say he had sexual intercourse with her.

Thank you because that bothers me.

No, he raped her, he raped her. She's a 15, 16-year-old girl, He raped her, and she's taped to the bed.

Like he raped her, they both raped her.

Oh my god, this is so horrible.

After the assault, the girl was allowed to leave, likely because Fred and Rose assumed that she wouldn't say anything about the attack.

Probably that she didn't have anybody to tell that's the thing.

Who's she going to tell?

And I'm sure they thought she wouldn't be believable anyway.

And she didn't, she didn't tell anybody, because she didn't have anybody. A few weeks later, Miss A. returned to the house with a can of gasoline she'd taken from the house down. But definitely say that he had sexual intercourse with her again.

Yeah, totally.

They raped her and she was fucking angry.

And I don't blame her for being angry.

And honestly, I wish she had been able to. Yeah, but she's a literal child. yup, she's a child.

Oh.

Which is so that's exactly what Rose and Fred want.

Yeah.

That's exactly what they want.

And that's what so many women and men feel when they're sexually assaulted, yeah.

You feel ashamed, you feel guilty.

And that's what the abuser preys upon.

Of course, and that's exactly what they do. When Fred and Rose did decide to kill again, they chose yet another victim who is unlikely to be reported missing. It's unclear how they first met or how the relationship actually began. But Shirley Ann Robinson was either 17 or 18 years old when she met Fred West in the spring of 1977..

Oh, no.

Now, whatever she said in her private letters was one thing. But eventually, Shirley began telling others in the house that she and Fred were going to be married, which Rose did not like. Uh-huh. By late fall, things in the West House had become wildly tense. Fred had begun working with Rose's father to build a small cafe downtown, which it's like, so he's just building a cafe downtown. No, thank you.

Don't you dare get anywhere near a cup of coffee, Fred?

No, don't you do it? And the two men planned to operate as a small business together, but the stresses of that project had increased. The fighting between Rose and Fred because they were pieces of shit and they hated each other in all actuality like they could. Neither one of them knows love, you know, like, that's not how that works. Um, and they had taken it out on Shirley as well.

Yeah.

Now, eventually, the tension became too much, and Shirley moved out of her room in the main house and started sleeping on the couch of another lodger. Uh, Liz Brewer, who lived on the second floor.

Okay, still at the house, yeah.

One day, in early May, Liz Brewer returned home to find Shirley and her belongings completely gone from the room. So she asked Fred where she had gone, and he told her she'd gone to visit relatives in Germany.

Yeah.

Given that Shirley was more than eight months pregnant and her baby was due to be born the following month, that seemed a little strange to Liz that she would just be jumping on a plane.

Eight months pregnant.

But she didn't know Shirley that well, so she didn't really question it that much, cause she was like, okay.

And she's probably seen all kinds of weird shit around this house and she's like, I'm not getting my nose in it.

Now, unlike the other murders which were committed, you know, because they are fucked up and they got some kind of gratification, sexual and otherwise from them. Investigators believe that the murder of Shirley and Robinson was committed because she presented a threat to Fred and Rose's relationship, according to Rose, while the other bodies appeared to have been dismembered in a methodical manner, Shirley's body appeared to have been quote hacked into pieces with either an ax or a cleaver.

And he's first of all, he's able to do all of this to all of these women. But there's a almost like fully grown baby in her belly. Yes, like, like people have babies at eight months. Yeah, he just killed a baby, too.

He just killed his own baby infant.

And dismembered, yep, both people.

Yep.

What, why did I not remember this from? Like, I've heard this case.

I did not know any of this because I never looked this hard into the case until now, I mean.

I've heard it like.

I've known the I knew the overview of of things, I did not know all these details.

Wow.

Once he had finished dismembering or hacking apart Shirley's body, Fred buried her in the back garden because he'd run out of space in the basement.

Okay, he had run out of space.

Ran out of space?

That's a pretty solid feeling.

And he didn't believe the explanation he was given about her having gone back to Germany. And he, he was absolutely convinced that in the case, he had little authority to press the matter any further and the case was closed. But he was like trying, he was like, something's amiss. By 1979, Fred was often preoccupied with the cafe at this point because now he's got a thriving business.

That's.

Yeah, what? And Rose was not a cafe.

Yeah.

A cafe? And Rose was supplementing the income by engaging in sex work, which Fred would often watch through one of the various peepholes he'd installed in the walls of the room that Rose used to entertain clients.

That's good because I'm about to break into pieces.

And more is coming. So I'm going to stop there before part four, which is going to be the final part, because it needs to be the final part.

Yeah, okay.

So we hope you keep listening and we hope you...

Keep it weird bye.

Bye.

Oh my fucking god.