Be innocent of the knowledge . . .

till thou applaud the deed

Colin Wilson

SHE MUST HAVE KNOWN: THE TRIAL OF ROSEMARY WEST by Brian Masters

Doubleday, £15.99, pp. 358

When Fred West hanged himself in his prison cell on New Year's Day 1995, many newspapers speculated that his wife Rose would now never come to trial. Her solicitor declared: 'The evidence was always flimsy, and now it is flimsier.'

What few people realised at the time was that there was some powerful evidence against Rosemary West. Two teenage girls, Caroline Owens and 'Miss A', had described how they were tied up by both the Wests, and subjected to lesbian assault by Rose and rape by Fred. Moreover, West's daughter, Anne Marie, had described how both her father and step- mother had taken her virginity with a vibra- tor when she was eight, and then routinely subjected her to sexual abuse.

At the beginning of Rose's trial, the defence tried to prevent this evidence from being introduced. But the judge cited the tale of Bluebeard, pointing out that if one of his wives had escaped, her evidence would have been relevant to the prosecu- tion.

In She Must Have Known, veteran crimi- nologist Brian Masters argues the highly unpopular position that Rose West might well have been innocent. It sounds, of course, absurd — as his title implies. How could a woman live with a mass murderer for more than two decades without noticing what was going on? Yet he argues his case

so convincingly that even the most sceptical reader will find himself wondering whether he might not be right after all.

Masters begins by pointing out that 17- year-old Caroline Owens was allowed to leave after her night of rape and beating. And since this is the only known case when both the Wests took part in kidnap and rape, it seems to show that Rose West had no homicidal intentions.

But what about the rape of 'Miss A', which took place five years later — by which time six corpses already lay under the floor of 25 Cromwell Street? Here Masters is inclined to take the side of Rose West, who alleged that it simply never hap- pened. Miss A, he says, is a known liar and deceiver, and she told no one else of the rape at the time.

But again, what about Anne Marie, the daughter who was raped at the age of eight? Here Masters admits that

Rosemary was aware of Fred's vulgarity, lewdness, overt sexual play with his own daughters, but not necessarily of his incestu- ous attacks.

Rose West, he concedes, was a foul- mouthed, aggressive woman who often treated her own children abominably. But, he says, this does not make her a murder- ess. And he paints a picture of a woman under her husband's thumb, engaged in prostitution because he ordered her to be, but still with no idea that the man to whom she was married picked up young girls in his van, took them to a remote farmhouse, tortured and murdered them, then took the bodies back home for burying while she was out all night sleeping with other men.

Masters' sober and unsensational style makes all this sound highly plausible. Yet there are obviously flaws in his argument. Anne Marie West described in court how, when she was 12, Rose West held her down in the back of the van while her father raped her. How does this square with his statement that Rose was 'not necessarily aware of his incestuous attacks'?

The answer to why Caroline Owens was allowed to go free seems obvious. She was their first kidnap victim and she had not only agreed not to tell on them, but also to return to their house as a nanny. It was only because her mother noticed marks on her face that she broke her word. The Wests almost went to prison. As it was, they were fined £50 each, an enormous sum for a working-class couple in 1973. They had good reason for making sure that it never happened again.

As to Miss A, no one who reads her pre- cise and detailed testimony at the prelimi- nary hearing and the trial can doubt that she is telling the truth. She probably sur- vived because she was one of three victims in the bedroom at the same time. (Anne Marie believes she was another.) She describes how she was taped face down- ward on the bed, sexually abused by Rose, then raped by Fred.

In court, all this showed what it was intended to show: that Rose West joined enthusiastically in the torture and rape of young girls, including her stepdaughter, and that she was therefore perfectly capa- ble of taking part in the rapes and mur- ders, and probably did.

But Masters ignores a far more potent argument for her guilt: that of the two, Rose was the dominant. Her children make the point repeatedly. On one occasion she chased Fred upstairs with a carving knife and drove it halfway through a door, almost severing her fingers in the process. After his rape of Caroline Owens, Fred apologised to Caroline when Rose was out of the room, saying: 'It was all her idea.'

There have been many cases of 'duo- murder', where a man and woman collabo- rate on sex killing — Masters cites the Moors Murders, and many others. But the West case is the only one in which the female partner was the dominant one of the two. Rose was not the poor, down- trodden victim under the thumb of her husband, as she tried to make out in court. She was not 'forced' to sleep with other men. She was a nymphomaniac who did it willingly. Rose was the boss. When she lost her temper, Fred took cover.

In presenting his book as an argument for Rose, Brian Masters does himself an injustice. For this large and carefully researched book is not primarily a polemic. Like the author's earlier books on Dennis Nilsen and Jeffrey Dahmer, it sets out the facts in detail, so the reader can make up his own mind. And, like the other two books, it deserves to become a classic of criminological literature.

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