The Real Prime Suspect

S02E03 Ex-DCI Jackie Malton turns her attention to Fred and Rose West, an English couple who committed at least twelve murders between 1967 and 1987 in and around Gloucester. All of their victims were young and female—and included two of their own children. In most cases, the victims were picked up while hitchhiking or waiting for a bus, then they were raped, killed and buried under the house. Jackie returns to the now empty lot at 25 Cromwell Street to revisit the couple’s sickening crimes. In 1993, after the police obtained a search warrant following a rape charge brought against Fred, the remains of Heather West (16), who had disappeared in 1987, were discovered under the patio. Soon, the police had turned up 8 more sets of human remains. Fred and Rose received life sentences, quickly judged to be sex-obsessed sadistic murderers beyond any hope of redemption. Fred West killed himself in prison in 1995; Rose West is still serving her sentence in Wakefield Prison. Jackie speaks to the police involved in the arrest, and considers how the Wests’ crimes managed to go unnoticed for so many years. Jackie will interview Leo Goatley and Howard Ogden, the Wests’ solicitors; Bernard Knight, pathologist; David Whittaker, specialist in forensic dentistry; Geoffrey Wasnell, author of Fred West’s biography; and Paul Britton, criminal profiler.