At just 18-years-old, Karen Hamilton embarked on a working holiday in the UK in the sleepy city of Gloucester – but little did she realise, her new neighbours were the country’s most notorious serial killers, Fred and Rose West.
“When I first met Fred, he didn’t do anything bad to me – but he gave me a very bad vibe, so I used to try and miss him every time I went to their house,” Karen tells Woman’s Day, recalling her first encounter with Fred and Rose when she would visit her friend Liz, who rented a room from the couple.
“Rose was quiet, but she had these really dark black eyes and she didn’t talk very much. She just had this energy that I did not want to go near.”
LIVING IN THE HOUSE OF HORRORS
Between 1971 and 1987, Fred and Rose West tortured, sexually assaulted and killed an unknown amount young girls in their “house of horrors” on Cromwell Street – with Fred eventually being found guilty of 12 murders, while Rose was convicted of 10.
Their victims – who also included their eldest daughter Heather and Fred’s daughter from a previous relationship, Charmaine – were mostly lodgers who were renting a room from the killer couple, who’d bury their victims in the home’s garden and cellar.
Like the victims, Karen and her friend Liz were lodgers in the Wests’ home but Karen believes they were not targets due to having family living nearby. Karen’s aunt and uncle lived a few doors down and Liz’s mum lived around the corner.
While living in the “house of horrors”, Karen, now 67, says the only indication that something was amiss was the horrible smell that came from the cellar in the basement.
“They acted like a really normal family, but there was a dark undercurrent,” the author from the Blue Mountains region of NSW tells.
“The house itself wqs pretty normal… the one thing unusual was it was very busy with lots of people coming and going.”
When asked about the odour coming from the basement, Karen says they often said it was just food that’d gone bad or sewerage.
STRANGE SMELLS
“We didn’t know what the smell was,” Karen shares. “It was only later that we discovered that there were bodies.”
Fred and Rose were eventually investigated by police after their daughter Heather disappeared in June 1987, with her parents telling her siblings she’d left to work as a cleaner in Torquay which was a two-hour drive away.
While the Wests’ other children did not initially question the story of what happened to Heather, they became curious after hearing many different reasons why Heather had left and didn’t contact the family.
When the children misbehaved, Fred would also jokingly threaten to bury them “under the patio like Heather” – which led Police to begin investigating whether Heather was killed.
Fred and Rose were eventually arrested for the first time in August 1992 after police searched their home under the pretext of looking for stolen property – but instead they found evidence of sexual assault, which their daughter, who cannot be named, confirmed in a statement to police.
Fred was charged with three counts of rape while Rose was charged as an accomplice – but both were eventually acquitted when their children refused to testify against Fred in court the following June.
In February 1994, Fred confessed to killing Heather and burying her under the garden after the police began pressing him for her location and condition. After being arrested for the second time, he confessed to another nine murders.
“I was at work when mum called to tell me the news,” Karen says.
“She told me that my aunt and uncle rang and that police had discovered all these dead bodies in the house. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”
PAYING HER RESPECTS
While both Fred and Rose were charged with multiple counts of murder – only Rose ended up being tried for their crimes as Fred took his own life in January 1995 while being held on remand.
That November, Rose, now 72, was found guilty of ten murders and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole or a conditional release.
Now nearly five decades since she met Fred and Rose, Karen is hoping to head back to Gloucester next year to visit the “house of horrors” she briefly called home.
“I will visit the house while I’m over there and give my respects to the girls that were incarcerated there,” says Karen, who has just published a memoir, Nightmare on Cromwell Street, about her experiences living with Fred and Rose.
“This is a historical case that needs to be remembered for how evil they were and for all the girls… we don’t want to forget those girls ever.”
Nightmare on Cromwell Street is out now.
