Inside the mind of serial killer Fred West

Housewife and student Janet Leach was brought in by police to assist Fred West as he confessed to his crimes. Her ordeal is now the focus of a new TV drama In 2006, I met the late Gordon Burn for a drink in a Manchester pub. It was Burn’s brilliant book about the Yorkshire Ripper case, Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son, which had given me the confidence to write my 2000 television drama, This Is Personal, about the police investigation of the Ripper murders. At the time of our meeting, I had just written a new television drama, See No Evil, about the moors murders – a subject Gordon too had explored in his novel Alma Cogan. We discussed how these notorious crimes had come to have such profound resonance in our national life, indeed had in some ways come to define certain places and periods – and why it seemed important for writers to engage with them. During the conversation, Burn spoke about his book about Fred and Rosemary West, Happy Like Murderers. He told me that he had found it the hardest of all to write, that the effect of peering into the moral abyss that the Wests’ crimes presented had been deeply unsettling. There was more to be said about the case, he was sure, but if I were ever to explore it I should expect to feel the same way. Five years later my two-part drama Appropriate Adult, which tells the story of Janet Leach, the Gloucester woman asked by the police to sit in on their interviews with Fred West, has been filmed and is due to be broadcast on ITV this autumn. During the research and writing of the drama I thought often about that conversation with Burn and, looking back, realise that its theme was born during that meeting. Putting the crimes of serial killers into any kind of order of horror would be a futile and tasteless task, but it is worth considering what made the crimes of the Wests particularly abhorrent. Like Peter Sutcliffe, they sometimes targeted women who were complete strangers, such as Lucy Partington, who was abducted on a main road in Cheltenham while on her way to catch the last bus home. Like Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, they committed appalling sexual crimes against children (their own and their stepchildren). But most of their victims were vulnerable young women who, for one reason or another, needed a home and were offered one at 25 Cromwell Street. An offer which ultimately led to violation, torture and death. It is perhaps this violation of our sense of what a home should be – safe, secure, loving – that is most troubling. The Wests carried out their crimes while (to most outside eyes) living a relatively normal domestic life in a quiet street in a picturesque English cathedral city. Few were aware that the authorities had suspicions of child abuse (there had been a failed prosecution), and though there was gossip about Rose’s activities as a prostitute, the Wests were generally well-liked locally. Fred West especially was genial, affable and possessed of a beguiling charm which he used equally on men and women. If you look at photos of him cracking the police up with laughter after his arrest you can see this. At a recent private viewing of the drama two of the Wests’ daughters, Mae and Louise, were struck by how convincingly Dominic West had captured these qualities in his portrayal of Fred West. It was, they felt, what many people failed to understand – that in many ways their parents functioned within the normal parameters of human behaviour. Indeed, although sexually abused by them, some of the Wests’ children felt loyalty, affection, perhaps even love towards their parents. They were not creatures from another planet. What should disturb us is not only that they could behave monstrously, but how like the rest of us they could seem. It is this inconvenient truth that lies at the heart of Appropriate Adult. There is a view that a drama about such a subject should not be made, which ignores the fact that since Sophocles, dramatists have engaged with the darkest areas of human experience. But these are real events, the argument goes, doesn’t that make it wrong? If so, then the many films which have dealt with the Holocaust, such as Sophie’s Choice and Schindler’s List, should never have been made. But isn’t it too soon? If that is true then Paul Greengrass’s United 93, made within a few years of 9/11, should never have seen the light of day. It is in fact 17 years since the Cromwell Street murders came to light – almost the same length of time as between the arrest of Peter Sutcliffe and the making of This Is Personal, my dramatisation of the flawed police hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper. Dramas about such events need a clear purpose, which is to illuminate those events. The process of making these programmes is a complicated and painstaking one. Of central importance are the feelings of those whose lives have been most directly affected, which is usually the families of victims. Often they have suffered twice, first by losing a loved one in horrific circumstances, second by acquiring a kind of stigma of being associated with a notorious crime. Factual dramas can help to lift this stigma. I have seen this happen numerous times. I will never forget the day I spent on set with the families of the victims of the moors murders when we were making See No Evil. We were filming the trial of Brady and Hindley in Chester – in the very court where they had been convicted. I recall asking Alan West, the stepfather of Lesley Ann Downey, who had attended the original trial, if it felt strange returning there to watch a filmed recreation. Nothing is ever normal again after you’ve had a child murdered was his answer, but he was glad to be there and in no doubt the story should be told. He was aware of the savage irony that the most vocal public opponent of the drama was Ian Brady, who had complained that it “would cause distress to the relatives”. The same stigma which attached itself to the families of the moors murders victims has clung to those affected by the Cromwell Street murders. This has become clear in the conversations we have had with those affected by them, including their daughters Mae and Louise. While they have been supportive of the drama and, having now seen it, believe it will be a force for good, Anne Marie Davis – the daughter of Fred West and his first wife, Rena – has opposed it and said that she will not watch. Having suffered as she did, Davis has every possible right to such feelings. It is our hope, however, that the drama will enhance sympathy for all those who have suffered and continue to suffer as a result of the Wests’ crimes. Appropriate Adult neither recreates those crimes nor attempts a definitive psychological analysis of Fred and Rosemary West. Like This Is Personal and See No Evil, it is about the effects of the crimes rather than crimes themselves. Whereas those earlier dramas focused variously on the police, the victims and their families, and the families of the murderers (whose suffering is often ignored), this one places at its centre a woman who was almost an accidental witness to the uncovering of what happened at 25 Cromwell Street. When Janet Leach (played by Emily Watson) first met Fred West, she had no idea who he was nor what he had done. She was a housewife and part-time social-work student who had recently gone on the appropriate adult register – a list of persons approved to sit in on police interviews with vulnerable people, in order to assist them and safeguard their rights. She had received minimal training and this was the first time she had been asked to perform the role. She was told only that the person she was to assist was a 52-year-old man with “learning difficulties”. The police wanted to be sure that his legal defence team could not later claim he had not understood the proceedings. Within minutes of entering the interview room she heard him describe the murder of his daughter Heather in graphic detail. From that moment, she became inextricably linked with the investigation and – as some of those closely concerned with the case have acknowledged – critical to its success. As the interviews proceeded West began to privately confide information about his crimes to her, information which, because of obligations of confidentiality, she was not free to pass on directly to the police. West knew this and exploited the power this gave him, both over her and the police. He rewarded Leach – emotionally – for the moral support he demanded from her if he was ever going to tell the full truth. And if she had not given that support there might have been families who, even now, might never have found out what happened to their loved ones. But it was in some ways a Faustian bargain. As the horror of what had happened at 25 Cromwell Street emerged, a kind of moral contagion seemed to spread outwards from the house – few were left unscathed by it. Stories and rumours, fuelled by a press that was ready to throw money at them, swirled around the city (including unproven allegations that the police investigation was compromised because unnamed officers had in the past used Rosemary West’s services as a prostitute). Caught up in this toxic atmosphere, and encouraged by her partner, Leach made a deal with the Daily Mirror to tell her story (albeit not until after any trial had taken place so as not to jeopardise its outcome). As Fred West drew her closer she made other misjudgments and alienated her family. There was more than an element of Stockholm syndrome in her relationship with him, and when it ended she was left empty and bereft. Looking back now, Leach is aware of all this, and makes no excuses for her mistakes nor claims to be a heroine. She behaved as I believe most of us would when exposed to (for want of a better phrase) extreme evil. But she survived, her essential human decency intact, and there is no doubt her actions helped bring to light crimes that might otherwise have remained undiscovered. That is why the story is told through her eyes. Our questions to the audience are: how would you act in the same circumstances? How would you cope with having such terrible knowledge put into your head? These were matters I discussed with Marian Partington at Hinsley Hall, Leeds, when she showed producer Lisa Gilchrist and myself around the library dedicated to the memory of her sister Lucy. Marian’s adult life has been deeply affected by first the disappearance of Lucy and then the discovery of what happened to her. As the conversation progressed I was reminded of the one I’d had years earlier with Burn. The question should not be about whether we engage with the darkest of human acts, but how we do so, and thus perhaps prevent them and liberate ourselves from their influence. As we were leaving, Partington mentioned a book which had helped her – Eva Hoffman’s meditation on the aftermath of the Holocaust, After Such Knowledge. It is a title, it occurs to me now, which might have served for Appropriate Adult. Appropriate Adult will be broadcast on ITV1 this autumn Drama Television Crime Dominic West Gordon Burn guardian.co.uk

Posted by on August 1, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.