True Crime Book Review Gordon Burn Happy Like Murderers

Tweet

1994 The story of two of Britain’s most infamous serial killers, Fred and Rosemary West, who killed at least a dozen women between 1967 and 1987 when they were finally caught. Many of the victims were dismembered and buried in concrete in the cellars of the West’s house in Cromwell Road, Gloucestershire. They were a dreadful couple, ghoulish and fixated on strange sex. Fred invited men to make love to Rose, and sometimes watched while they did. The Wests frequently allowed drug parties at their home, using the attraction of the drug dealers to lure young women to the house. Fred, often arrested for stealing, sometimes acted as a police informant to get the drug users and dealers arrested. The author suggests that this may be why the police often turned a blind eye to accusations of abuse by him. Though the house was finally searched in 1994 it was the 1987 murder of their daughter, Heather West that led to it. Fred frequently threatened women that they might meet the same fate as her (officially he claimed she was a runaway, hiding and not making contact due to her part in credit card fraud though no such crime had taken place). Heather had been telling too many friends how abusive Fred & Rose were. She was killed to silence her. Fred’s contradictory claims about her whereabouts led to investigations. The garden and cellars at Cromwell Road finally revealed their horrific secrets. Fred committed suicide in prison, though Rose is still serving a life sentence. Burn tries to be literary and arty with his book, often repeating whole passages again as if they are poetic, rather than letting the story tell itself. The book is also dated by inaccuracies as evidence found since publication proves Rose was killing on her own even when Fred was in prison for stealing car tyres and tax discs. It remains an amazing if terrifying story of human inhumanity though. Arthur Chappell