I started watching a few crime documentaries a while back, and got quite interested in the ones on serial killers. Over time I've developed a bit of a fascination with these people.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not developing a blood lust, looking for hints on how to best dispose of my first victim. I just find it incredible and disturbing in equal measure how, no matter what bizarre, twisted and horrific scenes you might see in a film, someone has almost invariably done the same thing to another human being. Ranging from the seemingly normal, well educated, well groomed Ted Bundy, who went undetected for a while simply for not looking like a serial killer, to Ed Gein who, let's face it, does.
The one, or ones, who have stuck with me is the story of the West family. I don't know why, maybe because it wasn't that long ago so wounds are still fresh in peoples minds. Walking around Gloucester and Cromwell Street especially, it feels like there's still an eerie air of mourning over the barbaric events of 17 years ago. Maybe it's the fact that this all happened just an hour or so up the road. That this kind of atrocity isn't something confined to those crazy Americans, or Victorian London.
Until recently, I knew what most know about Fred and Rose West, that they'd killed loads of people and buried them under the patio. I didn't realise the extent to which their depravity reached. I also didn't realise at first how recent the case came to light. I'd always heard about it, assuming it was something that went on in the 60's or 70's. Before my lifetime. The more I learn, the more I want to know about these intriguing people. Rose West, for example, was sexually abused as a child by her father, so its not a massive suprise that she felt this was an acceptable practice within her 'family of love', raping and abusing her own children, whom they'd raised for this exact purpose. Fred saw nothing wrong or abnormal about his own incestuous relationship with his mother.
It's no wonder these two went on to produce home made porn, apparently against the will of Rose however, some involving their own kids. They tortured and raped female lodgers. Fred strangled his daughter to death and had to close her eyes as he cut off her limbs so she wasn't 'watching' him and buried her in the garden. Other lodgers were killed and dismembered, and buried in the garden, in the cellar, in shallow graves in fields. Freds 8 year old step daughter from his previous marriage was killed by Rose, wrapped in a sheet and buried in the cellar of their old house.
All of the recordings of Fred West eventually confessing every detail of how he killed, cut up and disposed of the women are told in a matter of fact style, with no apparent emotion in his voice, no remorse, apart from him saying it got out of hand. It's this lack of empathy or emotion that fascinates me about not just the Wests, but most serial killers. For a rational, 'normal' person, taking a life, cutting through their flesh and bones and discarding their remains doesn't bear thinking about. What is lacking? What has snapped? Why are they inclined to kill?
