Let's Have A Chat About Murder

On 29 January 1972, Fred and Rosemary married. The ceremony took place at Gloucester Register Office, with Fred incorrectly describing himself as a bachelor upon the marriage certificate.

No family or friends were invited apart from Fred's brother John, who acted as best man.

Several months later, with Rose pregnant with her second child, the couple moved from Midland Road to an address nearby: 25 Cromwell Street.

Shortly after giving birth to her second child, Rose began to work as a prostitute, operating from an upstairs room at their residence and advertising her services in a local contact magazine.

To cater to these fetishes, they amassed a large collection of bondage and restraining devices, magazines and photographs later expanding this collection to include videos depicting bestiality and graphic child sexual abuse.

Rose controlled the West family finances, Fred giving her his pay packets. The room Rose used for prostitution was known throughout the West household as "Rose's Room", and had several hidden peepholes allowing Fred a long time voyeur to watch her entertain her clients.

He also installed a baby monitor in the room, allowing him to listen from elsewhere in the house.

But that is not all what was going on in this House of Horror.

At least eight of these murders involved the Wests' sexual gratification and included rape, bondage, torture and mutilation; the victims' dismembered bodies were typically buried in the cellar or garden of the Wests' Cromwell Street home in Gloucester, and this is how 25 Cromwell Street became known as the "House of Horrors".

In this Podcast I talk about the Childhoods of Both Fred and Rose West up until the day they meet and form their relationship.

Both suffered horrific systemic sexual and physical abuse from birth. Could this have any influence on what made them the serial killers they became?

Frederick Walter Stephen West born (29 September 1941 – 1 January 1995) was an English serial killer who committed at least twelve murders between 1967 and 1987 in Gloucestershire, the majority with his second wife, Rosemary West. All the victims were young women.

At least eight of these murders involved the Wests' sexual gratification and included rape, bondage, torture and mutilation; the victims' dismembered bodies were typically buried in the cellar or garden of the Wests' Cromwell Street home in Gloucester, which became known as the "House of Horrors".

Fred is known to have committed at least two murders on his own, while Rosemary is known to have murdered Fred's stepdaughter, Charmaine. The couple were apprehended and charged in 1994.

Fred fatally asphyxiated himself while on remand at HM Prison Birmingham on 1 January 1995, at which time he and Rose were jointly charged with nine murders, and he with three further murders.

In November 1995, Rose was convicted of ten murders and sentenced to ten life terms with a whole life order.

Fred first encountered Rosemary Letts in early 1969, shortly after her 15th birthday. The pair first met at Cheltenham bus station.

The Soham Murders UK – 2002 Part 2

While returning to 4 Redhouse Gardens, Wells and Chapman walked past the College Close home of Ian Huntley, the senior caretaker at the local secondary school.

Huntley evidently lured the girls into his house, stating that his girlfriend, Maxine Carr the girls' teaching assistant at St Andrew's Primary School—was also present in the house. (Carr was actually visiting her mother in Grimsby, Lincolnshire on this date.

The precise chain of events to occur after the girls entered 5 College Close is unknown, although investigators believe sections of Huntley's later claims in initial interviews granted to the media prior to his arrest and his later trial testimony, such as that he had been cleaning his dog at the time the girls passed by his house at approximately 6:30 p.m. and that one girl had been suffering from a mild nosebleed—may have been true.

In any event, the cause of death of both girls was later ruled to be asphyxiation.

The girls' bodies were discovered on 17 August 2002. in an irrigation ditch close to RAF Lakenheath, Suffolk.

Huntley was convicted of the murder of both girls on 17 December 2003 and sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment, with the High Court later imposing a minimum term of 40 years.

His girlfriend, Maxine Ann Carr—the girls' teaching assistant—had knowingly provided Huntley with a false alibi.

She received a three-and-a-half year prison sentence for conspiring with Huntley to pervert the course of justice.

The Soham Murders are the murders of two 10-year-old girls which occurred in Soham Cambridgeshire, England on 4 August 2002.

The victims, Holly Marie Wells and Jessica Aimee Chapman, were lured into the home of a local resident, Ian Kevin Huntley, who subsequently murdered the children, likely via asphyxiation before disposing of their bodies.

In this Podcast I talk about the chain of events leading up to these murders. The efforts made to locate Wells and Chapman in the thirteen days of their disappearance have been described as one of the most intense and extensive in British criminal history.

One individual who claimed to have spoken with the girls immediately before their disappearance was 28-year-old Huntley, who informed investigators on 5 August he had engaged in a brief conversation with both girls on his doorstep the previous afternoon.

Having actively participated in the search for the children, Huntley also made efforts to ingratiate police officers; regularly asking questions as to how their investigation was progressing and just how long DNA evidence could survive before deteriorating.

On 19 December 2014, Huckle was arrested by officers from Britain's National Crime Agency at London's Gatwick Airport and questioned on suspicion of serious offences against children.

Huckle was charged with 91 counts including creation and possession of child pornography, rape of a child under the age of 12, digital penetration, child abuse, and facilitating the commission of child sexual offences by creating a paedophile manual.

In April, during a preliminary trial hearing, Huckle pleaded guilty to 71 of the 91 charges he was facing after a request to watch all the evidence against him in court.

During the hearings, the full scale of Huckle's crimes became apparent for the first time.

The prosecution, led by Brian O'Neill QC, showed evidence of a long history of crimes that started during Huckle's gap year in 2006 and continued for eight to nine years until he was apprehended in 2014.

They included rape of children under the age of 12, possession and distribution of child pornography, creation of child pornography, child abuse, creating a paedophile manual entitled "Paedophiles and Poverty: Child Lover Guide", digital penetration of a child under the age of 12, and raising money for his activities via a crowd-funding website.

His victims ranged in age from 6 months to 12 years old; one was abused while wearing a nappy, and another was abused for several years between the ages of 5 and 12.

He boasted about his crimes to other paedophiles, posting such comments as "Hit the jackpot, a three-year-old girl as loyal to me as my dog and nobody seemed to care" and "impoverished kids are definitely much easier to seduce than middle-class kids".

On 13 October 2019, Huckle was found strangled and stabbed to death in his cell at Full Sutton prison, aged 33.

It was reported that he was beaten, stabbed, and strangled repeatedly.

Another prisoner was charged with his murder in January 2020.

Huckle was "humiliated" by fellow inmate Paul Fitzgerald on October 13 last year.

Paul Fitzgerald tortured Huckle for one hour and 19 minutes in his cell at HMP Full Sutton.

Fitzgerald claimed he was carrying out "poetic justice" for those targeted by Huckle.

He told the jury at Hull Crown Court during a five-day trial that he wanted Huckle to "know what it felt like".

Richard William Huckle was a convicted English serial sex offender and child rapist.

He was arrested by Britain's National Crime Agency after a tip-off from Australian Police and convicted of 71 counts of serious sexual assaults against children while working as a freelance photographer and posing as a Christian teacher in Malaysia.

Police officers from Task Force Argos had been aware of a network of paedophiles operating on a dark web network called The Love Zone (TLZ). They noticed one member who always made posts using the unusual greeting "hiyas" and had a distinctive freckle on one of his fingers.

Huckle was prosecuted under Section 72 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which allows British nationals to be tried and convicted in the United Kingdom for child sex crimes committed while overseas in an effort to prevent child sex tourism, a stratagem known as extraterritorial jurisdiction and a move welcomed by child protection charities.

Police officers from Task Force Argos had been aware of a network of paedophiles operating on a dark web network. They noticed one member who always made posts using the unusual greeting "hiyas" and had a distinctive freckle on one of his fingers.

The Innovation in forensic anatomical identification - combating the sexual exploitation, look at Surface markings on the hands as identification, Like Knuckle creases in hand identification and Vein pattern analysis. This research is led by Dame Susan Margaret Black..

Ian Watkins (born 30 July 1977) is a Welsh convicted sex offender and former singer, songwriter, and musician.

He achieved prominence as the co-founder, lead vocalist, and lyricist of the rock band Lostprophets. Rock band Lostprophets disbanded shortly thereafter and the remaining members formed the band No Devotion, with American singer Geoff Rickly replacing Watkins.

On 19 December 2012, Watkins was charged at Cardiff magistrates court with conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a one-year-old girl and possession and or distribution of indecent images of children and "extreme animal pornography".

He was remanded in custody, as were his two female co-accused.

On 18 December 2013, Justice John Royce sentenced Watkins to 29 years in prison, with eligibility to apply for parole after serving two-thirds of his prison term, around 18 years or so, followed by six years of supervised release, for multiple sexual offences, including the sexual assault of young children.

His two co-defendants, the mothers of his victims, respectively received sentences of 14 and 17 years’ imprisonment.

One of Britain's most prolific paedophiles, who posed as teenage girls on social media to get dozens of young boys to send explicit images of themselves and other children, was jailed for 25 years.

Former youth football team coach David Wilson, 36, tricked victims aged between 4 and 14 to send him explicit selfies before blackmailing them into making more extreme videos.

He is thought to have approached more than 5,000 children globally before being arrested by investigators, who had been sent information by Facebook.

Today police chiefs warned the social media giant's plan to introduce end-to-end encryption - a system where only the communicating users can read the messages - could hinder similar investigations in the future.

Appearing at Ipswich Crown Court, Wilson of King's Lynn, Norfolk, was jailed for 25 years after admitting 96 child sex abuse offences against 52 victims.

The court heard Wilson used unregistered phones to approach his victims through social media sites, including Facebook and Instagram.

Pretending to be young girls, Wilson built up trust with his victims before blackmailing them into sending him explicit images.

In some cases, Wilson blackmailed his victims into abusing younger siblings or friends.

Some boys were left suicidal by the abuse.

Zoe disappeared from her home in Army married quarters in Warminster, Wiltshire, UK, on 11 January 1997, sparking one of this country's biggest-ever search for a missing child.

Zoe was last seen being tucked into bed by her mother at her home in Warminster, Wiltshire, on 11 January 1997.

When his wife phoned later to say that Zoe was missing, Evans was the dutiful, concerned parent, joining searches for the youngster.

That night he went to bed early, saying he wanted to be up early the next day to take part in the renewed search.

Two days later, police found Evans's T-shirt near the rear door of his home and a pair of Zoe's knickers in a nearby field. Both were stained with her blood.

Days later Evans, an army lorry driver, appeared alongside his wife in a televised police appeal for information on the missing girl, faking his concern as he told Zoe there would be 'lots of cuddles' for her if she came home.

Unbeknown to Zoe's mother, the man sitting next to her was responsible for killing her daughter.

Evans was only playing the role of the concerned parent in a bid to deflect police interest in him.

His halting performance at the press conference where he refused to meet the eye of reporters and detectives, had led police directly to him.

He was arrested and charged with murder a few days later, and eventually convicted of her murder.

Zoe's naked body was later found in a badger sett, six weeks later, concealed deep in the undergrowth on Battlesbury Hill, less than a mile from her home.

One forensic psychologist explains Evans might have 'routinely' sexually abused his stepdaughter and killed her when she tried to protest.

Zoe was Nine Years Old at the time of her Murder.

Rebecca Marie "Becky" Watts (3 June 1998 – 19 February 2015) was a British student from Bristol who was murdered in 2015 at the age of 16.

Becky Watts was last seen at home in St George, Bristol, on the morning of 19 February 2015 by her step-mother Anjie Galsworthy, a multiple sclerosis sufferer, who left the house at around 11:15 for a hospital appointment.

It was the prosecution's case that Watts was suffocated in her bedroom during a "sexually-motivated" kidnap plot carried out by Matthews and Hoare.

According to the prosecution, after the killing, Matthews and Hoare put Watts's body into the boot of their car and stayed at the house for several more hours, during which time other family members arrived home.

Later that day, they drove back to their own house, where over the next few days they dismembered her body using a knife and a circular saw and put the remains into bags and boxes, which were then hidden in a neighbour's shed.

In November 2015, her step-brother, Nathan Matthews, was found guilty of her murder and was sentenced to life in prison with eligibility for parole after 33 years and his girlfriend, Shauna Hoare, was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 17 years in prison, but Matthews maintained that Hoare was not involved at all Both Matthews and Hoare were also convicted of conspiracy to kidnap, preventing the lawful burial of a body, perverting the course of justice and possession of two stun guns.