WARNING, DISTRESSING CONTENT: Kathleen Richards’s first day as Fred West’s lodger was marked by a sinister act that was a disturbing sign of horrors to come in her time at 25 Cromwell Street
On the day that teenager Kathleen Richards moved into a rented room at 25 Cromwell Street in November 1977, she immediately noticed something amiss. And that was down to her landlord – serial killer Fred West.
In her new book, detailing the time she spent in Fred and Rose Wests’ house of horrors, she recalled seeing a sinister sign of things to come. She wrote: “As I throw my bag on the bed, I spot a row of neatly-drilled holes along the bedroom wall.”
“Look,” Kathleen whispered to her older sister Deirdre, who shared her room in the serial killers’ infamous Gloucester home. “Are they spyholes?”
In their first conversation with their landlord, Kathleen and Deirdre were introduced not only to Fred’s wife Rose, but a young woman who the twisted builder had described as his “lover.”
“Maybe Fred is a dirty old man,” Deirdre told Kathleen. “That might explain why he has a wife and a lover both in the same room.”
But Kathleen couldn’t at the time believe that 18-year-old Shirley Robinson was really in a throuple with the Wests. “He’s old enough to be that girl’s dad,” she said at the time. “No way he was being serious. I’m sure there’s a simple explanation for that.”
Kathleen, who had run away to Gloucester to escape an abusive environment in her native Ireland, found some old newspaper underneath the carpet in their rented room and tore it into strips that she wadded up to block the spy-holes.
But when Kathleen awoke the following morning, she saw another chilling warning sign. She explained: “As I open my eyes, I see the six balls of newspaper, pushed back out of the holes, lying on the floor in defeat. I don’t know what scares me more, the peeping tom himself, or the fact that he is so blatantly shameless.”
Soon things escalated, with evil Fred pouncing on Kathleen whenever she left the room, cornering the naive teenager on the stairs and groping her, boasting to her about the size of his penis.
“You know you want me,” he would tell her. “Rose isn’t home. Why not come to my bedroom and see what I’ve got for you.”
Kathleen recalled how Fred had bad breath and body odour, making the regular maulings she received at his hands even more repellent.
For her part, vile Rose also attempted to seduce Kathleen, luring her into the Cromwell Street house’s living room, where she was laying on a sofa wearing nothing but a transparent nightie.
Kathleen’s only ally in this dark times was Shirley, who would eventually meet her own death at the hands of the twisted couple. The young Irish girl recalled how, whenever Shirley saw Fred trying to molest Kathleen, she would command him to let her go.
But even then, there was a dark complexity to the relationship, with Shirley apparently trying to help Rose seduce Kathleen during the “grotesque incident with the see-through nightie”.
Shirley had been pregnant when Kathleen and Deirdre had first moved into Cromwell Street, but mysteriously disappeared from the house just as she seemed ready to give birth. When the two Irish girls asked about Shirley’s whereabouts Fred and Rose would airily tell them that Shirley had “gone to Germany”.
After Shirley’s murder, the twisted landlord became even more focused on Kathleen. He would let himself into her bedroom with his spare key, and in one particularly shocking incident in February 1979, climbed into bed with her as she slept and attempting to initiate sex.
The terrified teenager begged him to let her go. He said he only would as long as she agreed to watch a “special video” with him and Rose. “We will have some fun,” he said. “You get my meaning?”
Kathleen pretended to agree, so she could make her escape. Telling Fred that she wanted to get ready, Kathleen promised to join the twisted couple in their sitting-room before bolting out of the front door as soon as Fred’s back was turned.
She met with her sister, who had been visiting a boyfriend in Derby, and they agreed to leave Cromwell Street the next day. Deirdre decided to move in with her boyfriend while Kathleen went to stay with her brother Danny.
The next time she heard Cromwell Street mentioned was almost exactly 15 years later, when she head a news report about a major murder investigation in Gloucester.
She told The Guardian that she was in “complete shock” when she heard the news.
“There weren’t any words,” she said. “I rang Deirdre, said hello and she said, ‘I know.’ We didn’t speak, just held the phone. I could hear her breathing.”
If you or somebody you know has been affected by this story, contact Victim Support for free, confidential advice on 08 08 16 89 111 or visit their website, Victim Support.
Under Their Roof by Kathleen Richards with Ann Cusack is published by Sphere at £22.