Rose West gave a chilling reaction when she was told that her serial killer husband, Fred, was dead

A prison governor has described the horrific moment Rose West learned of her husband’s death and her horrific reaction.

Infamous murderers Rose and Fred West tortured at least a dozen young women to death in sick sex games. She remains one of only four British women to be sentenced to life imprisonment. Rose West and her husband Fred murdered, dismembered and buried young women and girls at their home in Cromwell Street, Gloucester. They carried out the killings between 1967 and 1987 before Rose was jailed for life in 1995. Fred hanged himself in prison on New Year’s Day 1995 while awaiting trial for 12 murders.

Among their victims was one of their daughters and someone else’s daughter. Rose helped Fred rape their daughter, Heather, in 1987, kill her, and bury her under their yard. In 1997, then Home Secretary Jack Straw imposed a lifetime tariff on Rose West. Now 69 years old, she has continued to protest her innocence.

Rose is one of only four women in modern times to be sentenced to life imprisonment. Lucy Letby, the worst serial child killer in modern British history, joined the list in August after being convicted of killing seven children and attempting to kill six others. The list also includes bog killer Myra Hindley who, along with her accomplice Ian Brady, murdered five children between July 1963 and October 1965. In 1966, both Hindley and Brady were jailed until their deaths. Hindley was unsuccessful in suing for her lifetime tariff and died in 2002 at the age of 60.

The fourth member on the list is Joanna Dennehy, who is facing a life tariff for killing three men “just for fun” over a 10-day period in March 2013. She dumped the bodies in remote ditches in Cambridgeshire and, while police were searching for them, drove 140 miles to… Hereford where two random dog walkers were stabbed repeatedly.

But in prison, Rose West was a model of good behavior, quietly knitting an endless scarf and making a cup of tea for her jailers, who called her “Auntie Rose,” according to former prison governor Vanessa Frick. Rose even convinced the prison governor to take her for a day out in Regent’s Park in central London, and buy her ice cream, Vanessa told podcast host Sean Atwood, the Star reported.

Vanessa was in charge of the segregation unit at Holloway Prison in north London where Rose was imprisoned. “It was New Year’s Day around 4 or 5 p.m., when the duty governor arrived,” she recalled. Vanessa is told that Fred West hanged himself in Winson Green Prison and that Rose needs to get the news.

Vanessa takes Rose into the office, and the Governor on Duty advises her to sit down, explaining that he has some bad news for her. Anticipating an emotional reaction, he sympathetically tells her that Fred hanged himself in his cell. “There was nothing, no emotion…there was just a little twinkle in her eyes.”

Vanessa said she was under the impression that Rose believed her husband’s death meant she would not face trial for their crimes. “I think that’s what Fred thought too, that if he outdid himself, Rose would get away with it. I’m sure that’s what Rose thought, there was no emotion at all.”

Vanessa said she believed Rose was “evil in her own right” like Fred. She added that people generally believe that women can only be passive accomplices in horrific crimes, but people like Rose and Myra Hindley – who briefly had an affair with Rose when they were both at HMP Durham – are proof that some women They could just be partners. Evil as men can.