IN common with many people, I suspect, I chose not to follow the trial of Rosemary West last autumn. The discovery of the dismembered bodies of eleven young women in what soon became dubbed the "house of horror" 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester - was so sickening with its mix of banality and evil that I had no stomach for more.
When Frederick West hanged himself in Winson Green prison I felt cheated - again like many, I suspect. Although with no wish, to hear the details myself, I sensed that a tragedy of such magnitude needed a public stage for the final act, if only for the sake of the victims and their families. My own, gut reaction mirrored that of the nation. In spite of strenuous legal arguments on the part of Rose West's defence team that she should not be brought to trial, to trial she was brought. After all, said the collective voice of righteous revenge, the idea that these girls could have been murdered and buried by Fred West right under his wife's nose without her knowledge was inconceivable. Sudden disappearances (including that of her own daughter), the presence of blood, the smell, and DIY of herculean proportions she must have known.
Which is the ironic title of Brian Masters's unsettling account of the whole harrowing tale. Although juries are our representatives, ordinary people empowered to scythe their way through the obfuscations of the law, they do so armed with evidence, with facts. "She must have known" is simply not enough.
The problem in the Crown's case against Rosemary West was that there was no evidence to link her with the murders. All the prosecution had to offer was guilt by association and guilt by bad character.
The defence should have had an easy job. Of the eleven young women whose bodies were found, one was her own daughter, and Rose West's distress on hearing of her death was clearly unfeigned. Seven others were unknown to her unknown, indeed, to anyone at Cromwell Street, a lodging house that catered for the rejects of society. But not these girls. Their only known connection is that their dismembered bodies were found there.
Of the remaining four, the first, a jealous would be wife carrying Fred West's child, was killed well before West met the 15 year old Rosemary Letts, but the body already bore his trademark signature of mutilation - fingers, toes and kneecaps amputated and missing. The murders of the remaining two victims, West's ex wife and her daughter, were not laid at Rose's door until after Fred West's suicide, when the date of their murder was suddenly revised to coincide with his absence in prison for petty theft. It was 1971. Rose West had been with Fred for under two years and she was only 17.
Brian Masters sets out the background clearly and objectively. He is by trade a biographer, not a journalist. His tone is sober and unsensational. Although he has had no personal contact with either of the Wests (Rose West declined to co operate), since he is the author of two studies of serial killers (Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Nilsen), his understanding of the psychology of the phenomenon is probably as good as one could ask for.
It is hard to argue with Masters's contention that the way in which speculation was granted the status of fact, and in which evidence of sexual perversion and abuse was offered as evidence of propensity to kill, is understandable only in the context of the lynch mob. But beyond the very real flaws in the trial itself - not to mention the appalling role played by the tabloids and the "buying" of witnesses what anchors Masters's belief in Rosemary West's innocence (as opposed to her non proven guilt) is his analysis of the Wests' personalities in relation to other mass murderers, including Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.
For her role in the sexual abuse of her step daughter, not to mention the others, Rose West would have been put away for a long time. And rightly so. But, as Masters points out, "Even the wicked deserve justice." More importantly, perhaps, so do we.