Barry West was just seven when he watched his parents beat his sister Heather to death at their Cromwell Street home in Gloucester.
The son of Fred and Rose West died of a painkiller overdose, aged 40, in 2021 after telling a doctor his life was ‘not worth living’.
Between 1967 and 1987, Fred and Rose tortured, raped, and murdered at least 12 young women in Gloucester, including two of their own daughters, before Fred died by suicide and Rose was sentenced to life in prison in 1995.
In a previously unshared interview, that took place two years before his death, Barry told the Mirror that his father was a ‘solid monster’ but it was his mother that was ‘a complete psycho’.
The deviant couple married at Gloucester Register Office in January 1972 and moved into a three-storey property at 25 Cromwell Street shortly afterwards.
It was here, in what was dubbed the ‘House of Horrors’, that the majority of their victims were found buried in the garden and cellar in 1994.
Among their 12 victims was their eldest daughter Heather, who was 16 when West killed and dismembered her, and Charmaine, Fred’s eight-year-old daughter from his first marriage to Rena Costello.
During their time together, Fred and Rose shared ten children in total – including five they had together.
Barry West was just seven when he watched his parents beat his sister Heather to death at their Cromwell Street home in Gloucester
Barry was just seven when he watched his parents (above) beat his sister Heather to death at their Cromwell Street home in Gloucester
Heather West (pictured), the eldest of Fred and Rose’s biological children, was murdered, dismembered and buried in the garden when she was 16
Then there were the two girls, including Charmaine and Fred, as well as three daughters Rose gave birth to after becoming pregnant from clients she slept with while working as a prostitute.
Barry was Rose and Fred West’s youngest child, with the couple also parents to daughters Heather Ann, Mae June and Louise, alongside son Stephen, 45.
In June 1987, Heather, 16, became the final victim of the Wests after suffering years or trauma and abuse at the hands of her parents.
Barry, then seven, witnessed the death of his sister at the hands of her parents.
Taken into care five years later, he was too scared to give evidence at his mother’s 1995 trial and was plagued by nightmares and psychiatric problems his entire life.
‘That’s what people don’t know: My mum was, child abuse-wise, the main person,’ Barry said.
‘My mum was completely sick in the head. She beat me way more than my dad did, and enjoyed it, absolutely enjoyed it.’
Barry’s bedroom had been in the soundproofed cellar at 25 Cromwell Street, where the West children were often locked in overnight with Rose wearing the keys around her neck.
Barry’s bedroom had been in the soundproofed cellar at 25 Cromwell Street, where the West children were often locked in overnight with Rose wearing the keys around her neck
Fred and Rose West, arguably two of the UK’s most prolific murderers, pictured in mugshots
Fred West killed himself in prison in 1995 while awaiting trial on 12 murder charges. His wife, 67, was sentenced to life in jail without parole for ten murders. Pictured: The victims
Opening up about the abuse he suffered, he revealed that Rose would violently lash out straggling and even stabbing her children.
Barry said that his nose had become deformed due to the number of times she broken it and that she would regularly beat him with a giant wooden spoon which would split his head open.
‘She was just as sick as him. Her moods didn’t change. She used to hit us even on Christmas Day. She used to smack you straight in the mouth,’ Barry added.
He recalled one Christmas where he hid his Brussels sprouts behind the back of a chair and when Rose found it days later, she made him eat the rotting vegetable before forcing him to swallow his own sick.
Barry described his father as ‘disgusting man’ who forced him into sexual situations with his mother at just eight or nine’.
He claimed Fred regularly spoke about wanting to take his daughters’ virginity in front of him , telling him about about the family tradition of incest, and sex with animals.
According to Barry, the children would answer to phone to take booking for Rose when she working as a prostitute and he was also offered up to clients.
He recalled his mother telling him ‘there’s a man in here and I want you to do exactly what he tells you to do, no matter what’.
Fred and Rose West pictured with their children, two of whom died at their hands
Charmaine West (pictured) was murdered by Rose West at the age of eight and buried in the garden by Fred upon his release from prison
Mae West (L) and her older sister Heather, who was murdered at 16, pictured as children
Mae West (pictured as a teenager) was not taken into care and is believed to be the only one of the siblings who maintained contact with Rose after she was imprisoned
Stephen West pictured as a young boy with his dad Fred and his sister Heather, whose grave he was made to dig
The man became a regular and repeatedly raped him as well as having sex with Rose.
He claimed he and his sibling were made to watch homemade porn featuring their mother.
Barry admitted that he thought about killing his father and stabbed him with a screwdriver when he was aged 11.
However, Fred just laughed at him, he said.
‘Why didn’t we all run away?,’ Barry asked.
He responded to himself by saying his ‘dad was like God’ who ‘you couldn’t beat’ as ‘he would find you.’
His older sister Heather’s death acted as a warningr.
The rest of the children were told she’d moved away, but it went on to become a family ‘joke’ that if your crossed Fred and Rose, you could suffer the same fate – dead under the patio.
