MAKING OF A MONSTER

It's been three decades since the victims of Fred and Rose West finally received some justice. Three decades since West hanged himself in his jail cell and three decades since Rose was handed a whole life sentence.

- BY HOWARD SOUNES

The builder murdered at least 12 people between 1967 and 1987 but incredibly that wasn't the first time he had blood on his hands.

West ran over and killed a three-year-old in an ice cream van two years before his presumed first victim Anne McFall disappeared.

The death was ruled an accident but, speaking for the first time, the boy's family are adamant it was deliberate.

Howard Sounes gained access to more than 100 hours of police interviews for his new book The Fred West Tapes: Secrets of the Fred & Rose West Murder Investigation.

Here, in Day 2 of our exclusive serialisation, he exposes family secrets that led to the making of the monster.

FRED West often lied in his police interviews. But some of his most colourful stories turned out to be true.

One of the most shocking was that of Harry Feeney.

West was living in Glasgow with his first wife Rena when he got a job driving a Mr Whippy ice cream van.

One estate he visited was Castlemilk where cheap new homes had been built after the slum clearances. He told police he befriended a three-year-old boy who regularly came to his van.

One day, when Fred was driving out of the cul-de-sac where the boy lived, he heard a dreadful sound.

"There was an almighty bang, and I stopped. Fred told the police in these previously unseen 1994 interview transcripts. "I was on top of his head, and it was his head that made the bang" He looked under his van. "I see that the child was lying underneath, under the back axle," Fred continued.