Fred and Rose West were strange but I had no idea that they were... SERIAL KILLERS

Kathleen Richards was just 17 years old when she lodged at 25 Cromwell Street. As she publishes a spine-chilling memoir about surviving the so-called 'House of Horrors', she reflects on almost becoming another victim of the sadistic couple

- By Jane Warren

EARLY ONE morning in January 1979, 17-year-old Kathleen Richards bundled her few belongings into a bag, gathered up her baby nephew, and followed her older sister Deidre, lone year her senior, out of the front door of 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester. They didn’t look back.

“We had escaped — but at the time, we didn’t know what from,” says Kathleen, now aged 65. Towards the end of the 14 months they had spent in Cromwell Street as lodgers, their landlord had repeatedly attempted to molest Kathleen.

He began by squeezing past her on the stairs, then one night climbed into her bed. In the language of the 1970s, Kathleen says she thought he was “a dirty old man”.

“Fred West was an idiot, he seemed harmless, a bit silly, always thinking he could get away with things,” she says in a soft voice.

“At first I quite liked him. He was friendly, nice even. But I didn’t like him touching me, so living there got very intense because I was trying to keep away from him.

“I didn’t know he was doing the same thing to others.”

Never for one moment did Kathleen think he was evil. In fact, it was his wife Rosemary that she found more peculiar, with her strange mood swings that involved a singsong, childlike voice, rather than her usual abrasive tone.

It wasn’t until 15 years later, in August 1992, that the girls’ early morning departure would take on a heart-stopping significance. As Kathleen made dinner for her two young children, John, then 11, and Stephen aged five (her youngest Hannah wasn’t born yet), she heard on the radio that her former landlord and his wife had been arrested on suspicion of multiple murders.

Kathleen collapsed on the kitchen floor.

“When I first heard what the Wests had done, I was in shock and felt sick. I couldn’t believe it. You can’t believe he’s actually murdered people,” she says today.