‘Horrors House’ Suspect Found Hanged in Cell

Frederick West, the 53-year-old builder accused in the murder of 12 women and girls in the grisly “House of Horrors” case, was found hanged in his prison cell Sunday.

West and his wife, Rosemary, 41, had been scheduled to go on trial next month for the series of killings that shocked the nation, with body after body found in and around the Wests’ home in Gloucester.

The Prison Service is investigating the circumstances surrounding West’s death, but preliminary reports from Birmingham’s Winson Green Prison indicated it was a suicide.

West’s body was found at 12:55 p.m., officials said, and attempts by the staff to revive him were unsuccessful. A doctor pronounced him dead at 1:22 p.m.

His wife, who is in prison near Bristol accused of assisting in nine murders, was told of her husband’s death later Sunday by her lawyer.

West was arrested in February after one of the biggest police searches in recent years. Detectives who made the arrest were investigating the disappearance of the couple’s daughter Heather, who was last seen alive in 1987 at age 16.

Police found Heather’s remains buried under a patio in the small back yard of their house at 25 Cromwell St. Within days, two more bodies were found in different parts of the yard.

One of the bodies was identified as a former boarder of the Wests who was 18 and pregnant at the time of her disappearance.

Nine bodies were eventually discovered at the house, one at a former West home and the others in fields. West was accused of the murder of his first wife, Catherine, their daughter Charmaine and a teen-age Scottish nanny.

West was regularly brought to court for hearings but had never explained his role in the killings.

His early life was unremarkable: He was the son of a Gloucestershire farm worker and was the eldest of six children. He moved several times as an adult, working in construction, on farms and as a truck driver.

He married his first wife in 1962. She disappeared in 1970--with West indicating she had left with another man. He remarried in 1972.

Unknown to acquaintances, West had amassed a record of convictions for petty theft, receiving stolen goods and traffic offenses.

Still, he was often described as an ordinary, unremarkable person by those who knew him--all of whom expressed amazement that he could be the serial killer whose crimes caused headlines around the world.