- As a teenager living in the UK, Karen stayed at 25 Cromwell Street
- Years later, she learned the house was the infamous “House of Horrors,” where the Wests tortured and murdered multiple young women, burying them on the property
- Haunted by how close she came to becoming a victim, Karen later wrote a book to honour the girls who never escaped
Here Karen Hamilton, 67, Sydney, NSW tells her own story in her own words.
A rank stench wafted up my nostrils as I walked into the narrow terraced house.
‘Where are you living, love?’ asked the man, dressed in a baggy green jumper as he did jobs around the place, hammer in hand.
His dark eyes bored into me under his mop of unruly hair and thick bushy eyebrows.
‘Five doors down at number 15, with my aunt and uncle,’ I replied.
As the hair rose on my arms, the man was so creepy I couldn’t get up the creaky steep staircase quickly enough behind my friend Liz.
With each step, the rancid smell dissipated and, opening the door to Liz’s sun-drenched room on the top floor of 25 Cromwell Street, it felt homely and safe.
‘Don’t worry about Fred the owner. He’s just a bit weird,’ laughed Liz. ‘His wife, Rose, is nice, just quiet.’
Liz and I were best mates and I spent more time in her bedsit than at my aunt and uncle’s.
My mum, Joan, and dad, Francis, had emigrated to Australia in the 1950s from the UK, settling in Sydney.
We’d often visited my Aunt Lottie and Dad’s brother Uncle Bob, in Cromwell Street, Gloucester.
Now aged 18, in 1977 I’d flown to the UK to stay with them.
I’d easily made friends at the pubs and clubs and met Liz, then 17, a tall girl dressed in a glamorous pencil skirt with high heels, in the queue for Tracy’s nightclub.
Liz worked in the club and bagged me a job behind the bar.
Working late nights I began to stay at her place, chipping in for rent, so I didn’t wake up Lottie and Bob.
The many-roomed terrace was always humming with lodgers, young nannies and kids playing in the yard.
I often saw Rose, smiling. A shy plain woman with glasses she was usually with two of the children she shared with Fred, Heather and Mae.
They were the prettiest, sweetest little girls.
My new landlords Rose and Fred seemed delighted to have me in the house and were friendly – a bit too friendly in Fred’s case. He made my flesh crawl so I did my best to avoid him.
But as the months passed by, life got stranger.
‘I often saw Rose, smiling…she was usually with two of the children she shared with Fred, Heather and Mae.’
‘Fred says we’re not to go in that room,’ Liz said, pointing at the odd padlocked metal door leading to the cellar.
What was he hiding down there? I wondered.
But I didn’t dare try to find out…
After 11 months, I flew home. But I missed Liz, so a year later in 1979, aged 20, I went back for a visit.
When I knocked on the door at 25 Cromwell Street, Rose opened it.
‘Is Liz here?’ I asked.
‘No. Would you like to come in for a cuppa and wait?’ she said sweetly.
‘I’ll come back later,’ I replied nervously.
Something told me not to go in there without Liz…
Hours later Liz was home but as I went up the stairs the familiar heavy stench lingered.
‘It’s so great to see you,’ Liz cheered.
As we caught up, another young lodger named Shirley knocked on Liz’s door to say hello, and explained she was a nanny.
Shirley’s big brown soulful eyes locked with mine, and I felt a jolt of fear that I didn’t understand.
In her grey tracksuit, she seemed to be hiding a baby bump, around three or four months along.
It’s not my place to ask, I thought.
‘What was he hiding down there? I wondered.’
READ MORE: Elizabeth Smart kidnapping: Snatched from her bed in the night
Four weeks later I flew back to Sydney. Although we wrote to each other for months, as life moved on Liz and I lost touch.
I started my career as an audio court typist, but was plagued with terrible recurrent nightmares of three freshly dug graves
– a bright pink stiletto heel sticking out of one.
Then in 1994 when I was 35, Mum rang me in a panic.
‘I had a call from Aunt Lottie – they’ve been killing girls at 25 Cromwell Street,’ she said, as I reeled in terror.
‘What? Rose and Fred West? Oh my God!’ I gasped.
Never in my wildest dreams could I have ever thought I’d been living with serial killers.
The vile couple had buried bodies in the garden, in their cellar, and even under the floor in a bathroom.
‘You’re very lucky,’ Mum said tearfully.
Sick to my stomach, I remembered the foul stench – the smell of death, I was sure.
When the police rang they asked me, ‘Do you know any of the names of the girls?’
‘Only Shirley and Liz. Is Liz okay?’ I panicked but they reassured me that Liz was fine.
She called soon after.
‘There were 20-year-old bodies there,’ Liz said.
‘The vile couple had buried bodies in the garden, in their cellar, and even under the floor in a bathroom.’
‘No!’ I gasped.
Worse still, Liz said that the girl I’d spoken to in her room, Shirley Robinson, had been heavily pregnant with Fred’s baby when he’d strangled her to death and buried her in the garden.
Shocked, I was convinced that the otherworldly sensation I’d felt was a prediction of Shirley’s tragic death.
I felt so guilty that I couldn’t help her.
And I was sure the fact my aunt and uncle and Liz’s mum lived so close had saved us from Fred and Rose’s deadly sights.
I followed the case as 25 Cromwell Street became known as the House of Horrors.
Between them, Rose and Fred had 10 children. And horrifyingly, the police had caught wind of a tragic family ‘joke’.
‘He’d strangled her to death and buried her in the garden’
The West children had been told to behave – otherwise they’d end up buried under the patio, just like their sister Heather, who’d gone missing in 1986, aged 16.
The ‘joke’, shared by one of the five kids to a social worker after the children were removed from the West home in 1992, would lead to a gruesome discovery…
Police excavated the cellar and garden of 25 Cromwell Street.
Tragically they discovered nine bodies including Rose and Fred’s daughter, sweet Heather – the beautiful little girl I remembered so clearly from all those years ago…
More horror unfolded.
Fred’s first wife, Catherine ‘Rena’ Costello, had been discovered dismembered and dumped in a field.
His stepdaughter, Rena’s girl Charmaine, eight, was found buried under the floor of a home the Wests had once rented.
Rose West was charged with 10 murders, and her sick husband with 12. Escaping punishment, he died by suicide in his cell, aged 53, on January 1, 1995.
In November 1995, after pleading not guilty, Rosemary Pauline West, then 42, appeared at Winchester Crown Court.
‘I know I had a lucky escape.’
The court heard their victims – some teenagers, all female – were lodgers, nannies, students, hitchhikers and runaways.
They were tortured and subjected to brutal sexual assaults by the Wests. Some were mutilated, many were decapitated.
The evil killer was found guilty on all 10 counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Chilled to the core, I wondered if I’d had tea with Rose whether she would’ve drugged it and the same grisly fate would have befallen me.
I had two sons of my own, and when I read Mae West’s book about her and her siblings sleeping in the basement with bodies buried below, it broke my heart. I was so distressed that I couldn’t finish it.
I was glad when I heard the house had been demolished and a walkway put in its place. But I was horrified to hear police are still searching for other possible victims killed by the Wests.
Tormented by survivor guilt, last year I wrote a novella Nightmare on Cromwell Street about my time in the House of Horrors.
It’s a tribute to all those girls who lost their lives, and were murdered so young.
I know I had a lucky escape. I will think of those young girls who were killed so violently until my last breath.
To buy Karen’s book Nightmare on Cromwell Street shop here.
