Fred West Found Hanged
Birmingham, West Midlands The 1st of January 1995 AD
At 12.55 pm on New Year’s Day 1995 officers at Winson Green Prison in Birmingham made the grisly discovery of Fred West hanging from an improvised ligature made with his clothing. His cell had been on a 30-minute watch-schedule because of fears that he could take his life, but West was cunning if not bright. There were faint signs of life still in his body, but attempts to revive him failed and he was pronounced dead about half an hour after he was found.
West was on remand awaiting trial on 12 counts of murder. It has been speculated that he took his own life in the hope his wife Rose would be helped thereby to evade justice. She did not. Rose West was sentenced to life imprisonment for 10 murders on November 22 1995. A less well-known aspect of the West family history is that in 1996 Fred’s brother John also killed himself by hanging, similarly evading justice it seems, given a jury would have considered evidence against him the day after his suicide in respect of allegations that he raped one of his nieces more than 300 times.
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