The daughter of serial killers Fred and Rose West has revealed her evil mother “cut all ties” with her in a chilling letter from behind bars.
Mae West was subjected to vile sexual and physical abuse at the hands of her parents during her childhood in their Gloucester home, including being forced to sleep on rotting bodies the couple had buried in their basement.
Despite the horrors she went through, including the murder of her older sister Heather, the now 52-year-old still spoke to her mother more than a decade after Rose was locked up.
Fred and Rose were convicted of the combined murders of 12 women at their home in Gloucester between 1967 and 1987, and Rose is currently serving a life sentence for his role in the crimes. Fred committed suicide behind bars in 1995.
Speaking on the 30th anniversary of her parents’ arrest, Mae revealed that her mother callously “wrote me a letter basically telling me ‘it’s better if I leave you to it’, basically cutting off all contact with her eldest surviving daughter.”
Fred and Rose West (pictured) tortured, raped and murdered at least 12 young women and girls, including members of their own family.
Mae West (pictured), now 52, was subjected to vile sexual and physical abuse at the hands of her parents during her childhood in the home of the murderous couple (pictured in 1994).
And while serving her sentence, Mae received a letter from her mother cutting all ties she revealed (Rose pictured in 1995).
speaking to SunMae revealed that her mother’s move “made me question a lot of things,” but she is trying to focus on her own life and raising her own children.
She explained: ‘My mother and I stopped talking 16 years ago. We fought. It was her choice.
‘She wrote me a letter basically saying ‘It’s best if I leave you to it.’ In other words, she no longer wanted to see or communicate with me.
‘It made me question a lot of things at that moment, like whether I was with her or not. It’s strange that someone is your father and is alive but you don’t see him anymore.’
While Mae has spent the last 30 years building a new life, she said she often thought about her murdered sister.
She said in her recent interview: “I get terribly sad when I think about Heather, how old she would be now, what kind of life she would have had.” I love her so much.
‘Having parents like the ones I had has made me who I am. My challenge is to confront the effect they have had on me, rather than who they are.’
Meanwhile, she is raising her two children, including her youngest son, who “knows nothing” about her traumatic past.
Although his priority is to live a “normal, everyday life,” he admitted that it was becoming increasingly difficult to hide the truth from him.
She told the publication: “He’s at an age now where he’s starting to ask questions.” The only thing I have told him is that my father is dead and I don’t talk to my mother.
‘As far as I’m concerned, it never will. At least not on my part.
Fred and Rose’s murder spree finally came to an end on February 25, 1994, when police began excavation work on the house.
Fred West took his own life a year later at HMP Birmingham on New Year’s Day 1995. Rose received a life sentence for ten of the murders.
Fred West took his own life at HMP Birmingham on New Year’s Day 1995.
Rosemary West pictured holding her daughter Mae West as a baby. Mae’s childhood would be ruined by horrible abuse at the hands of her parents.
25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester, where the family lived and committed their crimes.
The basement of their home where the bodies of many of the couple’s victims were kept.
While Mae has spent the last 30 years building a new life, she often thinks about her sister who was murdered, she said (Mae pictured in 1994).
She said in her recent interview: “I get terribly sad when I think about Heather, how old she would be now, what kind of life she would have had.” I love her so much’ (Mae and Heather photographed as children)
In an interview with the Daily Mail in 2018, Mae spoke about her fears of people “finding out who she was.”
She said at the time: “I’m worried about people knowing or finding out who I am.” And I have all these anxieties about my son finding out about his grandparents.
‘My daughter is older and knows it and has overcome it. She discovered that her uncle’s credit card had the name West on it, she put two and two together and Googled it. I wish he hadn’t found out that way.
‘And my son is turning nine and… all the old fears are surfacing again. My strategy is to quit. I won’t tell you now. I want him to have a childhood that is not ruined.
‘It’s always a problem being part of the West family. I know I can’t work with children, and it’s mostly about self-protection, because if something happened to a child in my care, if they fell and got hurt, I would be blamed because of my background.
‘I once thought about escaping my past and going to Australia, but they wouldn’t let me enter the country because of what my parents did. And to think they used to deport prisoners from Britain!
Fred West walking through the garden of 25 Cromwell Street, where he and his wife buried the bodies of their victims.
Rose and Fred had eight children during their marriage, of whom Mae is the eldest surviving child (Fred at his daughter Anna’s wedding).
Fred had subdivided 25 Cromwell Street into a house where Rose worked as a prostitute in rented rooms.
The crimes of Mae’s parents, Fred and Rosemary West, were so heinous that they horrified and paralyzed the world.
In 1994, police searched the family home on a rough Gloucester street, searching for the remains of the Wests’ eldest daughter, Heather.
Fred had subdivided 25 Cromwell Street into a house where Rose worked as a prostitute in rented rooms. It became known as the House of Horrors after police excavations unearthed a series of dismembered female bodies in the basement and under the courtyard.
Among the remains were those of Heather, strangled seven years earlier, in 1987, when, at age 16, she had attempted to run away from home to avoid Fred’s predatory sexual advances.
Over the course of the preceding years, it was learned that Fred had committed at least a dozen more murders, most with Rose, his second wife.
The Cromwell Street victims: some teenagers; all women – were tenants, babysitters, students, hitchhikers, runaways. They were subjected to brutal sexual assaults by Fred and sometimes by Rose as well. Some were mutilated; many were beheaded.
Rose and Fred had eight children during their marriage, of whom Mae is the eldest surviving child. None of them had any idea their house held such bloody secrets until their parents were arrested and charged after the bodies were exhumed.
Fred, it also emerged, had committed at least two more murders alone, while Rose was responsible for killing Fred’s stepdaughter, Charmaine, from his first marriage to Rena, who was also one of Fred’s first victims.
Fred admitted to this monstrous catalog of crimes, claiming that he had acted alone. He committed suicide on January 1, 1995 in his Birmingham prison cell, where he was being held on remand.
Rose has always professed his innocence, but the jury at his trial in November of that year did not believe him. Convicted of ten murders, she was sentenced to life imprisonment with a subsequent order from the Home Secretary that she should never be released.