The sister of Lucy Partington, who was murdered by Fred and Rose West, reveals that she wrote a letter to her brother’s killer to alleviate Rose’s “suffering in some way.”
Marian Partington, now 75 and living in Oxford, was 26 when Lucy disappeared, and it was not until 20 years later that she finally discovered what had become of her younger sister.
In a BBC podcast, Forgiveness: Stories from the Front Line, presenter Marina Cantacuzino, founder of The Forgiveness Project, discovers how Marian came to terms with the horrific death of her beloved sister and how she managed to find a way to forgive.
Lucy, 21, was in the final year of her English Literature degree at the University of Exeter when she disappeared on December 27, 1973.
Lucy had been kidnapped, gagged, raped, tortured and murdered by Fred and Rose West, before being dismembered and buried under cement at their Cromwell Street home in Gloucester.
Marina said: ‘I found myself writing a letter to Rosemary West, I wanted her to know the journey I had to take because of what had happened to Lucy, and I wanted her to know that I wished her no harm.
‘I think I ended the letter with: “May you be free from fear.” So I wrote this letter but I didn’t decide to send it for another four years because I wanted to be sure that when I sent it I didn’t expect a response.
“And, in fact, the response came from the prison authorities saying that they did not wish to have any further contact.”
Marian said she was “deeply shocked” to learn of Rose’s crimes at trial and that forgiveness was not easy.
She said: “I was deeply shocked at the trial by Rosemary’s ability to lie, we were sitting and she was sitting there staring at me, there was a sense of anger there.
“We found out what was found in Lucy’s grave: there was duct tape, a gag with which she was silenced and a knife.”
However, when he heard Rosemary’s testimony, he decided to commit to trying to forgive her.
She said: “Forgiveness began for me with murderous anger, and I felt like there were a lot of raw, deep emotions to experience before that word could really appear.”
Marian Partington, now 75 and living in Oxford, reveals she wrote a letter to her brothers’ killer to “relieve his suffering in some way.”
Lucy, 21, was in the final year of her English Literature degree at the University of Exeter when she disappeared on December 27, 1973.
‘But I had the feeling that this was the only way out, it was about developing a forgiving heart, until I got to a place where I could genuinely experience authentic compassion for Rosemary West.
‘I genuinely saw the cage of his suffering, and I saw greed, hatred and ignorance, what the Buddha calls the three poisons.
“She’s demonized, society hates her, and I just wished that the thought I was having could alleviate her suffering in some way.”
Marian wanted to keep Lucy’s memory alive through writing, but this also helped her in her forgiveness process.
She said: ‘I needed to publish something beautiful and the beauty was a description of my sister Lucy’s life, and I needed to give it a name and it was called Salvaging the Sacred.’ Lucy has to have the last word.
Fred and Rosemary had offered Lucy a ride while she was heading home from a friend’s house.
Rosemary was convicted of 10 counts of murder the same year and is currently serving a life sentence.
Fred and Rose West tortured and murdered at least 10 women over a 20-year period between 1967 and 1987.
Marian, who became a Quaker after Lucy’s death, revealed how her family found out about Lucy’s murder.
She said: ‘She actually chose to become Catholic five weeks before she was kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered.
“I was at work and I noticed in the paper that there was a story coming out about a couple called the Wests and they had found three bodies in the garden and we all had a feeling it might have something to do with Lucy.
‘Rosemary West lived on the bus route she would have taken to get home the night she didn’t get home.
“I told my mother to contact the police and she did, and the next day they told me they had some news for us. That’s when everything went into slow motion.
“They said Fred West had been talking to them and they admitted there were more bodies in the basement and one of them was called Lucy.”
Lucy had been kidnapped, gagged, raped, tortured and murdered by Fred and Rose West, before being dismembered and buried under the concrete of their house on Cromwell Street in Gloucester (pictured).
Police excavate the garden at 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester where the bodies were found in 1994.
For a year after the discovery, Lucy’s remains were needed as a defense exhibit.
However, Marian felt an instinctive urge to go to the Cardiff mortuary to hold and wrap her sister’s bones.
She said: ‘It was about retrieving what was left of her, from the miserable hole she had been buried in for years.
‘I was amazed by the beauty of his skull, I picked him up and kissed his forehead. We had two stuffed animals and a blanket that had been on Lucy’s bed all those years.
‘We put them on either side of her skull and wrapped her in this soft brown blanket before putting her back in the box.
“I wanted to describe this because in the depths of horror there can be beauty.”
The couple tortured and murdered at least 10 women over a 20-year period, between 1967 and 1987.
The serial killer couple were arrested in 1994, after previous failed attempts to prosecute them.
Fred was accused of 12 murders, but took his own life before trial in 1995.
Rosemary was convicted of 10 counts of murder that same year and is currently serving a life sentence.
Marian previously said she delved into the details of Rosemary’s childhood in an attempt to understand how she could inflict such abject cruelty on others.
Speaking on the BBC documentary Inside Out West, he said: ‘I have details about Rosemary West’s childhood: violence in the family, abandonment and abuse, and (I’ve tried) to imagine what it would be like to grow up with very little love.’ said.
‘I can’t understand how there can be cruel actions that don’t have their roots in something else, something that has happened in someone’s life.
“But people will always say that’s not an excuse.”