She Must Have Known: the Trial of Rosemary West

by Brian Masters

Book Overview

"Frederick West cheated everybody when he hung himself on New Year's Day 1995. Was this a sign of overwhelming guilt? Was West criminally insane or merely a sexual sadist of the worst kind? Brian... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385406509
• ISBN13: 9780385406505
• Release Date: July 1996
• Publisher: Doubleday
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The stuff of nightmares.

This book gave me nightmares. That has never happened before. I have long given up on horror movies as I searched and searched for something that might frighten me. The stories/facts in this book are true and they are utterly horrific. Daughter/Girlfriend going "Travelling"....give her this book first. It should be compulsory reading.

Sad and enlightening

Reading books like this is always very sad. You are always thinking of the victims ends, snuffed out in their prime with their whole lives ahead of them. But the book is mainly about the trial of Rose West- did she, didn't she? Without deciding for you either way there is no doubt that the trial was a bit of a farce and that 'innocent till proven guilty' is a phrase used so often by society as word service to the judicial system that for all intents and purposes it has become meaningless. When a police force backed by society hatred and anger is trying to prove you guilty then you HAVE to prove your innocence in order to fight. Proving her innocence Rose West failed to do but so too did the prosecution fail to prove her guilt. If she was guilty because she 'must have known' then so are other members of the house guilty. There were hundreds of missing bones from the several victims which points to the dismemberment of the bodies happening away from the house and this indicates Fred Wests need to keep things secret from Rose. What makes me angry about this book is that Rose West could indeed be guilty but the trial never proved it one way or the other. Also, it shows that with Fred Wests suicide, the police and society, needing an outlet still for the rage, turned on Rose West like they had Derek Bently many years before when the real killer was too young to be legally prosecuted. A disturbing aspect was the tabloid journalists supplying schoolchildren with eggs to pelt Rose Wests police van so they could photograph it as she was driven off to court before being tried. Also one of the daughters getting offered hundreds of pounds by a newspaper for her inside story and then paid thousands when she added a page full of maternal abuse. This is a book that makes you think. My conclusions afterwards are that it seems so difficult to find the truth in these situations that society is not helped by the judicial system behaving maliciously and incompetently, and governments pandering to the mob by allowing journalistic interference. As I said, the book doesn't show Rose Wests innocence, it only shows that the trial was a farce.