Silent jury visits Cromwell Street

WILL BENNETT

The jury which will decide whether Rosemary West is guilty of murder walked in silence yesterday through 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, where the remains of nine of her alleged victims were found.

The eight men and four women moved in single file through the rooms where Mrs West and her husband Frederick lived for 22 years and where the prosecution alleges that they terrorised victims. Outside, neighbours hung out of their windows to try to see what was happening and journalists gathered on the pavements as they had done in February last year when the Cromwell Street murder inquiry began.

Mrs West, 41, is charged with murdering 10 girls and young women whose remains were found at 25 Cromwell Street and at the Wests' previous home in Gloucester. She denies the charges. Mr West, who was charged with 12 murders, was found dead in his prison cell on 1 January.

The prosecution alleges that seven of the victims were gagged, tied up and kept alive while they were sexually abused. They were mutilated and dismembered before being buried at 25 Cromwell Street.

The jury had unanimously asked to travel from Winchester, where the trial is taking place, to Gloucester to look at the house. Mr Justice Mantell agreed to their request despite misgivings about the trip.

The judge feared that because the house is small the jury would not be able to view it simultaneously. There was also concern that jurors might be photographed. Before they left Winchester in a coach in which the curtains were kept drawn the judge told the jury: "You must not talk about the case either during the view or coming and going [because] you are not all together." The jury set out on the two-hour journey escorted by police motorcyclists and a patrol car.

The jury's bus drove straight into the rear entrance to Cromwell Street and into a huge marquee which had been erected to cover the garden and the alley to one side of the house. It shielded the jurors from television cameras in three helicopters hovering overhead.

Sergeant Peter Maunder, a search expert, took 20 minutes to guide the jury through the house, starting at the top and moving down to the cellar where the remains of five young women were found earlier this year. The site of each grave was marked by white tape with a name printed on a card.

Brian Leveson QC, prosecuting, Sacha Wass, junior defence counsel for Mrs West, and Detective Superintendent John Bennett, who led the murder inquiry, also went round the house. Mr Justice Mantell went to Cromwell Street but did not go in with the jury.

Earlier this week the judge granted leave for Mrs West to be excused from going to the house. Richard Ferguson QC, defending, had told the court: "It was for many years the family home and it would be unduly distressing."

Both No 25 and No 23 next door lie empty. A campaign to buy and demolish them and create a memorial garden has already raised pounds 13,000.

A bouquet of carnations and roses lay outside No 25 yesterday. It was from Ann Marie Davis, Mr West's daughter by his first marriage who told the court on Wednesday that her father and stepmother had repeatedly sexually abused her.

It commemorated Heather West, the couple's eldest daughter whose remains were the first to be found at Cromwell Street and said: "Though the years have passed you are always in my heart." Heather would have been 25 last Tuesday.

The trial resumes at Winchester today.