After the 17-year-old was kicked out of the family home, she found lodgings with serial killers Fred and Rose West. Here, she talks about growing up in poverty in Dolphin’s Barn in the 1960s, her two-year stay in 25 Cromwell Street and the abuse she experienced there at the hands of serial killers Fred and Rose West
Kathleen Richards (also inset as a child), who was abused by serial killer Fred West
If there is one thing that lingers with Kathleen Richards, it’s the smell. The “vile, feral” odour that emanated from serial killer Fred West was one that she cannot forget, even almost five decades on.
“The stench was so intense, I could almost see it rising off him, like steam,” the Dubliner writes in her new memoir, Under Their Roof. “It was as if he had rolled in muck; as though he had something dead and rotting hidden under his clothes.”