Where is Rose West now as lawyer opens up on his damning letter to serial killer

The harrowing murders and abuse committed by remain one of Britain's most notorious and grisly true crime stories. As the case is catapulted back into the public consciousness by a new Netflix documentary, Rose West's former lawyer has broken his silence on the long-running question of whether she was a victim of her husband herself as well as a perpetrator. Rose, now 71, was handed a life sentence for killing 10 people including her daughter in 1995. Fred committed suicide in prison before going on trial for 12 murders.

Leo Goatley, who acted as Rose's lawyer for 12 years from the early 1990s, also revealed the contents of a damning letter he had penned to his old client. "I did write to her a couple of years ago, maybe three years ago, to say that I concluded that she was clearly guilty," he told . "I was kind of on the fence, I suppose, with that for many years, but I concluded that she was guilty ... But I didn't get a reply."

"She'd already been terribly sexually abused by her father and while she was easily manipulated, she also had a vile, foul temper," he added. "I think it's probably not always understood that these [killings] wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for the weird ideas in Fred's head.

"But once they happened, it would have unleashed something in Rose that might have been quite terrible. That's my own belief."

Rose is currently behind bars in HM Prison New Hall, West Yorkshire.

The horrific timeline of murders between 1967 and 1987 is mapped out in Netflix's new series, Fred & Rose West: A British Horror Story, culminating in the couple's arrest in 1994.

The discovery of the remains of one of their ten children, Heather West, beneath the patio of their back garden in 1987, sparked an investigation into the pair - and the unearthing of numerous other murders spanning two decades.

Police were tipped off by Fred and Rose's children, who alleged severe sexual abuse at the hands of their parents and said they were told if they didn't behave, they'd also end up under the patio.

Before taking his own life in prison, Fred told authorities that he hadn't meant to kill Heather and was just trying to "persuade her to stay at home". The grisly murder method immediately dispelled such claims however - the 16-year-old's body had been dismembered with a bread knife, with an electric flex put around her neck to make sure she was dead.

Fred and Rose began dating when he was 27 and she was 15, and during their early relationship, Rose was urged to sleep with other men by her husband, a dynamic that would later evolve into something far more sinister.

Fred is thought to have begun abducting, raping and killing women around 1967, and has hinted that the actual number of his victims exceeds the couple's confirmed 12 murders - including his first wife, unlucky hitchhikers and young women who had rented rooms in their house.

Although seven of their children are alive today, most of them have new identities and don't appear to be in contact with each other or their mother. Their eldest son Stephen told MailOnline: "I don't speak to my siblings and there are no large happy family get-togethers. Too much has gone on. It's probably too painful for us."