New dig for Fred West ‘victim’: Police excavate cafe basement in search for remains of Mary Bastholm who is feared to have been murdered by serial killer after going missing, aged 15, in 1968
Police are today digging up the basement of a cafe where a missing teenager feared abducted and murdered by Fred West in 1968 had worked before she vanished.
Mary Bastholm served tea, cake and sandwiches in the Gloucester eaterie then called ‘The Pop In’ and now called the ‘Clean Plate’- and serial killer West was a regular customer.
West was also said to have laid the concrete floor there just weeks before she disappeared 53 years ago.
Mary was last seen on January 6 1968 waiting for a bus to see her boyfriend and West has long been suspected of grabbing her and killing her. Miss Bastholm’s family have begged Rose West to say what she knows about the crime.
Today specialist officers from Gloucestershire Police are digging the cafe’s basement and using technology to scan the floor for human remains in an ‘extraordinary development’ in the cold case, according to The Sun.
Fred West is believed to have also killed 15-year-old Mary, although her remains have never been found.
Rose West, who has consistently claimed her innocence, and husband Fred, abducted, tortured and raped innocent women over a 20 year period at their house in Cromwell Street, Gloucestershire, where they resided from 1972 until their arrests in 1994.
The pair even killed their eldest daughter Heather in June 1987.
Fred, who confessed to the murders, killed himself in his cell while on remand at HMP Birmingham on New Year’s Day, 1995. His evil wife is serving a whole life term, meaning she will die in jail.
Their other victims included Alison Chambers, 16, Shirley Robinson, 18, Juanita Mott, 18, Shirley Hubbard, 15, Theresa Siegnethaler, 21, Lucy Partington, 21, Carol Ann Cooper, 15, Lynda Gough, 19, Rena Costello, Fred’s ex-wife, 27, Charmaine West Fred’s daughter, eight, and Anne McFall, 18.