Serial killer Fred West had secret jail suicide kit which allowed sick monster to cheat justice
Murderer used hidden items to hand himself in prison cell
SERIAL killer Fred West cheated justice after prison staff failed to confiscate a suicide kit from him.
Secret files show that items he used to hang himself were discovered during a search of his cell seven months earlier.
They included razor blades, bed sheets and a cotton reel.
The kit was found six days after he arrived at Winson Green Prison, Birmingham, in May 1994.
But the items were allowed to remain in his cell until his death using a makeshift noose on New Year’s Day 1995, aged 53.
West pinched the reel of cotton after prison shirts were delivered to his cell in laundry bags for him to repair.
His prison records are supposed to be sealed for 30 years but The Sun on Sunday obtained the files from the public records office in Kew, South West London.
Bizarrely, they reveal the dad-of-eight’s death was not initially treated as suicide. Prison staff at first recorded the “method of suicide” as: “Not applicable. Not suicide.”
The files also include a letter from West’s appropriate adult and “personal confessor” Janet Leach, requesting permission to visit him in July 1994.
West’s suicide exposed a series of blunders at the jail.
There was a lack of access to rubber gloves and equipment to clear airways.
Staff trying to give West the kiss of life had to use a piece of tissue as direct mouth to mouth contact was forbidden.
There was also no doctor on duty, with one only arriving 30 minutes later. A secret memo to then Home Secretary Ann Widdecombe claimed the prison service was warned about West’s suicidal tendencies.
Son Stephen told a 1996 inquest his dad boasted he had “conned” a psychiatrist and a prison doctor into thinking he was OK.
West was set to stand trial for 12 murders at his House of Horrors home in Gloucester when he killed himself.
Wife Rose, 62, was convicted of ten murders and is serving a life sentence.