Baby found dead as police probe 'unexplained' incident at home
A baby has been found dead at a home with police launching a probe to determine the circumstances around the "unexplained" incident.
Officers were called to an address in Middlesbrough following reports of a death of a baby on Sunday morning.
As reported by the Mirror, Cleveland Police have since contacted the baby's family and are with them.
The force said in a statement: " Officers were called to an address in Middlesbrough earlier today, Sunday 7 June, following the death of a baby.
"The death is being treated as unexplained and detectives have been carrying out some enquiries at the address.
"Our thoughts are with the family of the deceased child at this sad and difficult time."
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This comes after a body was found by police in the search for a Colombian woman who disappeared after leaving her home in east London.
Yajaira Castro Mendez, 46, was reported missing to the Metropolitan Police on May 31 having left her home in Ilford on the morning of May 29.
Her family has been told about the discovery of the body, which was found during searches in Hampshire's Bolderwood area on Saturday, but formal identification has yet to be made.
Detective Inspector Jay Gregory, who is leading the investigation, said: 'This is a very sad development in the investigation and our thoughts are very much with Yajaira's family and friends at this incredibly difficult time.
'We continue to appeal to anyone with information that could assist the investigation to please come forward.'
A post-mortem examination has yet to take place.
The police said a man who was known to Ms Castro Mendez appeared in court on Friday charged with her murder and was remanded into custody.
Her disappearance was initially treated as a missing person investigation led by local officers.
The investigation was then transferred to the Met's Specialist Crime Command on June 5, after a range of extensive further inquiries suggested she had come to harm.
Police were at a scene in Gray's Inn Road, Camden, on Friday as part of their investigation.
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Daily Record
3 hours ago
- Daily Record
Life was hell after I stabbed my dad Fred West with a screwdriver - but it was mum I was scared of
WARNING - DISTRESSING CONTENT: Howard Sounes, the Mirror reporter who first broke the story of Fred and Rose West in 1994, has gained access to more than 100 hours of Fred West's unheard police interviews for his new book Few could be worse parents than Fred and Rose West. Their 16 year old daughter Heather was strangled, dismembered in the family bath (using a kitchen knife to avoid scratching the enamel) and buried beneath the patio. The remains of West's eight year old stepdaughter Charmaine were found under their previous residence, her body kneecapped and dissected. Two of West's pregnant lovers were discovered in unofficial graves, both just weeks away from full term. West's former wife Rena was found in a nearby field, while a runaway was buried under what used to be a paddling pool. Another woman was found beneath the bathroom floor and five more were discovered in the cellar - where the youngest West children slept. However, those who survived life at 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester didn't consider themselves much luckier. Howard Sounes, an author who first reported on the West case for the Mirror in 1994, recently gained access to over 100 hours of previously unheard police interviews with Fred West. Now, in the first instalment of our serialisation of his new book The Fred West Tapes: Secrets of the Fred and Rose West Murder Investigation, he shares his chilling, previously unpublished interview with West's son Barry, revealing the true horrors of growing up in Britain's infamous House of Horrors...., reports the Mirror. Anna-Marie West was a mere eight years old when she was first raped by her father and stepmother. From then on, rape became a horrifyingly regular occurrence. She was bound to metal torture devices that her father, builder Fred West, constructed at work - all the while being told this was normal. Some of the West children were subjected to sexual abuse not only by Fred and Rose. On one occasion, a few were permitted to attend their parents' party - only to be molested by inebriated men, seemingly with their parents' approval, according to one child's account. Incest was ingrained in Fred's DNA, and child abuse was as commonplace as meals at 25 Cromwell Street. Strangely enough, it wasn't always their father who instilled the most fear amongst the West children. It was Rose. The mother and stepmother has consistently denied all accusations against her for three decades. However, in November 1995, she was convicted on 10 counts of murder committed between 1971 and 1987. During the trial, the court was presented with ample evidence of her perpetrating severe sexual and physical assaults on children. She subsequently became only the second woman - following Myra Hindley - to receive a Whole Life Order, ensuring she will never be released. Many of her children, like her son Barry, were handed a life sentence of their own - unable to recover from the trauma inflicted by the Wests. Barry grappled with mental health issues and drug use. Tragically, he passed away two years after recounting to me the full extent of the horrors endured within the House of Horrors. It is only now that I can share the details of that interview for the first time. Barry confided in me, saying: "My dad was a solid monster," and added about his mother, "But she [Rose] was a complete psycho. That's what people don't know: My mum was, child abuse-wise, the main person. My mum was completely sick in the head. She beat me way more than my dad did, and enjoyed it, absolutely enjoyed it." When the West children were young, they endured nights locked in the cellar, sometimes even strapped to their beds. Rose took on the role of jailer to her own children, with the keys to the cellar hanging around her neck. The slightest provocation would trigger Rose's violent outbursts, which included not just hitting and slapping but also stabbing and strangling her children. She even used a novelty giant wooden spoon as a weapon. Barry recounted the physical abuse he suffered, stating: "My nose is on a slant because of the amount of times she broke it," and "She would use [the spoon] as a baseball bat to beat us. I've got massive scars on the back of my head from the amount of times she split my head open with it. She broke my arm, all sorts of stuff. She had intense enjoyment in beating the s**t out of me... " These horrific acts form Barry's earliest memories. He shared further: "She was just as sick as him. Her moods didn't change. She used to hit us even on Christmas Day. She used to smack you straight in the mouth." One Christmas, Barry recounted a particularly unpleasant experience with his mother's brussel sprouts. "I put them in a tissue and then hid them in the back of a chair," he confessed. Days later, Rose discovered the decomposing vegetables. "She put them on the table, and she made me eat them," he continued. "[Then] she put her hand over my mouth and made me swallow my own sick. That's the sort of s**t I had growing up. I don't remember any present opening." Life at Cromwell Street was devoid of happiness for the children. Rose insisted on sending her daughters to school with cropped hair, dressed in boys' shoes for their durability. She would have them wash their hair with dish soap instead of shampoo and forbade the use of deodorant, leading to mockery from their peers. The West boys were not spared; they attended school in their sisters' cast-offs, allowing their hair to grow out. Many developed squints and speech impediments, often signs of child mistreatment. "When we was young, we all had speech impediments," Barry revealed, "I got my face punched in every day I went to school....[I was] scared to go to school, scared to go home." Home was no sanctuary, with both parents presenting a threat. The children once pooled their money to buy a £12 Zippo lighter for Father's Day, even having it engraved. "He threw it across the room," Barry remembered. "That was the kind of man he was." And that was only part of their ordeal. West incessantly discussed sexual matters in the presence of his children, expressing a desire to take his daughters' virginity, boasting about the family's history of incest, and even engaging in bestiality. His deranged aspiration was to witness his daughter Rose being copulated with by a bull. "[Dad] was such a disgusting man, he was vile," Barry confided. Fred West harboured intentions to sexually initiate his daughters, and Barry alleged that he was coerced into sexual acts with his own mother at the tender age of "eight or nine". The children were often tasked with managing phone appointments for 'Mandy', the pseudonym their mother used while working as a sex worker. It wasn't long before Barry found himself being presented to clients as an additional service. Barry recounted one particular incident where Rose, dressed in her nightgown, instructed him to accompany her to her bedroom. "She said, 'There's a man in here and I want you to do exactly what he tells you to do, no matter what'," Barry remembered. "[I] was just confused. I didn't know what she was talking about. I walk in and there was a giant man in front of me." That evening marked the beginning of Barry's ordeal; he was raped by a regular visitor who continued to abuse him and engage in sexual relations with Rose. The mother maintained a peculiar system for her clientele, storing individual pairs of underwear for each regular in separately labelled jars. Moreover, West demanded that all contraceptives be retained after use, with the twisted aim of "artificially inseminating" their offspring. Barry also disclosed that they were forced to watch homemade pornographic videos featuring their mother. Within the family, there were whispers that Barry might not have been West's biological son but rather a result of the incestuous relationship between Rose and her father, Bill Letts. It was alleged that Bill had been sexually abusing Rose since her childhood, and as per notes written by West while in prison, Bill was a frequent visitor to Cromwell Street. West claimed that one of his daughters once came downstairs and complained, "Grampy [is] going to sleep with me." He recounted that Rose's response was chilling: "He is not going to eat you, he is only going to f**k you. You'll probably love it." (Rose has consistently denied any wrongdoing, even after being convicted of multiple murders). In addition to the physical violence and sexual abuse, young women were lured to the house where they were assaulted and murdered, often dismembered by West in the family bathroom. The victims were found missing fingers, toes, and other body parts, which led a psychologist to speculate on a possible cannibalistic aspect to the crimes. Anna-Marie, the eldest surviving child, was nearly nine years old when Lynda Gough, aged 19, became the first victim of the Cromwell Street murders in 1973. Over the following six years, eight more women, including some lodgers, vanished without a trace. The remains of West's first wife Rena, his pregnant lover Anne McFall, and his stepdaughter Charmaine were buried at different locations. Most of the children insisted they were oblivious to the horrors unfolding around them. However, years on, one of the children (who shall remain unnamed) disclosed that there were instances when they were confined to a cupboard under the stairs, overhearing shouting and screaming. Upon emerging, they would notice fresh concrete in the cellar. "Why didn't we all run away?" pondered Barry, who subsequently endured a prolonged struggle with mental health issues. "I suppose that's the hold he had, the power. My dad was like God. You couldn't beat him. You couldn't run away. He would find you." Barry even considered murdering his father as a means to cease their suffering. "I tried stabbing him when I was eleven with a screwdriver. He just laughed at me," he recounted. The younger siblings did manage to exact some form of retribution against Rose. Barry alleged that just before they were taken into care amid the police investigation, Rose attacked them with a wooden spoon, prompting them to collectively retaliate. "I remember all my sisters jumping on top [of her], and we all sort of stood up [to her] and she was tired," he recalled. "She was knackered. She hit us until [she] couldn't hit us anymore. And that's when she broke down. And I saw the weakness of her, and she was crying her eyes out..." Generally speaking though, the youngsters understood not to misbehave - or breach the West family's code of silence. Barry's elder sister Heather served as their cautionary tale. She disappeared at 16 in 1987 after expressing her desire to escape the household. The kids were informed she'd relocated and severed all ties. Yet it evolved into a household 'gag': cross Fred and Rose, and you'd end up like Heather - beneath the patio, three slabs up and nine along. Barry subsequently revealed: "That was what was going to happen to all of us when we got old enough. If we didn't turn out like him, we was against him. And if we was against him, we would have to go in the garden – under the patio. He made us understand that." When that 'gag' reached police ears, the excavators arrived. And the Wests' decades of depravity would remain concealed no longer....
Daily Mirror
7 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Ghislaine Maxwell questioned directly about Prince Andrew's friendship with paedo Epstein
Ghislaine Maxwell was today quizzed about Prince Andrew's friendship with Jeffrey Epstein by US government lawyers. Insiders told the Mirror how the convicted teen sex trafficker was questioned about the royal as she was asked about her knowledge of '100 different people' related to the late child Wall Street financier. A source said: 'No one was off limits. The interview was meticulous as it was long. Ghislaine was quizzed about everyone she knew in Epstein's circle, including the Duke. Nothing was left on the table.' Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence in a Florida prison after being sentenced in 2022. She is not due for release until July 2037. After being questioned by Donald Trump 's Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, for two days, Maxwell's lawyer confirmed she had not held back from answering questions about anyone. 'We started this morning (Fri) right around 9 o'clock, and went to now lunchtime, and we're finished after all day, yesterday and today,' her attorney David Oscar Markus said. 'Ghislaine answered every single question asked of her over the last day and a half, she answered those questions honestly, truthfully, to the best of her ability. She never invoked a privilege. She never refused to answer a question.' He added: 'They asked about every single, every possible thing you could imagine. Everything.' The meeting with Maxwell came just weeks after the Department of Justice announced it would not release any Epstein files - a move that has sparked outrage among survivors. It has also, more critically for Trump, sparked a civil war among his MAGA supporters, seeing thousands turn on after he campaigned for the White House on a promise to release all information on the sex offender. The president, now scrambling to contain the political fallout, is said to be privately furious at the backlash from his own base. Markus said Maxwell was being used as the 'scapegoat' in the entire Epstein case and has been 'treated unfairly for the last five years.' Her attorney said that they had not put in a formal request with the White House for a pardon for Maxwell, 63, following the conclusion of her questioning. But Markus didn't rule one out completely, saying, 'Things are happening so quickly. The president said earlier he has the power to do so, we hope he exercises that power in the right way,' he added. Last night, a source told the Mirror that in addition to being quizzed about Andrew, she was also questioned about Bill Clinton. Both the Duke of York and the former president are documented as flying on Epstein's private 'Lolita Express' jet and pictured with him at various times. Andrew famously refused to speak to the FBI. In 2020, when he was the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman made the extremely rare decision to publicly blast the Duke. He accused the Prince of "seeking to falsely portray himself" as eager to help his Epstein inquiry before he accused Andrew of providing "zero cooperation." Berman claimed that despite public statements to the contrary, the royal had "repeatedly declined" requests to schedule an interview. Andrew's legal team denied his claims, insisting that the Duke offered to assist authorities on at least three occasions. He was later accused of having sex on three separate occasions with Epstein's 'teen sex slave' Virginia Giuffre, which the Duke emphatically denied. In 2019, she accused the royal of sexually abusing her on three occasions when she was 17 - claims he vehemently denied. Facing a civil lawsuit in New York, Andrew opted to settle out of court in early 2022, reportedly paying Giuffre £12 million. He issued no apology and continued to protest his innocence, insisting he had no memory of ever meeting her despite the now-infamous photo of them together with Maxwell grinning in the background. It was unclear whether Blanche intends to question her further. Markus said he did not know whether the discussions would have any impact on her case. With Maxwell's questioning finished, Markus added: "We don't know how it's going to play out. We just know that this was the first opportunity she's ever been given to answer questions about what happened and so the truth will come out about what happened with Mr Epstein, and she's the person who's answering those questions.'
Daily Mirror
8 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
'My serial killer dad Fred West was monster, but Mum did the unthinkable to us kids'
On the anniversary of Cromwell Street trial, Fred and Rose West's son reveals what it was really like growing up in the House of Horrors - and how he once tried to kill his father, only to get an unexpected reaction Few could make worse parents than Fred and Rose West. Their daughter Heather, 16, was strangled, dismembered in the family bath (with a kitchen knife so as not to scratch the enamel) and buried under the patio. West's eight-year-old stepdaughter Charmaine was discovered kneecapped and dissected under their previous home. And not one but two of West's pregnant mistresses were found in unofficial graves, both just a few weeks shy of being full term. West's ex-wife Rena was in a nearby field, a runaway was buried under what had been a paddling pool. Another woman was under the bathroom floor and five more were in the cellar - where the youngest West children slept. But those who survived life at Gloucester's 25 Cromwell Street did not count themselves that much luckier. Author Howard Sounes helped break the West story as a Mirror reporter in 1994, and as the leading expert on the case recently gained access to more than 100 hours of Fred West's unheard police interviews. Now in Day One of our serialisation of his new book The Fred West Tapes: Secrets of the Fred & Rose West Murder Investigation, he shares his harrowing previously-unpublished interview with West's son Barry, revealing what it was really like growing up in Britain's House of Horrors….. Anna-Marie West was just eight when her father and stepmum first raped her. Thereafter, rape became routine. She was strapped to metal torture contraptions that builder Fred West made at work - and told it was perfectly normal. Some, but not all, of the West children were used for sexual pleasure not only by Fred and Rose. Once a few of them were allowed to go to their parents' party - only, according to one child, to be molested by drunken men with their parents' encouragement. Incest was part of Fred's DNA, and child abuse was as routine as mealtimes at 25 Cromwell Street. But, bizarrely, it wasn't always their father who inspired the most fear amongst the West children. It was Rose. The mum and stepmum has denied all allegations against her for 30 years. But in November 1995, she was found guilty of 10 counts of murder between 1971 and 1987. During the trial, the court heard abundant evidence of her committing serious sexual and physical assaults against children. She later became only the second woman - after Myra Hindley - to be handed a Whole Life Order, meaning she'll never be freed. Many of her children, like her son Barry, received a life sentence of their own - never recovering from the trauma the Wests inflicted. He struggled with his mental health and had been used drugs. He sadly died two years after meeting me to describe the full horror of life inside the House of Horrors. It is only now I can share that interview for the first time. 'My dad was a solid monster,' Barry told me. 'But she [Rose] was a complete psycho. That's what people don't know: My mum was, child abuse-wise, the main person. My mum was completely sick in the head. She beat me way more than my dad did, and enjoyed it, absolutely enjoyed it.' When the West children were young they were made to sleep in the cellar, often locked in there at night, sometimes strapped to their beds. Rose was her children's gaoler, wearing the keys to the cellar around her neck. The slightest thing would set Rose off, and she would lash out violently: not just hitting and slapping but stabbing and strangling her children. She also hit them with a novelty giant wooden spoon. 'My nose is on a slant because of the amount of times she broke it,' Barry told me. 'She would use [the spoon] as a baseball bat to beat us. I've got massive scars on the back of my head from the amount of times she split my head open with it. She broke my arm, all sorta stuff. She had intense enjoyment in beating the s**t out of me… ' Sadly, these were Barry's earliest memories. He said: 'She was just as sick as him. Her moods didn't change. She used to hit us even on Christmas Day. She used to smack you straight in the mouth.' One Christmas, Barry made the mistake of not liking Mum's brussel sprouts. 'I put them in a tissue and then hid them in the back of a chair,' he said. Days later Rose found them, rotting away. 'She put them on the table, and she made me eat them,' he added. '[Then] she put her hand over my mouth and made me swallow my own sick. That's the sort of s**t I had growing up. I don't remember any present opening.' Childhood at Cromwell Street was simply joyless. Rose sent her girls to school with short hair, like boys, wearing boys' shoes because they lasted longer. She made her daughters clean their hair with washing-up liquid rather than shampoo and she didn't allow the purchase of deodorant, which the girls were teased about. The West boys went to school in their sisters' hand-me-downs, allowing their hair to grow long like girls. Many developed squints and speech defects, which can be indications of child abuse. 'When we was young, we all had speech impediments,' says Barry, 'I got my face punched in every day I went to school….[I was] scared to go to school, scared to go home.' It wasn't just Rose waiting for him at home. It was also his father. The children once clubbed together to buy him a £12 Zippo lighter for Father's Day. They even got it inscribed. 'He threw it across the room,' Barry recalled. 'That was the kind of man he was.' That wasn't the half of it. West spoke about sex constantly in front of the kids, about wanting to take his daughters' virginity, about the family tradition of incest, even sex with animals. His stated ambition – the very idea is insane – was to see Rose mounted by a bull. '[Dad] was such a disgusting man, he was vile,' Barry told me. Fred wanted to deflower his daughters, and Barry claimed he was forced into sexual situations with his mother at just 'eight or nine'. The children often had to take phone bookings for 'Mandy', their mum's alias when she was working as a prostitute. Barry started being offered up to clients as an extra, as such. According to him, one evening, Rose came downstairs in her nightdress and told Barry to follow her to her room. 'She said, 'There's a man in here and I want you to do exactly what he tells you to do, no matter what',' recalled Barry. '[I] was just confused. I didn't know what she was talking about. I walk in and there was a giant man in front of me.' The regular raped Barry. This was just the start. His abuser continued to visit the house to molest him and have sex with Rose. The mum had a dedicated pair of underwear for each regular, kept in separate labelled jars. West also insisted she kept all used contraceptives in order to "artificially inseminate' their children. Barry claimed they were even made to watch homemade porn featuring their mother. It was sometimes said within the family that Barry may not have been West's child at all, but the product of the incestuous relationship between Rose and her father, Bill Letts. Bill had allegedly been abusing Rose since she was a girl and, according to notes made in prison by West, was a regular visitor to Cromwell Street. West alleged one of his daughters once came downstairs complaining: 'Grampy [is] going to sleep with me.' According to West, Rose said: 'He is not going to eat you, he is only going to f**k you. You'll probably love it.' (Rose routinely denies all wrongdoing even after her murder convictions). Alongside the beatings and the abuse, young women were being brought to the house where they were attacked, murdered, often dismembered by West (in the family bathroom). All were found with fingers, toes and other body parts missing, leading one psychologist to suggest there could have been a cannibalistic element to the killings. The eldest surviving child Anna-Marie was coming up for nine when 19-year-old Lynda Gough was killed in 1973, the first of the nine Cromwell Street murders. Eight more women, some of them lodgers, disappeared over the next six years. The bodies of West's first wife Rena, pregnant mistress Anne McFall and stepdaughter Charmaine were buried elsewhere. Most of the children maintained they had no idea what was going on. Years later, however, one child (whom I won't identify) claimed that there were days when they were locked in a cupboard under the stairs while they heard shouting and screaming. When they came out they saw fresh concrete had been poured in the cellar. 'Why didn't we all run away?' Barry, who went on to suffer a long battle of psychological issues, asked me. 'I suppose that's the hold he had, the power. My dad was like God. You couldn't beat him. You couldn't run away. He would find you.' Barry contemplated killing his father to end their misery. "I tried stabbing him when I was eleven with a screwdriver. He just laughed at me," he claimed. The younger siblings did get some revenge on Rose, however. Just before they were taken into care during the police investigation, Barry claimed Rose came at them with the wooden spoon and they all joined forces to turn on her. "I remember all my sisters jumping on top [of her], and we all sort of stood up [to her] and she was tired," he claimed. "She was knackered. She hit us until [she] couldn't hit us anymore. And that's when she broke down. And I saw the weakness of her, and she was crying her eyes out..." On the whole however, the children knew not to step out of line - or break the West code of silence. Barry's older sister Heather was their warning. She vanished aged 16 in 1987 after saying she wanted to leave home. The children were told she'd moved away and cut contact, But it became a family 'joke': if you crossed Fred and Rose, you'd end up like Heather - under the patio, three paving stones up and nine across. Barry later said: 'That was what was going to happen to all of us when we got old enough. If we didn't turn out like him, we was against him. And if we was against him, we would have to go in the garden – under the patio. He made us understand that.' When that 'joke' reached the ears of police, the diggers moved in. And the Wests' decades of debasement would stay buried no more….
