Fred West's missing 'victim': the Mary Bastholm mystery

06/03/21 • 28 min

Mary Bastholm vanished from a Gloucester bus stop in January 1968, while en route to visit her boyfriend. She was just 15 years old and her disappearance was completely out of character. Within months, police shelved the investigation after running out of leads – despite detectives believing she had been abducted. A police file on her case was gathering dust for a quarter of a century until 1994, when Fred and Rose West were arrested over the brutal murders of 12 girls and young women. Psychopath Fred West was quickly linked with Mary's disappearance but repeatedly denied being responsible before killing himself. In this exclusive interview, Stephen Wright speaks to ex Det Supt John Bennett, who led the Cromwell Street investigation in the 1990s (and who as a young detective worked on Mary’s disappearance in the late 1960s) to discuss her case and the recent police dig at the site of a former Gloucester cafe in a new bid to find her remains. Why is Bennett convinced Fred West abducted and murdered Mary, and will her body ever be located?

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