Everyone wants to see inside the mind of a serial killer. But have you ever wanted a glimpse of their underwear drawer?
Probably not, but in the cavernous rooms the True Crime Museum, right on Hastings’ seafront, you can.
That’s because curator Joel Griggs spent £2,500 buying knickers worn by Rose West, who tortured and killed at least 10 women, mostly with her husband Fred.
Joel got his hands on the undies after they were co-opted at HMP Bronzefield – Europe’s largest female prison, now home to Lucy Letby – where Rose lived for four years until 2008.
He said: ‘A prison worker retrieved them from a laundry basket and later offered them to us for a ridiculous amount of money which we turned down at the time.
‘Tiny squares of material from the knickers were then offered for sale on eBay but because the sale contravened eBay’s rules and procedures, the items were taken down and the sale never proceeded.
‘On the underwear we have you can see small biro marks which the seller planned to cut around to sell off bit by bit.
‘When our tenth anniversary came round I thought it would be worth contacting the prison worker, now retired, again, which I did and that resulted in us buying them for £2,500.’
The museum has a feel akin to the so-called ‘House of Horrors’ where most of West’s victims were found buried in 1994.
Joel’s collection includes the bath in which contract killer Bruce Childs dismembered six people, acid bottles used to dissolve others’ victims, an array of shanks, and triple murderer Louis Lefevre’s skull.
But West’s knickers appear far less sinister than the items of notorious criminals like the Kray Twins, collected by Grigg’s father John when working with the Metropolitan Police.
Griggs said: ‘When you look at an exhibit like this, which appears banal at first, I think people then realise the connection with something really evil and monstrous. I think that is where the interest lies really.’
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