POLICE are searching for a body at a cafe in Gloucester linked to the case of a missing teenager who was feared killed by Fred West.

Gloucestershire Police said they had found evidence that a body could be buried within The Clean Plate café in Southgate Street, Gloucester, and are linking it to the disappearance of 15-year-old Mary Bastholm.

Mary was reported missing on January 6 1968 and has never been found.

RELATED NEWS:

Serial killer West, who died in prison in 1995 aged 53, was previously suspected over her disappearance.

Gloucestershire Police said its Major Crime Investigation Team has deemed that further assessments are required at the cafe in order to determine whether an excavation is necessary, with officers expected to be at the scene for a number of weeks.

But who is Fred West and how is he connected to Herefordshire?

Along with his wife Rose, the couple tortured, raped and murdered an unknown number of women between 1967 and 1987, most at their home in Cromwell Street, Gloucester, which became known as the “House of Horrors”, with nine sets of bones found under the patio and cellar of the house.

Fred West, a builder, killed himself in prison while awaiting trial on 12 murder charges, while mother-of-eight Rose was convicted in 1995 of murdering 10 young girls and women, including her eldest daughter Heather, 16, and her stepdaughter Charmaine, eight.

OTHER NEWS:

Fred, born in Herefordshire on September 29, 1941, escaped trial by killing himself in his prison cell in January 1995.

The Wests began their killing spree at another house, close to the centre of the town. Under the floorboards police found the body of Charmaine, Fred’s eight-year-old daughter by his first wife.

At least two other women were killed in the flat.

He had first met Catherine ("Rena") Bernadette Costello, who came from Lanarkshire, at a dance hall in Much Marcle in 1960, and dated her for several months before she returned to Scotland.

The re-acquainted in 1962 and had a child in 1964.

Costello later became a victim of the serial killers.

Rose West, now 67, is serving a life sentence in HMP New Hall, Flockton, West Yorkshire.

Fred West was born and raised in Much Marcle, between Ledbury and Ross-on-Wye.

OTHER NEWS:

It is also the location where he buried some of his victims.

He confessed to having dumped the bodies of his first wife, Rena, aged 25, and a former lover, Ann McFall, aged 18, both from Scotland, in fields near his childhood home at Much Marcle.