A step-sister of one of Rose West’s victims is emigrating after the serial killer’s nephew followed in her footsteps when he abducted a 12-year-old girl and raped her.
Mary-Ann Mitchell’s half-sister Juanita Mott vanished in 1975 and she and her husband will now go ‘as far away from Gloucester as we can get’ after Steven Letts was convicted this week.
She was 17 when Juanita was murdered and the teenager’s body was found in the basement of Fred and Rose West’s Cromwell Street house of horrors nearly 20 years later.
This week it emerged Letts, 39, followed in his notorious aunt’s footsteps and snatched the ‘troubled’ child from a city centre street before abusing her having got her drunk and high on cocaine.
Mrs Mitchell, who is moving to Fort Worth, Texas, has been scared to go out alone in Gloucester since her own sibling vanished almost 40 years ago and she says Letts’ crimes have brought more hellish memories back.
She said: ‘What do you expect from that family? They’re all the same’.
Mary-Ann Mitchell’s half-sister Juanita Mott was murdered by Rose West said she will go ‘as far away from Gloucester as we can get’ after the killer’s nephew Steven Letts was convicted of abduction and rape
West was convicted of ten murders in 1995 but maintained her innocence. She is serving a life term at Low Newton prison in Durham
She told The Sun: ‘Abducting a child on a bike and plying them with drink and drugs, it’s horrific.
‘What the Wests did destroyed the lives of countless people. That’s why we’re emigrating. It’s about as far away from Gloucester as we can get’.
Steven Letts grabbed the girl from outside a children’s home took her back to his flat, plied her with vodka and cannabis, and then raped her.
Juanita was 17 when Mary-Ann was murdered and found in the basement of the West’s Cromwell Street house of horrors nearly 20 years later.
The chilling moment he pounced was been captured on CCTV.
After the jury convicted Letts of abduction and rape at the end of a six-day trial he was remanded in custody to await sentence next Tuesday.
Judge Jamie Tabor QC said he would not pass sentence immediately because Letts also has to be sentenced for aggravated burglary, which he was convicted of at a trial earlier this year.
It would be necessary to adjourn to a later date so that the other defendant can also be brought to court for sentence at the same time, the judge said.
Letts, of Gloucester, is the son of Graham Letts, Rose West’s brother. His mother Barbara Letts has been in the public gallery at court throughout the trial.
During the rape and abduction trial last week Letts accepted that the girl went back to his flat with him but he insisted he had no sexual contact with her.
He said he had not abducted her and that she had latched onto him in the street because her support worker was being bullying and aggressive towards her.
He also contested the girl’s true age and suggested she may have been over 12. His barrister, George Threlfall, questioned whether a photocopy of a birth certficate from a foreign country could be accepted as genuine evidence of her age.
It was agreed by everyone in the case that the girl looked a lot older than 12 – and a consultant odontologist accepted in evidence that her teeth were those of a child between 12 yrs 10 months and 13yrs 10 months old.
This is the chilling moment Steven Letts led his 12-year-old victim away from Gloucester city centre before he plied her with drugs and raped her
Letts, dressed in a baseball cap and black tracksuit bottoms, cycling alongside the girl as they walk through the city centre at night
At the start of the trial prosecutor Sarah Regan told the court the girl had moved into a Gloucester care home on February 23 this year and staff were made aware she was in the habit of asking older men and other strangers for cigarettes.
On March 6 the girl was taken into Gloucester by her support worker so she could sell a set of headphones, Ms Regan said.
‘They walked about and she managed to get two cigarettes from people and was bought a drink. The support worker told her it was getting late and they needed to return,’ the barrister said.
‘The girl refused and started to walk off in the opposite direction. At that point she started to talk to Mr Letts, who was walking passed in the opposite direction.
‘She asked him for a fag. The support worker heard her talk to him about a ‘spliff’ and he replied ‘yeah, yeah.’ The worker told Mr Letts she was under age and under no circumstances was he to give her drugs.
‘In reply, he said he was only going to give her a ‘rolling’. He sat down on a bench with the girl standing next to him.
‘The worker challenged him and said it was not a rolling he was making and she was not to have a spliff. He got agitated. He told the support worker she could not tell him what to do.
‘He was told his behaviour was unacceptable and he was not to give her anything. He got even more agitated and and accused the support worker of drawing attention to him.
‘Unsurprisingly, the girl also got agitated and told the support worker she was not going to go back to the home with her. She also pushed her and told her to f*** off.
‘Feeling uncomfortable at how the situation had escalated, the worker walked away to watch from a distance and phoned a colleague to report what had happened. She also phoned the police. The girl and Mr Letts walked off.
‘The worker followed, reporting to the police what she could see, but they then disappeared from view.
‘At 1am the home received a call from the police saying the girl had been found. The official went to Barton street police station to be met by the girl complaining she was hungry.
‘She said that she and Steve and Steve’s friend had been drinking and taking drugs’.
The girl did not say anything about having sex and refused to hand over her clothes or be medically examined.
But the next morning she spoke to another support worker at the home, who was asked by the girl, ‘Does sex hurt?’
She also asked how long it took to find out if you are pregnant after sex.
The girl then told the support worker she had sex with Letts the night before. Police were called and she told officers she had consented to it.
Officers seized Letts’ shorts and the girl’s DNA was found on the inside front panel. The prosecution said this must have come from him having sexual contact with her but Letts claimed the girl had worn the shorts herself while in her flat – something she denied.
In evidence, Letts claimed he was acting as a ‘good Samaritan’ when he agreed to take the girl home with him.
He had been shocked by the way her carer had been speaking to her and he felt he had a ‘duty of care’ to look after her, he said.
The girl told him when she was at her flat that she was 15, he said. He told the jury he allowed her to stay in the flat for several hours but he intended to take her to a nearby police station and he was arrested as he was about to do so.
He had not given the girl drugs or alcohol or had sex with her, he said. But she had abused his hospitality when he was out of his flat on three occasions during that night by helping herself to vodka and a cannabis spliff, he added.
The jury of six men and six women returned guilty verdicts on both charges of abduction and rape within 90 minutes of retiring today.
Four security officers flanked Letts in the dock as the verdicts were delivered but he remained calm and composed and showed little reaction.
His mother shouted, ‘Fight your corner’ to him as he was taken down to the cells.
Letts’ aunt, Rose West, was convicted in 1995 of the murder of ten girls and is serving a life sentence. Her husband Fred West was facing 12 murder charges when he committed suicide in prison.