House of Horrors of ‘Oz’s Fred and Rose West’ who killed women after chillingly codenaming plot ‘the munchies’
Saturday, September 4, 2021
The suburban home in Perth went on sale earlier this year as "restored, renewed, refreshed" — yet nothing will ever expunge its dark history.
Unlike the Wests’ now demolished 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester, the home on Moorhouse Street in Perth Australia still stands and was sold earlier this year to a young couple for a bargain £250,000.
Nearly 35 years ago husband and wife serial killers David and Catherine Birnie butchered four women and tried to kill a fifth in 1986.
Wife Catherine Birnie would help him, gaining pleasure in the tortures and killings.
The Birnies were considered by neighbours to be a quiet and respectable couple.
In reality, they were anything but.
They would inject heroin and gobble prescription drugs while living out their sick fantasies in torture rooms.
Posing as a friendly couple to win the trust of their victims, the depraved pair viciously killed 22-year-old Mary Neilson, 15-year-old Susannah Candy, 31-year-old Noellene Patterson and 21-year-old Denise Brown.
The string of deaths became known as the Moorhouse murders, after the Birnies’ street address.
Kate Moir, 17, was their fifth and final victim. But she managed to escape their evil clutches by crawling out of a bedroom window when the Birnie's were distracted.
The teen ran to the police who then investigated and exposed to the world what had been going on inside the house of horrors.
She later spoke out about her trauma in a TV interview, recalling how she was shackled to the bed in shiny chains.
While the "mustard-coloured robe" David wore as he attacked his victims still sticks in her memory.
The couple pleaded guilty to all charges brought against them in February 1987.
'I'VE GOT THE MUNCHIES'
Cruel Catherine and David would stalk the streets in their car hunting for young women that they could persuade to get into the vehicle.
When she saw a woman she liked the look of she’d say the code — "I've got the munchies".
If he fancied the potential victim as well, he'd turn back to his wife and say: "I've got the munchies too."
They would then use their disarming charm to lure their victims into the car, trapping them.
They would then be taken to 3 Moorhouse Street where their ordeal would unfold.
Here they were chained to the bed where they were raped, tortured, and murdered by David.
As he did this, Catherine would become thrilled as she took photographs, cheering him on.
FATAL ATTRACTION
The killing spree started in the Spring of 1986, when Catherine, then 35, was a mother of six.
She abandoned her children before the murders, so she could be with David whom she had been estranged from.
The couple both came from difficult upbringings, and became neigbhours after Catherine moved in next door to David with her aunt and uncle.
Reports from the time claim that the twisted pair were in a sexual relationship before the age of 14.
David and his four siblings were taken into care, and moved away from the area because of neglect.
But the sicko would always keep in touch with Catherine, with the pair being drawn to each other despite stints in prison and starting separate families.
In 1983 Catherine left her family so she could reunite with David, even taking his second name despite the pair never marrying.
The twisted couple moved into the now infamous Moorhouse Street, appearing to the outside world as a normal couple living a quiet life.
But the pair regularly injected heroin and took prescription drugs together.
David was a sex-addict and became obsessed with violent fantasies, eventually asking Caroline to help them become reality.
He asked his girlfriend to help him kidnap, bind and rape a young woman - to prove her feelings for him.
After repeatedly raping their second victim, David took a nylon cord and turned to Catherine to say "prove you love me."
She then put the cord around her neck and strangled her to death.
The killings and strangulations started with David taking the lead, but eventually Catherine launched the fatal attacks.
Today Catherine Birnie is behind bars after receiving four life sentences, but was made eligible for parole in 2007.
But like Fred West, her husband cheated justice by killing himself in jail in 2005.