title: Fred West

text: Rose occasionally sexually abused Anna Marie herself, and later took extreme gratification in degrading her with acts such as binding Anna Marie to various items of furniture before encouraging Fred to rape her, and forcing her to perform household chores while wearing sexual devices and a mini-skirt. From the age of 13, Fred and Rose forced Anna Marie to prostitute herself within the household, with her clients being informed Anna Marie was 16. Rose was always present in the room when these acts occurred, to ensure Anna Marie did not reveal her true age. On one occasion when Anna Marie was aged 13 or 14, Rose took her to a local pub, insisting she drink several glasses of barley wine. Several hours later, Fred arrived at the pub to collect Rose and Anna Marie. Once they had left the premises, Anna Marie was bundled into her father's van and beaten by Rose, who asked her: "Do you think you could be my friend?" before she was sexually abused by her father and stepmother.


title: Fred West

text: In October 1972, the Wests hired 17-year-old Caroline Owens as their children's nanny. They had picked her up one night on a secluded country road as she hitchhiked from Tewkesbury to her Cinderford home, having visited her boyfriend. Learning that Owens disliked her stepfather and was looking for a job, the Wests offered her part-time employment as a nanny to the three children then in their household, with a promise she would be driven home each Tuesday. Several days later, Owens moved into 25 Cromwell Street, sharing a room with Anna Marie, who Owens noted was "very withdrawn".


title: Fred West

text: Rose, who had begun to engage in prostitution by this time, explained to Owens that she worked as a masseuse when the younger woman enquired about the steady stream of men visiting her. According to Owens, Fred also claimed to be skilled in performing abortions, should she ever need such a service. Owens also noted Fred talked about sex almost incessantly; her suspicions as to his sexual overtones were further heightened when Fred boasted that many of the women he claimed to have performed abortions upon were so overjoyed that they would offer him their sexual services as a reward. When Owens herself became the recipient of the Wests' overt sexual advances, she announced her intentions to leave Cromwell Street and return home.


title: Fred West

text: Knowing Owens' habits of hitchhiking along the A40 between Cinderford and Tewkesbury, the Wests formulated a plan to abduct her for their shared gratification. Fred later admitted that the specific intent of this abduction was the rape and likely murder of Owens, but that his initial incentive was to determine whether his wife would be willing to at least assist him in an abduction. On 6 December 1972, the couple lured Owens into their vehicle with an apology for their conduct and the offer of a lift home. Initially, Owens believed the Wests had been sincere in their apologies to her and obliged, believing she had simply mistaken their earlier intentions. Rose joined her in the back seat, with the explanation she wanted a "girls' chat" as Fred drove.


title: Fred West

text: Shortly thereafter, Rose began to fondle her, as Fred questioned whether she had had sex with her boyfriend that evening. When Owens began to protest, Fred stopped the car, referred to Owens as a "bitch", and punched her into unconsciousness before he and Rose bound and gagged her with a scarf and duct tape. In her subsequent statement to police, Owens stated that, at Cromwell Street, she was given a drugged cup of tea to drink, then again gagged and subjected to a prolonged sexual assault from Fred and Rose. At one stage, Fred remarked that Owens' clitoris was unusual then lashed her genitals with a leather belt. When Owens screamed, Rose again smothered her with a pillow and further restrained her about the neck, and performed cunnilingus on her. Quickly realising the gravity of her situation, Owens ceased resisting their sexual assaults.


title: Fred West

text: The following morning, having noted Owens' screaming when one of his children had knocked on the door of the room in which she was restrained, Fred threatened that he and his wife would keep her locked up in the cellar and allow his "black friends" to abuse her, and that when they had finished, he would bury her body beneath "the paving stones of Gloucester". Fred then claimed he had killed hundreds of young girls, adding that Owens had primarily been brought to the house for "Rose's pleasure". He and Rose then calmly asked Owens whether she would consider returning to work as their nanny. Seeing her escape avenue, Owens agreed, and vacuumed the house to indicate her belief in becoming an extended member of the family. Later that day, Owens escaped from a launderette she and Rose had entered and returned home. Although initially too ashamed to divulge to her mother what had happened, when her mother noted the welts, bruises and exposed subcutaneous tissues on her daughter's body, Owens burst into tears and confided what had happened.


title: Fred West

text: Owens' mother immediately reported her daughter's ordeal to the police, and the Wests were arrested and charged with assault, indecent assault, actual bodily harm, and rape. The case was tried at Gloucester Magistrates' Court on 12 January 1973, but by this date, Owens had decided she could not face the ordeal of testifying in court. All charges pertaining to her sexual abuse were dropped, and the Wests agreed to plead guilty to the reduced charges of indecent assault and causing actual bodily harm; each was fined £50, and the couple were allowed to walk free from court. When Owens heard this news, she attempted suicide.


title: Fred West

text: Three months after the Wests' assault trial, the couple committed their first known murder. The victim was a 19-year-old named Lynda Gough, with whom Fred and Rose became acquainted through a male lodger in early 1973. Gough regularly visited Cromwell Street, and engaged in affairs with two male lodgers. On 19 April, she moved into their home on Cromwell Street. On or about 20 April, other tenants were told that she had been told to leave the household after she had hit one of their children. This story was later repeated to Gough's mother when she contacted the Wests to enquire about her daughter's whereabouts.


title: Fred West

text: When Gough's dismembered body was found, the jaw was completely wrapped in adhesive and surgical tape to silence her screams, and two small tubes had likely been inserted into her nasal cavities to allow breathing. Long sections of string and sections of knotted fabric were also discovered with her remains. Gough had likely been suspended from holes carved into the wooden beams supporting the ceiling of the cellar Fred later admitted he had devised for the purpose of suspending his victims' bodies, and likely died of either strangulation or suffocation. Her dismembered body, missing five cervical vertebrae, the patellae and numerous finger bones, was buried in an inspection pit beneath the garage.


title: Fred West

text: From their later investigations, police and forensic experts concluded all the victims found in the cellar at 25 Cromwell Street had been murdered in this location, and that, like Gough, each had been dismembered in this location. Five victims were murdered and buried in the cellar at Cromwell Street between November 1973 and April 1975. The first of these victims, 15-year-old Carol Ann Cooper, was abducted on 10 November 1973. Cooper lived in the Pines Children's Home in Worcester, and was abducted after spending the evening at a cinema with her boyfriend. She had been waiting for a bus in Warndon when she vanished, and was likely dragged into Fred's car, where her face was bound with surgical tape and her arms bound with braiding cloth before she was driven to Cromwell Street. At the Wests' address, Cooper was suspended from the wooden beams of the cellar ceiling before her abuse and murder. As had been the case with Lynda, Cooper died from strangulation or asphyxiation, before her body was dismembered and buried in a shallow, cubical grave in the cellar.


title: Fred West

text: Over the following 17 months, four further victims between the ages of 15 and 21 suffered a similar fate to that endured by Gough and Cooper, although the disarticulation conducted upon each successive victim, plus the paraphernalia discovered in each shallow grave, suggests each victim was likely subjected to greater abuse and torture than those previously murdered.


title: Fred West

text: Following the murder of 18-year-old Juanita Mott in April 1975, Fred concreted over the floor of the entire cellar. He later converted this section of the household into a bedroom for his oldest children, and he and his wife are not known to have committed any further murders until May 1978, when Fred—either with or without Rose's participation but certainly with her knowledge—murdered an 18-year-old lodger named Shirley Robinson. Robinson had first met Fred at The Green Lantern café in April 1977, and had taken lodgings with the Wests the same month. She was heavily pregnant at the time of her murder. Although Rose—herself pregnant at the time—initially boasted to neighbours the child Robinson was carrying was her husband's; she soon developed a deep resentment of Robinson, and the motive for her murder is likely to have been the removal of a threat to the stability of the Wests' relationship. Her body was buried in the garden of 25 Cromwell Street. It was extensively dismembered, but no restraining devices were found with these remains, making a sexual motive for this murder unlikely. The unborn baby had been removed and had several bones missing. Shortly thereafter, Rose unsuccessfully submitted a claim for maternity benefit in Robinson's name with Gloucester social services. As had earlier been the case with Charmaine and Lynda, Fred and Rose allayed the suspicions of anyone who asked about Robinson's whereabouts by claiming she had relocated to live with her father in West Germany.


title: Fred West

text: The final murder Fred and Rose are known to have committed with a definite sexual motive occurred on 5 August 1979. The victim was a 16-year-old named Alison Chambers, who had run away from a local children's home to become the Wests' live-in nanny in the middle of 1979. Chambers is believed to have lived within their household for several weeks before her murder, and Rose promised Chambers she could live at a rural "peaceful farm" she claimed she and her husband owned. Her body was also buried in the garden of Cromwell Street, close to the bathroom wall, and although Chambers was likely dismembered, her skeleton was not marked by striations as the earlier victims' bodies had been. In an effort to allay any concerns from Chambers' family (with whom she maintained regular correspondence), Fred and Rose later posted a letter, written by Chambers to her mother prior to her murder, from a Northamptonshire post box.


title: Fred West

text: Heather and Mae West became the focus of Fred's incestuous sexual attentions after Anna Marie ran away from home in 1979 after enduring a particularly severe beating from Rose to her stomach just days after being discharged from hospital for treatment of an ectopic pregnancy. The frequency of the abuse endured by Heather and Mae increased when both girls reached puberty. Fred was overt and unapologetic in his conduct, and would justify his actions with the simple explanation: "I made you; I can do what I like with you." He further referred to his intentions to impregnate both his daughters on at least one occasion, and would occasionally force all his children to watch pornography with him. As Heather, Mae and their younger brother Stephen were very close in age, the trio resolved that if their father asked either of the two girls to be alone in a room with him, they would only do so if at least one other member of the trio were present to avoid either girl being raped. Both girls also developed a regime whereby they would only shower or undress when their father was either out of the house, or as her sister stood guard at the door. Stephen was also informed by his father that he would have to have sex with his mother by the age of 17 (in the event, his parents evicted him from their home when he was 16).


title: Fred West

text: Although the girls were repulsed by their father's behaviour, Mae—having once endured Fred's throwing a vacuum cleaner at her when she remonstrated against his fondling her—developed a mechanism whereby she would tolerate Fred's sexually fondling her, then jokingly brush aside any efforts he made to take the molestation further, whereas in her autobiography, Mae recollected that Heather "was affected quite badly by all of this. Even more than me." A strong suspicion remains that, by 1985 or 1986, Heather had been forced to engage in intercourse with her father, as by the mid-1980s, she developed classic symptoms of the distress felt by victims of child abuse: these included habits of her biting her nails until they bled; drinking alcohol; of warily watching her father through the corner of her eye wherever she was sitting or standing; expressing nervous fragility whenever in the presence of males; her sleep being repeatedly broken by nightmares; and her repeatedly bouncing back and forth as she sat on any chair. This distressful behaviour led to Fred and Rose suspecting Heather had lesbian inclinations, and also resulted in her becoming the increasing recipient of taunts from her father (who had never particularly liked Heather) that she was "ugly" and a "bitch". On the occasions Heather remonstrated about the abuse to her mother, Rose would simply laugh at her distress.


title: Fred West

text: Heather also expressed to Mae and Stephen her desire to run away from home and live a nomadic lifestyle in the Forest of Dean, and to never again see any human beings.


title: Fred West

text: Heather did complain to friends about the abuse she and her siblings endured, and her external signs of psychological distress were noted by several of them. Staff at the Hucclecote Secondary School, which Heather and her siblings attended, are also known to have expressed concern as to why Heather—a studious and obedient pupil—refused to obey orders either to change her clothing for, or shower after, sporting activities. On one occasion, she was forced to take a shower, resulting in her peers and staff noting her arms, legs and torso were covered in welts and bruises in various stages of healing. Heather attempted to excuse these injuries as having been obtained in fights with her siblings, but confided in one close friend that they had been inflicted by her parents, adding that her mother considered her a "little bitch" who deserved her beatings.


title: Fred West

text: By the mid-1980s, rumours of Rose's sex life had reached several of the children's classmates, and although the West children had been instructed never to divulge details of their home lives to their peers, Heather confided to her friends that many of these rumours were true. The father of one of these classmates was a friend of the Wests; as such, word soon reached Fred and Rose that Heather had divulged details of her home life—including details of her mother's promiscuity—to her classmates. Fred was so concerned by these revelations that he began to escort Heather to and from school.


title: Fred West

text: After Heather left school in 1986, she applied for numerous jobs in an effort to leave Cromwell Street. By June of the following year, she had pinned her hopes on escaping the household via obtaining a job as a chalet cleaner at a holiday camp in the seaside town of Torquay; she received notification that this application had been unsuccessful on 18 June 1987. In response, she crumpled into tears before her siblings Mae and Stephen. That same evening, her whole family heard Heather sobbing aloud as she attempted to sleep, and according to Mae, she "cried all the way through the night." The following morning, on 19 June, Heather was "back to her usual self, looking miserable, biting her nails and sitting on the couch bouncing back and forth as she sat" as her siblings left the house to go to school.


title: Fred West

text: When Heather's siblings returned home, they were informed Heather had left to accept the job she had previously been refused in Torquay, although Rose told an enquiring neighbour that she and Heather had had a "hell of a row", and that Heather had run away from home. Later, to answer their children's questions about why Heather failed to contact or visit her siblings, the parents claimed that Heather had eloped with a lesbian lover. When Mae and Stephen suggested they report Heather's disappearance to police, Fred changed his story yet again, saying it would be unwise to initiate a search for Heather as she was involved in credit card fraud. On more than one occasion, Fred and Rose persuaded an unknown acquaintance to fake a phone call from Heather to her parents.


title: Fred West

text: In the years following Heather's disappearance, Fred occasionally jokingly threatened the children that they would "end up under the patio like Heather" if they either misbehaved or divulged the mistreatment they endured to anyone outside the household. With Rose's approval, he later constructed a barbecue pit immediately opposite where Heather had been buried, and placed a pine table on her grave for the children of the family to sit upon whenever the Wests held family gatherings in their garden.


title: Fred West

text: Heather's disappearance, Fred and Rose's constantly changing stories about their daughter's whereabouts, plus their allusions to foul play, ultimately led to police enquiries as to Heather's whereabouts. These enquiries culminated in a search warrant being issued to excavate the Wests' garden in February 1994.


title: Fred West

text: In May 1992, Fred asked his 13-year-old daughter, Louise, to bring some bottles to a room on the first floor of their home. Rose was not present in the home at the time. Shortly thereafter, the girl's siblings heard her scream, "No, don't!" Later, Fred returned downstairs. Louise was found by her siblings writhing in pain, sobbing that her father had raped and sodomised her, at one stage partially strangling her. When Rose returned home, Louise confided in her mother that she had been raped by Fred; Rose replied, "Oh well. You were asking for it." Over the following weeks, Louise was raped on three further occasions, with Rose personally witnessing one of these rapes before following her distressed and bleeding daughter into the bathroom and asking the child, "Well, what did you expect?" Fred also filmed one of these rapes. Several weeks later, Louise garnered the courage to confide in a close friend what her father had done; this friend told her own mother what had happened on 4 August. In response, the friend's mother anonymously informed the police.


title: Fred West

text: On 6 August 1992, the police searched the West household on the pretext of searching for stolen property. Although numerous objects of sexual paraphernalia—including 99 pornographic videos of both home-made and commercial nature—were discovered, police did not find the video depicting the rape of Fred's daughter. The 13-year-old made a full statement through a specially-trained solicitor, describing her father's actions, the fact the sexual abuse had begun when she was 11, and that her mother had been casually indifferent to her plight. All the children in the household were placed in foster care the following day. Medical examinations revealed evidence of physical and sexual abuse.


title: Fred West

text: The West children also divulged their mother had inflicted most of the physical abuse and that their father frequently said that if they told anyone about the goings-on in the household they would be "buried under the patio" like their sister Heather.


title: Fred West

text: Police began a full-scale investigation, eventually leading to Fred being charged with three counts of rape, and one of buggery, with Rose as an accomplice. She was also charged with child cruelty, inciting her husband to engage in sex with their daughter, and obstructing the police. The Wests were questioned as to the whereabouts of their eldest daughter, and although Fred claimed Heather was "alive and well" and supporting herself via prostitution, Rose initially claimed to have no knowledge of Heather's whereabouts, or why she had left home. She claimed on 11 August that she could "remember now" that her daughter had left home at her own persuasion due to Rose's concerns her other children may discover Heather's supposed lesbian inclinations. Rose then added she had also given her daughter £600 to incentivise her to leave the household, before further claiming to have maintained sporadic telephone contact with her daughter over the years. The following day, Rose was granted bail on the condition she did not maintain contact with her children, her stepdaughter, or her husband prior to her upcoming trial.


title: Fred West

text: As Fred awaited trial, he was held on remand in Birmingham. Learning that her father had denied any wrongdoing, Anna Marie also contacted police to offer a full statement detailing her experiences as a child. In a statement given to Detective Constable Hazel Savage, Anna Marie recounted the extensive physical, mental and sexual abuse she had endured as a child at the hands of her father and stepmother, before agreeing to testify against both parents at their upcoming trial. Anna Marie also added she had, for several years, been unsuccessfully attempting to trace her mother Rena and half-sisters Charmaine and Heather. Further enquiries conducted with Anna Marie's husband, Chris Davis, revealed that Heather had confided in him just how unhappy she was shortly before her disappearance, and of her desire to leave home. Davis elaborated that although Heather had not divulged any details about her enduring any sexual abuse, he had been so concerned for her welfare he had offered to confront her parents, and Heather had dissuaded him from doing so, blurting: "For Christ's sake don't, because they'll kill us both!" Davis then suggested they might wish to speak with Heather to garner further details of her abuse.


title: Fred West

text: In their efforts to gather further evidence, police and social services also spoke with Mae, who, having spoken with her 13-year-old sister and learned Louise did not wish to see her father charged, initially denied she had endured any molestation as an adolescent. Police then focused their attentions on tracing Heather in efforts to corroborate Anna Marie's claims of sexual abuse, but enquiries to the Inland Revenue and the Social Security department held no records attesting to her being alive. Two months later, Gloucester social services also contacted police to stress their concern over the whereabouts of Heather.


title: Fred West

text: This case against the Wests collapsed when Anna Marie and her 13-year-old half-sister Louise declined to testify at the court case on 7 June 1993, with the child rape victim expressing her desire to return to her family, and Anna Marie choosing to withdraw her statement because of her noting the misery of her younger siblings, and her fear of Rose's vindictiveness. Shortly thereafter, Anna Marie spoke further with DC Savage, further emphasising that her mother Rena and half-sister Charmaine were also missing.


title: Fred West

text: Although the Wests were acquitted of all charges, all their younger children remained in foster care, albeit with permitted supervised visitations to Cromwell Street. Despite the Wests claiming to the few relatives from whom they were not already estranged by 1993 that the charges had been fabricated by police, almost all of their remaining family members severed contact with them. Meanwhile, police continued investigating the disappearance of Heather, noting no records existed indicating she was still alive. When Anna Marie was questioned as to the colloquial "family joke" regarding Heather being buried beneath the patio, she confirmed that the sole time she had heard her father recite this claim, he had immediately burst into laughter, leading to her refusing to take this claim seriously.


title: Fred West

text: In retracing Fred's history, police also discovered that although Rena and Charmaine had disappeared in 1971, no missing person report had ever been filed on either of them. DC Savage and her colleagues were convinced Heather was dead, and that Fred's repeated statement to his children that her body lay beneath the family patio might be true. On 23 February 1994, Gloucester police successfully applied for a search warrant authorising the search of 25 Cromwell Street to locate Heather's remains.


title: Fred West

text: When police visited the address on 24 February and showed the warrant to Rose, she turned pale, before becoming hysterical and shouting over her shoulder to her eldest son, Stephen, "Get Fred!" Rose became contradictory in her informal questioning as to the circumstances surrounding Heather's disappearance. When reminded of these contradictions, she became distraught and abusive, shouting at the officers: "I can't fucking remember! It's a bloody long time ago! What do you think I am? A bloody computer?"


title: Fred West

text: Fred had been working in Stroud at the time; upon hearing of the police's intentions, he assured Stephen he would be home immediately. When Fred arrived three hours later, he informed his family of his intention to voluntarily offer a witness statement to police regarding his daughter's whereabouts. Despite Fred's insistence in this statement that Heather had been "alive and well", albeit involved in a drugs cartel, and that the claims he and his wife had made as to Heather being buried beneath the family patio were simply "rubbish", police were unassuaged. In response, Fred abruptly changed tactics, claiming they simply held a grudge against him due to his 1993 acquittal of the rape of his daughter.


title: Fred West

text: That evening, with the search team having left their premises and a uniformed officer remaining at Cromwell Street to guard the excavation site, Mae and Stephen observed their parents talking in hushed tones as they repeatedly glanced towards the garden from their kitchen window.


title: Fred West

text: In the early hours of the following morning, as his son Stephen was about to leave for work, Fred informed him: "Look son, look after mum and sell the house [...] I've done something really bad. I want you to go to the papers and make as much money as you can." Shortly thereafter, police returned to Cromwell Street to continue their search for Heather's body. Upon their arrival, Fred indicated his wish to be arrested for Heather's murder and to be taken to Bearland police station to provide a full confession; he was then arrested and formally cautioned.


title: Fred West

text: At 11:15 that morning, Fred formally admitted to police he had indeed killed his daughter, albeit in an act of manslaughter. He confessed to strangling Heather in a fit of rage, then dismembering her body in the ground floor bathroom with a heavy serrated knife he normally used for cutting slabs of frozen meat. Her remains had been stored in a dustbin as he waited for an opportunity to dig her grave. Fred was insistent his wife had no knowledge of her daughter's murder, claiming he had committed this murder as Rose was preoccupied with one of her clients, adding the fact the search team had not yet unearthed Heather's remains was because they had been excavating the wrong section of his garden. He then volunteered to accompany police to the house to pinpoint the precise location of Heather's body. Upon receipt of this confession, Fred's solicitor, Howard Ogden, and Janet Leach, his appointed appropriate adult, informed Mae and Stephen their father had confessed to their sister's murder. In response, Stephen slumped against a wall and began sobbing; Mae entered a state of shock, before stammering that her father had not killed her sister.


title: Fred West

text: The following day (26 February), police began excavating the section of the garden at Cromwell Street where Fred indicated he had buried his daughter's body. Shortly after 4 p.m., police found a human thigh bone protruding from a section of the garden Fred had insisted police need not look in. Excavating the section of the garden where Fred had indicated he had buried his daughter's body, investigators discovered a mass of jumbled human remains encased in the remnants of a bin bag and intertwined with two lengths of rope. These dismembered remains were taken to the police headquarters for further examination, where they were determined to be those of a young woman, with one kneecap and several phalanges missing. The decedent's fingernails were discovered in a pile, suggesting they may have been torn from her fingers as a means of torture. Several hours later, the body was identified via dental records as being that of Heather West.


title: Fred West

text: That evening, having been formally charged with his daughter's murder and questioned as to why police had also discovered a third thigh bone, Fred confessed there were two further sets of human remains in his garden, and agreed to return to Cromwell Street to reveal the locations of both graves; one of whom he named as Shirley Robinson, whom he described as being a former tenant and a lesbian who had been heavily pregnant with his child at the time of her 1978 murder; the other victim he described (incorrectly) as being "Shirley's mate", but either could not or would not elaborate as to her identity. Both sets of remains were discovered on 28 February, and Fred was charged with both murders two days later.


title: Fred West

text: Having discovered three sets of human remains in the garden, a decision was made to thoroughly search the entire property. Rose was placed into a safe house in the nearby town of Dursley as police commenced their search inside 25 Cromwell Street. Informed of this fact, and with the formal interviews conducted by the investigative team lasting up to 16 hours each day and including persistent questioning as to the whereabouts of his first wife Rena and stepdaughter Charmaine, Fred authorised his solicitor to pass a note he had written to the leader of the murder investigation: Superintendent John Bennett of the Gloucestershire Police. This note—dated 4 March—read: "I, Frederick West, authorise my solicitor, Howard Ogden, to advise Superintendent Bennett that I wish to admit a further (approx) nine killings, expressly Charmaine, Rena, Lynda Gough and others to be identified. F. West."


title: Fred West

text: Questioned further as to his claims, Fred calmly explained there were a further five bodies buried in his cellar, and a sixth body beneath the ground-floor bathroom. Most of these victims, Fred claimed, had been hitchhikers or girls he had murdered in the 1970s after picking them up at bus stops. Initially, Fred claimed these six victims had been killed when they had threatened to inform Rose of his infidelity with women, and that he had transported their bodies to Cromwell Street to abuse, dismember, and then bury in shallow graves. The dismemberment, Fred claimed, had made it easier to bury the remains in shallow, cubical graves, and he agreed to return to Cromwell Street to indicate precisely where he had buried each victim.


title: Fred West

text: Between 5 and 8 March, police found six further bodies of young females at 25 Cromwell Street. Each victim had been extensively mutilated, and each body bore evidence of having been subjected to extreme sexual abuse prior to the act of murder. For example, the third set of remains discovered in the cellar was found with a length of cloth wrapped around the skull, and an oval of adhesive tape 16 inches in circumference found with the remains had likely been used to gag this victim, whose ankles and wrists were also bound with a large section of rope. Also found in this grave was a large, serrated knife. The second set of remains was found with a section of tubing twisted into a U-shape alongside her severed limbs, and her skull was found encased in adhesive tape which had been wrapped around the section where her face had been 11 or 12 times, with a narrow plastic tube inserted where the nasal cavities had been in an effort to allow her to breathe prior to her murder. Each set of remains was missing numerous bones, particularly phalanges; when questioned, Fred refused to divulge the whereabouts of the bones missing from each set of remains, or the reason for their absence.


title: Fred West

text: Despite Fred's insistence that his wife held no knowledge of any of the murders, investigators suspected otherwise. Rose was arrested on 20 April 1994, initially on offences relating to the rape of an 11-year-old girl, and the physical assault of an eight-year-old boy—both charges dating from the mid-1970s. The following day, she was refused bail, and transferred to Pucklechurch Prison to be held in the maximum security wing. Here, she was questioned more closely about the murders, in particular those of her daughter Heather and Lynda Gough, and on 25 April she was formally charged with Gough's murder.


title: Fred West

text: By 6 May, Fred and Rose were jointly charged with five counts of murder, with Rose simply replying, "I'm innocent" upon hearing each formal charge - a response that proved to be a theme throughout each of the 46 interviews investigators held with Rose prior to her trial.


title: Fred West

text: As well as the murders of the victims exhumed from Cromwell Street, Fred had confessed to the murders of his first wife and stepdaughter, and to knowing the location of Anne McFall's remains (although he always denied killing her). Fred agreed to identify each burial location, and the remains were unearthed between 10 April and 7 June. He was then transferred to Birmingham's HM Prison Birmingham, where a strict suicide watch called for his cell to be checked every 15 minutes.


title: Fred West

text: Fred and Rose West were brought before a magistrates' court in Gloucester on 30 June 1994; he was charged with 12 murders and she with nine. This was the first time the couple had seen each other since Fred's February arrest. Prior to hearing the formal charges against them, Fred leaned toward his wife and gently placed his hand upon her shoulder; in response, Rose—having ignored her husband's presence—visibly winced in discomfort. Both were ordered held on remand.


title: Fred West

text: As police attempted to lead Fred from the hearing, he resisted their efforts, and again attempted to move towards Rose, who again winced and attempted to writhe away from his grasp.


title: Fred West

text: Immediately after this court appearance, Fred was re-arrested on suspicion of murdering Anne McFall, whose body had been found on 7 June but had not been officially identified until this date; he was formally charged with McFall's murder on 3 July, appearing in court the following morning.


title: Fred West

text: As he was held on remand at HM Prison Birmingham in the months following his arrest, Fred became increasingly depressed. This became worse after Rose's public rejection of him at Gloucester Magistrates' Court on 30 June, her refusal to reply to letters he sent her, and reports leaked to the press in which she (Rose) had assumed the role of a grieving mother who had lost a daughter and stepdaughter to her husband and in which she declared both her innocence of murder, and her hatred of him.


title: Fred West

text: Fred pleaded with Stephen and Anna Marie (the only children to visit their father while on remand) to convey to Rose that he loved her, but Rose never acknowledged these overtures. In response, Fred withdrew his earlier confessions to having acted alone in the murders, and instead accused his wife of almost total culpability in all the murders to which he had been charged, excluding that of Anne McFall, which he claimed had been committed by his first wife.


title: Fred West

text: The initially strict suicide watch having been relaxed, on 1 January 1995 Fred West asphyxiated himself in his cell by wrapping an improvised rope he had constructed from a blanket and tags he had stolen from prison laundry bags around his neck, then binding this device to a door handle and window catchment, and sinking to his knees.


title: Fred West

text: At the bottom of the suicide note found in his cell was a drawing of a gravestone, within which was written: "In loving memory. Fred West. Rose West. Rest in peace where no shadow falls. In perfect peace he waits for Rose, his wife."


title: Fred West

text: At pretrial proceedings in February, Rose pleaded not guilty to ten charges of murder (the murder of Charmaine West having been added to the original nine after Fred's suicide, and two counts of rape and indecent assault of young girls having been dropped with a view for later resubmission), though her counsel conceded that circumstantial evidence indicated Rose's willingness to subject young girls to sadistic physical and sexual abuse.


title: Fred West

text: Her trial at Winchester Crown Court began on 3 October 1995. She was tried before Mr Justice Mantell.


title: Fred West

text: An important early decision by the judge was to admit testimony related to the sexual mistreatment of three women by Fred and Rose, accepting the prosecution's argument that it established a pattern of behaviour repeated in the murders.


title: Fred West

text: In his opening statement, prosecutor Brian Leveson portrayed the Wests as sex-obsessed sadistic murderers, terming the bodies discovered at Cromwell Street and Midland Road "secrets more terrible than words can express... [The victims'] last moments on Earth were as objects of the depravity of this woman and her husband".


title: Fred West

text: He pointed out that Fred was incarcerated when Charmaine West was killed; claimed that the Wests had each learned from their mistake in allowing Caroline Owens to live (they "would never be so trusting again"); and said that the gag on victim Thérèse Siegenthaler had a "feminine" toucha scarf tied in a bow.


title: Fred West

text: He promised to demonstrate Rose's controlling and sexually sadistic character and her efforts to deflect suspicion about the disappearance of their victims.


title: Fred West

text: Prosecution witnesses included Cromwell Street lodgers; victims' relatives; Rose's mother Daisy and sister Glenys; and surviving victims including Anna Marie West, Kathryn Halliday (a former lover of the Wests), Caroline Owens, and a "Miss A" (who had been sexually assaulted at 14 by Fred and Rose in 1977, and who described Rose as the more aggressive perpetrator of the two). Neighbours described Charmaine's 1971 disappearance while Fred was imprisoned, and Rose's casual indifference to Heather's disappearance.


title: Fred West

text: Rosemary's counsel, Richard Ferguson, tried to discredit prosecution witnesses as either having financially exploited their connection to the case, or motivated by grudges. Owens, though admitting to receiving £20,000 for her story, described her extreme survivor's guilt: "I only want to get justice for the girls who didn't make it. I feel like it was my fault."


title: Fred West

text: Ferguson emphasised that Fred, before meeting Rose, had committed at least one murder strikingly similar to those at issue in the present trial, and that the prosecution's case was largely circumstantial. He contended that Rose was unaware of the extent of Fred's sadism, and urged the jury to not be prejudiced by her promiscuity and domineering manner.


title: Fred West

text: Against the advice of her counsel, Rose herself testified; her manner sometimes morose and tearful, sometimes upbeat and humorous. She wept while describing herself as a victim of child abuse and rape who naively married a violent and domineering man, but joked about issues such as her "always being pregnant", and laughed while describing one victim's "grandfather glasses". She also claimed never to have met six of the victims buried at Cromwell Street, and to recall very little of her assault on Caroline Owens. When shown photographs of the victims buried in the cellar and victim Alison Chambers and asked by Brian Leveson whether she recognised any of their faces, Rose's face turned bright red, and she repeatedly stuttered as she replied, "No, sir."


title: Fred West

text: When questioned as to life at Cromwell Street, Rose claimed she and Fred had lived separate lives, which was inconsistent with the earlier testimony of witnesses who had visited or lodged at their address. In reference to her relationship with her eldest child, Rose admitted her relations with Heather were strained, before claiming to the court that her daughter was a lesbian who had physically and psychologically abused her siblings. Despite these allegations, Rose stated she had loved her daughter, and held no knowledge of her murder. Further questioned as to the contradictory explanations she and her husband had given as to Heather's disappearance, Rose claimed these discrepancies had stemmed from telephone conversations she had had with Heather after she had left home.


title: Fred West

text: The defence next called a succession of women who claimed to have been attacked or assaulted by a lone male whose physical description matched that of Fred West between 1966 and 1975. These seven women each testified they had recognised their attacker as Fred West when his photograph appeared in the media in 1994. The intention of this testimony was to illustrate to the jury that Fred was capable of abducting, assaulting or attempting to attack women without Rose, which the prosecution had never disputed. The physical recollections of several of these women varied greatly.


title: Fred West

text: The final witness to testify at Rose's trial was Fred's appointed appropriate adult, Janet Leach, whom the prosecution had called to testify on 7 November in rebuttal to the tape recordings of Fred's confession which had been played to the court on 3 November and in which he had stressed Rose had "known nothing at all" about any of the murders. Leach testified that through this role, Fred had gradually begun to view her as a confidante, and had confided in her that on the evening prior to his 25 February arrest, he and Rose had formed a pact whereby he would take full responsibility for all the murders, many of which he had privately described to her as being "some of Rose's mistakes". He had further divulged that Rose had indeed murdered Charmaine while he had been incarcerated, and had also murdered Shirley Robinson. Fred had also confided that he had dismembered the victims, and Rose had participated in the mutilation and dismemberment of Shirley Robinson, having personally removed Robinson's unborn child from her womb after her death. In reference to the remaining eight murders for which Rose was charged, Leach testified that Fred had confided Rose had "played a major part" in these murders.


title: Fred West

text: Upon cross examination, Leach did concede to Richard Ferguson she had earlier lied under oath about having sold her story to a national newspaper for £100,000, although she was adamant as to the sincerity of her testimony. While delivering this testimony, Leach collapsed, and the trial was adjourned for six days. She returned to complete her cross examination on 13 November.


title: Fred West

text: After seven weeks of evidence the judge instructed the jury, emphasising that circumstantial evidence can be sufficient for a finding of guilt, and that if two people take part in a murder, the law considers them equally guilty regardless of which of them did the deed.


title: Fred West

text: On 21 and 22 November, the jury returned unanimous guilty verdicts for all ten murders. Terming her crimes "appalling and depraved", Mr Justice Mantell sentenced Rosemary to life in prison, emphasising that she should never be paroled.


title: Fred West

text: Initially, Rose was incarcerated at HMP Bronzefield as a Category A prisoner; she was later transferred to HM Prison Low Newton before, in 2019, being transferred to HM Prison New Hall, where she continues to protest her innocence.


title: Fred West

text: Fred and Rose West are known to have committed at least 12 murders between 1967 and 1987; many investigators, authors, and journalists who have studied the case believe there are other victims whose bodies have never been found. Prior to his suicide, police had recorded over 108 hours of tape-recorded interviews with Fred, both when he had claimed to have acted alone in the commission of the murders, and when he had attempted to portray Rose as being the more culpable participant. On several occasions, Fred made cryptic hints he had murdered several other girls, but refused to divulge any further information beyond that he had murdered 15-year-old Mary Bastholm in 1968 and buried the body on farmland near Bishop's Cleeve. He also claimed to have killed one victim while working on a construction project in Birmingham, and that other bodies had been buried in Scotland and Herefordshire.


title: Fred West

text: To his appropriate adult, Fred claimed there were up to 20 further victims he and his wife had killed, "not in one place but spread around", and he intended to reveal the location of one body per year to investigators.


title: Fred West

text: While on remand, Fred made several admissions as to the fate of the victims buried at Cromwell Street to his son Stephen. Much of this information was disjointed or told in a third party manner; Fred claimed that he had extensively tortured the victims prior to their murder, but had not raped them, instead engaging in acts of necrophilia with their bodies at or shortly after the point of death. He also claimed the reason many phalange bones had been missing from the victims' bodies was because the removal of their fingers and toes had been one of the forms of torture the victims had endured, with other torture methods including the extraction of their nails, acts of mutilation, and cigarettes being stubbed out on their bodies. Furthermore, the locations of almost all the burial sites of victims—both discovered and undiscovered—was symbolic to Fred, as each had been buried at or very close to the location he had lived in or worked at the time of the victim's murder.


title: Fred West

text: Police firmly believe the Wests were responsible for further unsolved murders and disappearances. They believed they committed ten murders between 1971 and 1979, at least seven of which were for sexual purposes. Following the rash of murders between 1973 and 1975, Fred and Rose are not known to have committed any murders until 1978. They committed one further murder in 1979, followed by an eight-year lull until they murdered their daughter in 1987. Police do not know of any further murders they committed before their 1994 arrest.


title: Fred West

text: During interview, Fred confessed to murdering up to 30 people, indicating up to 18 other undiscovered victims.


title: Fred West

text: Fred's remarkably relaxed, emotionally sterile attitude towards all aspects of his crimes startled many members of the enquiry team. This prompted Superintendent John Bennett to seek the assistance of a criminal psychologist for an expert opinion on Fred's state of mind. After analysing Fred's behaviour throughout the extensive 1994 interviews, psychologist Paul Britton advised Superintendent Bennett that Fred's blasé manner indicated he had committed so many offences over such a long period that he was now indifferent to the acts of torture, mutilation and murder. Britton added that although an offender of this nature may come to offend less frequently, he would be unlikely to cease killing altogether.


title: Fred West

text: One theory which may explain the sudden lull in the frequency of their murders is the fact that by the mid-1970s, the Wests had begun a practice of befriending teenage girls from nearby care homes, many of whom they sexually abused, with others encouraged to engage in prostitution within their home. The Wests established acquaintances—including several of their lodgers—willing to partake in their shared fetishes, which may have satiated the couple to a degree.


title: Fred West

text: Caroline Owens, Anna Marie West, and several other survivors of sexual assaults at the Wests' hands each testified at Rose's trial that she had been by far the more calculating, aggressive and controlling of the two. Owens stated that, at one stage in her ordeal, Fred said that they had abducted Owens primarily for Rose's gratification. It is possible Rose's increasing family size, plus the fact she and her husband had, by the mid-1970s, begun seeking avenues to exploit girls from care homes in addition to acquiring contacts—willing or unwilling—to submit to their fetishes, may have led Fred and Rose to decide that these avenues of control and domination were sufficient for their satisfaction.


title: Fred West

text: Four young women similar in age and physical characteristics to those Fred was later charged with murdering in Gloucestershire are known to have disappeared during the time Fred lived in Glasgow—one of whom, Margaret McAvoy, Fred had been acquainted with via his employment as an ice cream van driver. He had also rented a garden allotment adjacent to his house and which he frequently visited, although only a small section of this plot was ever cultivated. To one neighbour, Fred remarked that he used the remainder for "something special", about which he refused to elaborate. Much of the supposed cultivation of this allotment occurred in the early hours of the morning.


title: Fred West

text: Police were unable to investigate whether any further bodies were buried at this location, as these allotments were built over in the 1970s as a section of the M8 motorway.


title: Fred West

text: Fred's body was cremated in Coventry on 29 March 1995 in a funeral that was attended by just four of his children. In a five-minute service, in which no hymns were sung, the Reverend Robert Simpson quoted sections of Psalm 23, then added a solemn reminder to those present that they must "also remember everyone else who has also suffered because of these tragic events". His ashes are believed to have been scattered at the Welsh seaside resort of Barry Island, a location he had regularly visited both as a child and as an adult with his family.


title: Fred West

text: After the 1994 arrest of their parents, the four youngest West children (born between 1978 and 1983), were given new identities to protect them from the notoriety of their family. Each child remained in foster care.


title: Fred West

text: The remains of Charmaine and Rena were cremated in Kettering. At the insistence of Anna Marie West, mother and daughter shared the same coffin, and no roses were to be brought to the service by any mourners.


title: Fred West

text: As a direct result of her tenacity in investigating the Wests, DC Hazel Savage was placed upon the annual New Year's honours list. The following year, she was awarded an MBE.


title: Fred West

text: The Wests' house in Cromwell Street was demolished in October 1996, with every piece of debris destroyed to discourage potential souvenir hunters. It had been referred to in the press as the "House of Horrors". The site was later redeveloped into a public pathway.


title: Fred West

text: Fred's younger brother, John, hanged himself in the garage of his Gloucester home in November 1996. At the time of his suicide, he had been awaiting the jury verdict in his trial for the alleged multiple rapes of his niece, Anna Marie, and another underage girl at Cromwell Street in the 1970s.


title: Fred West

text: In March 1996, Rose announced her intentions to appeal against her sentence, contending extensive press coverage had rendered witness testimony unreliable, that no physical evidence existed to attest she had participated in any of the murders, that the final instructions delivered by the judge to the jury had been biased in favour of the prosecution, and that undue weight had been given to the similar fact evidence introduced at her trial. This appeal was rejected by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Taylor of Gosforth, who contended Rose had received a fair trial and efficient legal representation. In July 1997, then-Home Secretary Jack Straw subjected Rose to a whole life tariff, effectively denying her any possibility of parole. Rose again announced that she would appeal against her sentence via her solicitor Leo Goatley in October 2000; in September 2001, she announced her intentions to abandon her appeals, stating she would never feel free even if released. She maintains her innocence in any of the murders.


title: Fred West

text: Both of Rose's oldest biological children and her stepdaughter, Anna Marie, initially visited her in prison on a regular basis, although by 2006, she had ceased contact with them after Mae began asking questions about her culpability in the murders. Rose justified her decision with the explanation: "I was never a parent [then] and could never be now." The sole visitor Rose continues to receive in prison is Anna Marie, who later changed her name to Anne Marie.


title: Fred West

text: The body of the Wests' former friend and housemate, Terrence Crick, was found in his car in the Scarborough district of Hackness in January 1996. He was 48 years old. Crick had become acquainted with Fred while he had lived at the Lake House Caravan Park in 1969; he had reported Fred to the authorities on several occasions after having been shown surgical instruments Fred claimed to have used to perform illegal abortions, and Polaroid images of the subjects' genitals he claimed to have taken immediately after the procedures. Crick had further informed authorities Fred had asked him to assist in finding pregnant girls to perform abortions upon.


title: Fred West

text: Crick had believed the information he had provided to police was ignored as Fred was a known police informant. The stress and guilt Crick had felt over the fact the information he had provided had not resulted in charges being brought apparently led him to take his own life. An inquest later recorded a verdict of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.


title: Fred West

text: In 2004, one of the Wests' youngest children, Barry, claimed to have witnessed the murder of his sister Heather. According to Barry (who was seven at the time), Fred and Rose had restrained, then sexually and physically abused Heather, before Rose had repeatedly stamped upon her head until she ceased to move.


title: Fred West

text: In 1999, Anna Marie West attempted suicide by drowning herself in the River Severn. Stephen West is also known to have made a suicide attempt in 2002, by attempting to hang himself. In 2004, he was jailed for nine months for having unlawful sex with a 14-year-old girl on multiple occasions. The couple's youngest son, Barry, took his own life via a suspected drug overdose in October 2020 at the age of 40. He is known to have battled a drug addiction and psychiatric problems as a result of the abuse he witnessed and endured as a child.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Leonhard Euler ( , ; 15 April 170718 September 1783) was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician and engineer who founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made pioneering and influential discoveries in many other branches of mathematics such as analytic number theory, complex analysis, and infinitesimal calculus. He introduced much of modern mathematical terminology and notation, including the notion of a mathematical function. He is also known for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, astronomy and music theory.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler is held to be one of the greatest mathematicians in history and the greatest of the 18th century. A statement attributed to Pierre-Simon Laplace expresses Euler's influence on mathematics: "Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all." Carl Friedrich Gauss remarked: "The study of Euler's works will remain the best school for the different fields of mathematics, and nothing else can replace it." Euler is also widely considered to be the most prolific; his 866 publications as well as his correspondences are collected in the "Opera Omnia Leonhard Euler" which, when completed, will consist of 81 "quarto" volumes. He spent most of his adult life in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and in Berlin, then the capital of Prussia.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler is credited for popularizing the Greek letter formula_1 (lowercase pi) to denote the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, as well as first using the notation formula_2 for the value of a function, the letter formula_3 to express the imaginary unit formula_4, the Greek letter formula_5 (capital sigma) to express summations, the Greek letter formula_6 (uppercase delta) for finite differences, and lowercase letters to represent the sides of a triangle while representing the angles as capital letters. He gave the current definition of the constant formula_7, the base of the natural logarithm, now known as Euler's number.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler was also the first practitioner of graph theory (partly as a solution for the problem of the Seven Bridges of Königsberg). He became famous for, among many other accomplishments, solving the Basel problem, after proving that the sum of the infinite series of squared integer reciprocals equaled exactly , and for discovering that the sum of the numbers of vertices and faces minus edges of a polyhedron equals 2, a number now commonly known as the Euler characteristic. In the field of physics, Euler reformulated Newton's laws of physics into new laws in his two-volume work "Mechanica" to better explain the motion of rigid bodies. He also made substantial contributions to the study of elastic deformations of solid objects.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Leonhard Euler was born on 15 April 1707, in Basel, Switzerland, to Paul III Euler, a pastor of the Reformed Church, and Marguerite ( Brucker), whose ancestors include a number of well-known scholars in the classics. He was the oldest of four children, having two younger sisters, Anna Maria and Maria Magdalena, and a younger brother, Johann Heinrich. Soon after the birth of Leonhard, the Euler family moved from Basel to the town of Riehen, Switzerland, where his father became pastor in the local church and Leonhard spent most of his childhood.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: From a young age, Euler received schooling in mathematics from his father, who had taken courses from Jacob Bernoulli some years earlier at the University of Basel. Around the age of eight, Euler was sent to live at his maternal grandmother's house and enrolled in the Latin school in Basel. In addition, he received private tutoring from Johannes Burckhardt, a young theologian with a keen interest in mathematics.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: In 1720, at thirteen years of age, Euler enrolled at the University of Basel. Attending university at such a young age was not unusual at the time. The course on elementary mathematics was given by Johann Bernoulli, the younger brother of the deceased Jacob Bernoulli (who had taught Euler's father). Johann Bernoulli and Euler soon got to know each other better. Euler described Bernoulli in his autobiography:


title: Leonhard Euler

text: It was during this time that Euler, backed by Bernoulli, obtained his father's consent to become a mathematician instead of a pastor.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: In 1723, Euler received a Master of Philosophy with a dissertation that compared the philosophies of René Descartes and Isaac Newton. Afterwards he enrolled in the theological faculty of the University of Basel.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: In 1726, Euler completed a dissertation on the propagation of sound with the title "De Sono" with which he unsuccessfully attempted to obtain a position at the University of Basel. In 1727, he entered the Paris Academy prize competition (offered annually and later biennially by the academy beginning in 1720) for the first time. The problem posed that year was to find the best way to place the masts on a ship. Pierre Bouguer, who became known as "the father of naval architecture", won and Euler took second place. Over the years, Euler entered this competition 15 times, winning 12 of them.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Johann Bernoulli's two sons, Daniel and Nicolaus, entered into service at the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg in 1725, leaving Euler with the assurance they would recommend him to a post when one was available. On 31 July 1726, Nicolaus died of appendicitis after spending less than a year in Russia. When Daniel assumed his brother's position in the mathematics/physics division, he recommended that the post in physiology that he had vacated be filled by his friend Euler. In November 1726, Euler eagerly accepted the offer, but delayed making the trip to Saint Petersburg while he unsuccessfully applied for a physics professorship at the University of Basel.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler arrived in Saint Petersburg in May 1727. He was promoted from his junior post in the medical department of the academy to a position in the mathematics department. He lodged with Daniel Bernoulli with whom he worked in close collaboration. Euler mastered Russian, settled into life in Saint Petersburg and took on an additional job as a medic in the Russian Navy.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: The academy at Saint Petersburg, established by Peter the Great, was intended to improve education in Russia and to close the scientific gap with Western Europe. As a result, it was made especially attractive to foreign scholars like Euler. The academy's benefactress, Catherine I, who had continued the progressive policies of her late husband, died before Euler's arrival to Saint Petersburg. The Russian conservative nobility then gained power upon the ascension of the twelve-year-old Peter II. The nobility, suspicious of the academy's foreign scientists, cut funding for Euler and his colleagues and prevented the entrance of foreign and non-aristocratic students into the Gymnasium and Universities.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Conditions improved slightly after the death of Peter II in 1730 and the German-influenced Anna of Russia assumed power. Euler swiftly rose through the ranks in the academy and was made a professor of physics in 1731. He also left the Russian Navy, refusing a promotion to lieutenant. Two years later, Daniel Bernoulli, fed up with the censorship and hostility he faced at Saint Petersburg, left for Basel. Euler succeeded him as the head of the mathematics department. In January 1734, he married Katharina Gsell (1707–1773), a daughter of Georg Gsell. Frederick II had made an attempt to recruit the services of Euler for his newly established Berlin Academy in 1740, but Euler initially preferred to stay in St Petersburg. But after Emperor Anna died and Frederick II agreed to pay 1600 ecus (the same as Euler earned in Russia) he agreed to move to Berlin. In 1741, he requested permission to leave to Berlin, arguing he was in need of a milder climate for his eyesight. The Russian academy gave its consent and would pay him 200 rubles per year as one of its active members.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Concerned about the continuing turmoil in Russia, Euler left St. Petersburg in June 1741 to take up a post at the Berlin Academy, which he had been offered by Frederick the Great of Prussia. He lived for 25 years in Berlin, where he wrote several hundred articles. In 1748 his text on functions called the "Introductio in analysin infinitorum" was published and in 1755 a text on differential calculus called the "Institutiones calculi differentialis" was published. In 1755, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and of the French Academy of Sciences. Notable students of Euler in Berlin included Stepan Rumovsky, later considered as the first Russian astronomer. In 1748 he declined an offer from the University of Basel to succeed the recently deceased Johann Bernoulli. In 1753 he bought a house in Charlottenburg, in which he lived with his family and widowed mother.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler became the tutor for Friederike Charlotte of Brandenburg-Schwedt, the Princess of Anhalt-Dessau and Frederick's niece. He wrote over 200 letters to her in the early 1760s, which were later compiled into a volume entitled "Letters of Euler on different Subjects in Natural Philosophy Addressed to a German Princess". This work contained Euler's exposition on various subjects pertaining to physics and mathematics and offered valuable insights into Euler's personality and religious beliefs. It was translated into multiple languages, published across Europe and in the United States, and became more widely read than any of his mathematical works. The popularity of the "Letters" testifies to Euler's ability to communicate scientific matters effectively to a lay audience, a rare ability for a dedicated research scientist.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Despite Euler's immense contribution to the academy's prestige and having been put forward as a candidate for its presidency by Jean le Rond d'Alembert, Frederick II named himself as its president. The Prussian king had a large circle of intellectuals in his court, and he found the mathematician unsophisticated and ill-informed on matters beyond numbers and figures. Euler was a simple, devoutly religious man who never questioned the existing social order or conventional beliefs. He was, in many ways, the polar opposite of Voltaire, who enjoyed a high place of prestige at Frederick's court. Euler was not a skilled debater and often made it a point to argue subjects that he knew little about, making him the frequent target of Voltaire's wit. Frederick also expressed disappointment with Euler's practical engineering abilities, stating:


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Throughout his stay in Berlin, Euler maintained a strong connection to the academy in St. Petersburg and also published 109 papers in Russia. He also assisted students from the St. Petersburg academy and at times accommodated Russian students in his house in Berlin. In 1760, with the Seven Years' War raging, Euler's farm in Charlottenburg was sacked by advancing Russian troops. Upon learning of this event, General Ivan Petrovich Saltykov paid compensation for the damage caused to Euler's estate, with Empress Elizabeth of Russia later adding a further payment of 4000 rubles—an exorbitant amount at the time. Euler decided to leave Berlin in 1766 and return to Russia.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: During his Berlin years (1741–1766), Euler was at the peak of his productivity. He wrote 380 works, 275 of which were published. This included 125 memoirs in the Berlin Academy and over 100 memoirs sent to the St. Petersburg Academy, which had retained him as a member and paid him an annual stipend. Euler’s "Introductio in Analysin Infinitorum" was published in two parts in 1748. In addition to his own research, Euler supervised the library, the observatory, the botanical garden, and the publication of calendars and maps from which the academy derived income. He was even involved in the design of the water fountains at Sanssouci, the King’s summer palace.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: The political situation in Russia stabilized after Catherine the Great's accession to the throne, so in 1766 Euler accepted an invitation to return to the St. Petersburg Academy. His conditions were quite exorbitant—a 3000 ruble annual salary, a pension for his wife, and the promise of high-ranking appointments for his sons. At the university he was assisted by his student Anders Johan Lexell. While living in St. Petersburg, a fire in 1771 destroyed his home.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: On 7 January 1734, he married Katharina Gsell (1707–1773), daughter of Georg Gsell, a painter from the Academy Gymnasium in Saint Petersburg. The young couple bought a house by the Neva River.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Of their thirteen children, only five survived childhood, three sons and two daughters. Their first son was Johann Albrecht Euler, whose godfather was Christian Goldbach.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Three years after his wife's death in 1773, Euler married her half-sister, Salome Abigail Gsell (1723–1794). This marriage lasted until his death in 1783.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: His brother Johann Heinrich settled in St. Petersburg in 1735 and was employed as a painter at the academy.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler's eyesight worsened throughout his mathematical career. In 1738, three years after nearly expiring from fever, he became almost blind in his right eye. Euler blamed the cartography he performed for the St. Petersburg Academy for his condition, but the cause of his blindness remains the subject of speculation. Euler's vision in that eye worsened throughout his stay in Germany, to the extent that Frederick referred to him as "Cyclops". Euler remarked on his loss of vision, stating "Now I will have fewer distractions." In 1766 a cataract in his left eye was discovered. Though couching of the cataract temporarily improved his vision, complications ultimately rendered him almost totally blind in the left eye as well. However, his condition appeared to have little effect on his productivity. With the aid of his scribes, Euler's productivity in many areas of study increased and in 1775 he produced, on average, one mathematical paper every week.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: In St. Petersburg on 18 September 1783, after a lunch with his family, Euler was discussing the newly discovered planet Uranus and its orbit with Lexell when he collapsed and died from a brain hemorrhage. wrote a short obituary for the Russian Academy of Sciences and Russian mathematician Nicolas Fuss, one of Euler's disciples, wrote a more detailed eulogy, which he delivered at a memorial meeting. In his eulogy for the French Academy, French mathematician and philosopher Marquis de Condorcet, wrote:


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler was buried next to Katharina at the Smolensk Lutheran Cemetery on Vasilievsky Island. In 1837, the Russian Academy of Sciences installed a new monument, replacing his overgrown grave plaque. To commemorate the 250th anniversary of Euler's birth in 1957, his tomb was moved to the Lazarevskoe Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler worked in almost all areas of mathematics, including geometry, infinitesimal calculus, trigonometry, algebra, and number theory, as well as continuum physics, lunar theory, and other areas of physics. He is a seminal figure in the history of mathematics; if printed, his works, many of which are of fundamental interest, would occupy between 60 and 80 quarto volumes. It has been proposed that Euler was responsible for a third of all the scientific and mathematical output of the 18th century. Euler's name is associated with a large number of topics. Euler's work averages 800 pages a year from 1725 to 1783. He also wrote over 4500 letters and hundreds of manuscripts. It has been estimated that Leonard Euler was the author of a quarter of the combined output in mathematics, physics, mechanics, astronomy, and navigation in the 18th century.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler introduced and popularized several notational conventions through his numerous and widely circulated textbooks. Most notably, he introduced the concept of a function and was the first to write "f"("x") to denote the function "f" applied to the argument "x". He also introduced the modern notation for the trigonometric functions, the letter for the base of the natural logarithm (now also known as Euler's number), the Greek letter Σ for summations and the letter to denote the imaginary unit. The use of the Greek letter "π" to denote the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter was also popularized by Euler, although it originated with Welsh mathematician William Jones.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: The development of infinitesimal calculus was at the forefront of 18th-century mathematical research, and the Bernoullis—family friends of Euler—were responsible for much of the early progress in the field. Thanks to their influence, studying calculus became the major focus of Euler's work. While some of Euler's proofs are not acceptable by modern standards of mathematical rigour (in particular his reliance on the principle of the generality of algebra), his ideas led to many great advances.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler is well known in analysis for his frequent use and development of power series, the expression of functions as sums of infinitely many terms, such as


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler's use of power series enabled him to solve the famous Basel problem in 1735 (he provided a more elaborate argument in 1741):


title: Leonhard Euler

text: now known as Euler's constant or the Euler–Mascheroni constant, and studied its relationship with the harmonic series, the gamma function, and values of the Riemann zeta function.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler introduced the use of the exponential function and logarithms in analytic proofs. He discovered ways to express various logarithmic functions using power series, and he successfully defined logarithms for negative and complex numbers, thus greatly expanding the scope of mathematical applications of logarithms. He also defined the exponential function for complex numbers and discovered its relation to the trigonometric functions. For any real number (taken to be radians), Euler's formula states that the complex exponential function satisfies


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler elaborated the theory of higher transcendental functions by introducing the gamma function and introduced a new method for solving quartic equations. He found a way to calculate integrals with complex limits, foreshadowing the development of modern complex analysis. He invented the calculus of variations and formulated the Euler–Lagrange equation for reducing optimization problems in this area to the solution of differential equations.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler pioneered the use of analytic methods to solve number theory problems. In doing so, he united two disparate branches of mathematics and introduced a new field of study, analytic number theory. In breaking ground for this new field, Euler created the theory of hypergeometric series, q-series, hyperbolic trigonometric functions, and the analytic theory of continued fractions. For example, he proved the infinitude of primes using the divergence of the harmonic series, and he used analytic methods to gain some understanding of the way prime numbers are distributed. Euler's work in this area led to the development of the prime number theorem.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler's interest in number theory can be traced to the influence of Christian Goldbach, his friend in the St. Petersburg Academy. Much of Euler's early work on number theory was based on the work of Pierre de Fermat. Euler developed some of Fermat's ideas and disproved some of his conjectures, such as his conjecture that all numbers of the form formula_13 (Fermat numbers) are prime.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler linked the nature of prime distribution with ideas in analysis. He proved that the sum of the reciprocals of the primes diverges. In doing so, he discovered the connection between the Riemann zeta function and prime numbers; this is known as the Euler product formula for the Riemann zeta function.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler invented the totient function φ("n"), the number of positive integers less than or equal to the integer "n" that are coprime to "n". Using properties of this function, he generalized Fermat's little theorem to what is now known as Euler's theorem. He contributed significantly to the theory of perfect numbers, which had fascinated mathematicians since Euclid. He proved that the relationship shown between even perfect numbers and Mersenne primes (which he had earlier proved) was one-to-one, a result otherwise known as the Euclid–Euler theorem. Euler also conjectured the law of quadratic reciprocity. The concept is regarded as a fundamental theorem within number theory, and his ideas paved the way for the work of Carl Friedrich Gauss, particularly "Disquisitiones Arithmeticae". By 1772 Euler had proved that 2 − 1 = 2,147,483,647 is a Mersenne prime. It may have remained the largest known prime until 1867.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: In 1735, Euler presented a solution to the problem known as the Seven Bridges of Königsberg. The city of Königsberg, Prussia was set on the Pregel River, and included two large islands that were connected to each other and the mainland by seven bridges. The problem is to decide whether it is possible to follow a path that crosses each bridge exactly once and returns to the starting point. It is not possible: there is no Eulerian circuit. This solution is considered to be the first theorem of graph theory.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler also discovered the formula formula_14 relating the number of vertices, edges, and faces of a convex polyhedron, and hence of a planar graph. The constant in this formula is now known as the Euler characteristic for the graph (or other mathematical object), and is related to the genus of the object. The study and generalization of this formula, specifically by Cauchy and L'Huilier, is at the origin of topology.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Some of Euler's greatest successes were in solving real-world problems analytically, and in describing numerous applications of the Bernoulli numbers, Fourier series, Euler numbers, the constants and , continued fractions, and integrals. He integrated Leibniz's differential calculus with Newton's Method of Fluxions, and developed tools that made it easier to apply calculus to physical problems. He made great strides in improving the numerical approximation of integrals, inventing what are now known as the Euler approximations. The most notable of these approximations are Euler's method and the Euler–Maclaurin formula.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler helped develop the Euler–Bernoulli beam equation, which became a cornerstone of engineering. Besides successfully applying his analytic tools to problems in classical mechanics, Euler applied these techniques to celestial problems. His work in astronomy was recognized by multiple Paris Academy Prizes over the course of his career. His accomplishments include determining with great accuracy the orbits of comets and other celestial bodies, understanding the nature of comets, and calculating the parallax of the Sun. His calculations contributed to the development of accurate longitude tables.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler made important contributions in optics. He disagreed with Newton's corpuscular theory of light, which was the prevailing theory of the time. His 1740s papers on optics helped ensure that the wave theory of light proposed by Christiaan Huygens would become the dominant mode of thought, at least until the development of the quantum theory of light.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: In fluid dynamics, Euler was the first to predict the phenomenon of cavitation, in 1754, long before its first observation in the late 19th century, and the Euler number used in fluid flow calculations comes from his related work on the efficiency of turbines. In 1757 he published an important set of equations for inviscid flow in fluid dynamics, that are now known as the Euler equations.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler is well known in structural engineering for his formula giving Euler's critical load, the critical buckling load of an ideal strut, which depends only on its length and flexural stiffness.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler is credited with using closed curves to illustrate syllogistic reasoning (1768). These diagrams have become known as Euler diagrams.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: An Euler diagram is a diagrammatic means of representing sets and their relationships. Euler diagrams consist of simple closed curves (usually circles) in the plane that depict sets. Each Euler curve divides the plane into two regions or "zones": the interior, which symbolically represents the elements of the set, and the exterior, which represents all elements that are not members of the set. The sizes or shapes of the curves are not important; the significance of the diagram is in how they overlap. The spatial relationships between the regions bounded by each curve (overlap, containment or neither) corresponds to set-theoretic relationships (intersection, subset, and disjointness). Curves whose interior zones do not intersect represent disjoint sets. Two curves whose interior zones intersect represent sets that have common elements; the zone inside both curves represents the set of elements common to both sets (the intersection of the sets). A curve that is contained completely within the interior zone of another represents a subset of it.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler diagrams (and their refinement to Venn diagrams) were incorporated as part of instruction in set theory as part of the new math movement in the 1960s. Since then, they have come into wide use as a way of visualizing combinations of characteristics.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: One of Euler's more unusual interests was the application of mathematical ideas in music. In 1739 he wrote the "Tentamen novae theoriae musicae" ("Attempt at a New Theory of Music"), hoping to eventually incorporate musical theory as part of mathematics. This part of his work, however, did not receive wide attention and was once described as too mathematical for musicians and too musical for mathematicians. Even when dealing with music, Euler's approach is mainly mathematical, for instance, his introduction of binary logarithms as a way of numerically describing the subdivision of octaves into fractional parts. His writings on music are not particularly numerous (a few hundred pages, in his total production of about thirty thousand pages), but they reflect an early preoccupation and one that remained with him throughout his life.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: A first point of Euler's musical theory is the definition of "genres", i.e. of possible divisions of the octave using the prime numbers 3 and 5. Euler describes 18 such genres, with the general definition 2A, where A is the "exponent" of the genre (i.e. the sum of the exponents of 3 and 5) and 2 (where "m is an indefinite number, small or large, so long as the sounds are perceptible"), expresses that the relation holds independently of the number of octaves concerned. The first genre, with A = 1, is the octave itself (or its duplicates); the second genre, 2.3, is the octave divided by the fifth (fifth + fourth, C–G–C); the third genre is 2.5, major third + minor sixth (C–E–C); the fourth is 2.3, two-fourths and a tone (C–F–B–C); the fifth is 2.3.5 (C–E–G–B–C); etc. Genres 12 (2.3.5), 13 (2.3.5) and 14 (2.3.5) are corrected versions of the diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic, respectively, of the Ancients. Genre 18 (2.3.5) is the "diatonico-chromatic", "used generally in all compositions", and which turns out to be identical with the system described by Johann Mattheson. Euler later envisaged the possibility of describing genres including the prime number 7.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler devised a specific graph, the "Speculum musicum", to illustrate the diatonico-chromatic genre, and discussed paths in this graph for specific intervals, recalling his interest in the Seven Bridges of Königsberg (see above). The device drew renewed interest as the Tonnetz in neo-Riemannian theory (see also Lattice (music)).


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler further used the principle of the "exponent" to propose a derivation of the "gradus suavitatis" (degree of suavity, of agreeableness) of intervals and chords from their prime factors – one must keep in mind that he considered just intonation, i.e. 1 and the prime numbers 3 and 5 only. Formulas have been proposed extending this system to any number of prime numbers, e.g. in the form


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler opposed the concepts of Leibniz's monadism and the philosophy of Christian Wolff. Euler insisted that knowledge is founded in part on the basis of precise quantitative laws, something that monadism and Wolffian science were unable to provide. Euler's religious leanings might also have had a bearing on his dislike of the doctrine; he went so far as to label Wolff's ideas as "heathen and atheistic".


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler was a religious person throughout his life. Much of what is known of Euler's religious beliefs can be deduced from his "Letters to a German Princess" and an earlier work, "Rettung der Göttlichen Offenbahrung gegen die Einwürfe der Freygeister" ("Defense of the Divine Revelation against the Objections of the Freethinkers"). These works show that Euler was a devout Christian who believed the Bible to be inspired; the "Rettung" was primarily an argument for the divine inspiration of scripture.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: There is a famous legend inspired by Euler's arguments with secular philosophers over religion, which is set during Euler's second stint at the St. Petersburg Academy. The French philosopher Denis Diderot was visiting Russia on Catherine the Great's invitation. However, the Empress was alarmed that the philosopher's arguments for atheism were influencing members of her court, and so Euler was asked to confront the Frenchman. Diderot was informed that a learned mathematician had produced a proof of the existence of God: he agreed to view the proof as it was presented in court. Euler appeared, advanced toward Diderot, and in a tone of perfect conviction announced this non-sequitur: "Sir, formula_16, hence God exists—reply!"


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Diderot, to whom (says the story) all mathematics was gibberish, stood dumbstruck as peals of laughter erupted from the court. Embarrassed, he asked to leave Russia, a request that was graciously granted by the Empress. However amusing the anecdote may be, it is apocryphal, given that Diderot himself did research in mathematics.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: The legend was apparently first told by Dieudonné Thiébault with embellishment by Augustus De Morgan.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: Euler was featured on both the sixth and seventh series of the Swiss 10-franc banknote and on numerous Swiss, German, and Russian postage stamps. In 1782 he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The asteroid 2002 Euler was named in his honour.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: It took until 1830 for the bulk of Euler's posthumous works to be individually published, with an additional batch of 61 unpublished works discovered by Paul Heinrich von Fuss (Euler's great-grandson and Nicolas Fuss's son) and published as a collection in 1862. A chronological catalog of Euler's works was compiled by Swedish mathematician Gustaf Eneström and published from 1910 to 1913. The catalog, known as the Eneström index, numbers Euler's works from E1 to E866. The Euler Archive was started at Dartmouth College before moving to the Mathematical Association of America and, most recently, to University of the Pacific in 2017.


title: Leonhard Euler

text: In 1907, the Swiss Academy of Sciences created the Euler Commission and charged it with the publication of Euler’s complete works. After several delays in the 19th century, the first volume of the "Opera Omnia", was published in 1911. However, the discovery of new manuscripts continued to increase the magnitude of this project. Fortunately, the publication of Euler’s Opera Omnia has made steady progress, with over 70 volumes (averaging 426 pages each) published by 2006 and 80 volumes published by 2022. These volumes are organized into four series. The first series compiles the works on analysis, algebra, and number theory; it consists of 29 volumes and numbers over 14,000 pages. The 31 volumes of Series II, amounting to 10,660 pages, contain the works on mechanics, astronomy, and engineering. Series III contains 12 volumes on physics. Series IV, which contains the massive amount of Euler’s correspondences, unpublished manuscripts, and notes only began compilation in 1967. The series is projected to span 16 volumes, eight volumes of which have been released .


title: Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

text: The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is given each year for animated films. An animated feature is defined by the Academy as a film with a running time of more than 40 minutes in which characters' performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique, a significant number of the major characters are animated, and animation figures in no less than 75 percent of the running time. The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was first awarded in 2002 for films made in 2001.


title: Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

text: The entire AMPAS membership has been eligible to choose the winner since the award's inception. If there are sixteen or more films submitted for the category, the winner is voted from a shortlist of five films, which has happened nine times, otherwise there will only be three films on the shortlist.


title: Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

text: For much of the Academy Awards' history, AMPAS was resistant to the idea of a regular award for animated features, considering there were simply too few produced to justify such consideration. Instead, the Academy occasionally bestowed special Oscars for exceptional productions, usually for Walt Disney Pictures, such as for "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" in 1938, and the Special Achievement Academy Award for the live action/animated hybrid "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" in 1988 and "Toy Story" in 1995. In fact, prior to the award's creation, only one animated film was nominated for Best Picture: 1991's "Beauty and the Beast", also by Disney.


title: Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

text: By 2001, the rise of sustained competitors to Disney in the feature animated film market, such as DreamWorks Animation (founded by former Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg), created an increase of film releases of significant annual number enough for AMPAS to reconsider. The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was first given out at the 74th Academy Awards, held on March 24, 2002. The Academy included a rule that stated that the award would not be presented in a year in which fewer than eight eligible films opened in theaters. It dropped the rule on April 23, 2019, to make voting for animated films more acceptable. People in the animation industry, as well as fans, expressed hope that the prestige from this award and the resulting boost to the box office would encourage the increased production of animated features.


title: Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

text: In 2009, when the nominee slots for Best Picture were doubled to ten, "Up" was nominated for both Animated Feature and Picture at the 82nd Academy Awards, the first to do so since the inception of the Animated Feature category. This feat was repeated the following year by "Toy Story 3".


title: Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

text: In 2022, it was unclear whether "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On" would be eligible for the award at the 95th Academy Awards due to being a live-action/stop-motion animated hybrid. Director Dean Fleischer Camp said that he and A24 films had to submit documentation in order to prove the film had enough animation to meet the award's minimum requirements Nonetheless, the AMPAS officially deemed the film eligible for consideration in the Animated Feature category.


title: Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

text: Some members and fans have criticized the award, however, saying it is only intended to prevent animated films from having a chance of winning Best Picture. DreamWorks had advertised heavily during the holiday 2001 season for "Shrek", but was disappointed when the rumored Best Picture nomination did not materialize, though it was nominated for and ultimately won the inaugural Best Animated Feature award.


title: Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

text: The criticism surrounding the Best Animated Feature category was particularly prominent at the 81st Academy Awards, in which "WALL-E" won the award but was not nominated for Best Picture, despite receiving widespread acclaim from critics and audiences alike and being generally considered to be one of the best films of 2008. This sparked controversy over whether the film was deliberately snubbed of such nomination by the Academy. Film critic Peter Travers commented that "If there was ever a time where an animated feature deserved to be nominated for Best Picture, it's "WALL-E"." However, official Academy Award regulations state that any film nominated for this category can still be nominated for Best Picture.


title: Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

text: From 2010 onward, with the increasing competitiveness of the Animated Feature category, Pixar (a perennial nominee) did not receive nominations for several recent films due to the more mixed critical response and comparatively low box-office receipts, while Pixar's sister studio Disney Animation won their first three awards.


title: Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

text: In 2010, the Academy enacted a new rule regarding the motion capture technique employed in films such as "A Christmas Carol" (2009) and "The Adventures of Tintin" (2011), each directed by Academy Award for Best Director winners Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg, and how they might not be eligible in this category in the future. This rule was possibly made to prevent nominations of live-action films that rely heavily on motion capture, such as "Avatar" (2009).


title: Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

text: On the 94th Academy Awards, the award for Best Animated Feature was presented by three actresses who portrayed as Disney princess characters in live-action remakes of their respective animated films: Lily James ("Cinderella"), Naomi Scott ("Aladdin"), and Halle Bailey ("The Little Mermaid"). While introducing the category, Bailey stated that animated films are "formative experiences as kids who watch them", as James put it, "So many kids watch these movies over and over, over and over again". Scott added: "I see some parents who know exactly what we're talking about" (ironically one of the nominees, "Flee", was a documentary about a refugee fleeing the Soviet-Afghan War). The remarks were heavily criticized by those working in the animation industry as perpetuating the stigma that animated works are strictly for children, especially since the industry was credited with sustaining the flow of Hollywood content and revenue during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Phil Lord, co-producer of one of the nominated films, "The Mitchells vs. the Machines", tweeted that it was "Super cool to position animation as something that kids watch and adults have to endure". The film's official social media accounts responded to the joke with an image reading: "Animation IS cinema". A week later, Lord and his producing partner Chris Miller wrote a guest column in "Variety" criticizing the Academy for the joke and how Hollywood has been treating animation writing that "no one set out to diminish animated films, but it's high time we set out to elevate them". They also suggested to the Academy that the category should be presented by a filmmaker who respects the art of animation as cinema.


title: Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

text: Adding to the controversy was the fact that the award for Best Animated Short Film (the nominees for which were mostly made up of shorts not aimed at children) was one of the eight categories that were not presented during the live broadcast. The winner for the Best Animated Short award was "The Windshield Wiper", a multilingual Spanish-American film which is adult animated, while another nominee in three categories; Best Animated, Documentary, and International Feature, was "Flee," a PG-13 rated animated documentary about an Afghan refugee. Alberto Mielgo, director of "The Windshield Wiper", later gave an acceptance speech for the Oscar: “Animation is an art that includes every single art that you can imagine. Animation for adults is a fact. It’s happening. Let’s call it cinema. I’m very honored because this is just the beginning of what we can do with animation.” Some speculations suggested that the speech played a role in the decision to not broadcast the award.


title: Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

text: Another factor is that numerous animated films have been made for mature audiences, with a few of them, "Persepolis", "Anomalisa", "I Lost My Body," and "Flee", having been nominated in this category, though none have won.


title: Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

text: These comments came as "#NewDeal4Animation", a movement of animation workers demanding equal pay, treatment and recognition alongside their contemporaries working in live-action, was picking up momentum during negotiations for a new contract between The Animation Guild, IATSE Local 839/SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, and the presentation is being used to rally the movement.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: Apollo 13 is a 1995 American space docudrama film directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Ed Harris, and Gary Sinise. The screenplay by William Broyles Jr. and Al Reinert dramatizes the aborted 1970 Apollo 13 lunar mission and is an adaptation of the 1994 book "Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13", by astronaut Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger. The film depicts astronauts Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise aboard Apollo 13 for America's fifth crewed mission to the Moon, which was intended to be the third to land. En route, an on-board explosion deprives their spacecraft of much of its oxygen supply and electrical power, which forces NASA's flight controllers to abort the Moon landing mission and improvise scientific and mechanical solutions to get the three astronauts to Earth safely.


title: Apollo 13 (film)

text: Howard went to great lengths to create a technically accurate movie, employing NASA's assistance in astronaut and flight-controller training for his cast and obtaining permission to film scenes aboard a reduced-gravity aircraft for realistic depiction of the weightlessness experienced by the astronauts in space.