I'm Molly Wansall and I'm Geoffrey Wansall and for the last 16 years or thereabouts we have been having lunch every Saturday and often our conversation turns to murder and that's what's prompted us to launch this true crime podcast called blood ties

hi everyone welcome back to the blood ties podcast I'm Molly Wantsall and I'm here with my father, Geoffrey Wansall.

Hello everyone, welcome back. It's always a pleasure to talk to you and to hear what you think.

It's been a fairly dramatic week on the true crime front. I seem to have been swamped with Frederick West.

Tell us what's been going on then.

On Tuesday afternoon, Gloucester Constabulary announced that they were investigating whether or not a woman, a young woman,

15-year-old called Mary Bastholm, might have been buried under a cafe in Southgate Street in

Gloucester. I've always suspected, indeed everyone has always suspected

that Mary Bastogne disappeared into thin air on the 6th of January 1968. It was one of West's early

victims. By a strange series of coincidences, an ITV production crew had decided to take some ground-seeking ground radar

into this cafe, follow up a very old rumour, and it was a very old rumour,

that in fact Mary might be under the floor, under the floor of the basement,

very much Fred's M.O.

The police were obviously informed and took it seriously.

And indeed are at this moment excavating the basement of the cafe.

In Fred West's day, it was called the Pop-in Cafe,

and Mary Bastogne was a part-time waitress there.

Mary was absolutely Fred's cup of tea.

Young, vulnerable, a little naive.

And not surprisingly, this caused an absolute storm of media interest.

I mean, I think I was first called at midday by the sun who ran a spread the following day.

I think I did, I don't know endless sky news 5 live BBC breakfast

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