Lucy Katherine Partington (4 March 1952 – some time between 27 December 1973 and 2 January 1974; aged 21) was a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English ...

murder victim. She was born in

St Albans St Albans () is a cathedral city in Hertfordshire, England, east of Hemel Hempstead and west of Hatfield, north-west of London, south-west of Welwyn Garden City and south-east of Luton. St Albans was the first major town on the old Roma ...

, the third child of Roger and Margaret (Bardwell) Partington. On the night of 27 December 1973, during her final year of reading

English Literature English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines E ...

Exeter University , mottoeng = "We Follow the Light" , established = 1838 - St Luke's College1855 - Exeter School of Art1863 - Exeter School of Science 1955 - University of Exeter (received royal charter) , type = Public ...

, she was abducted by serial killers

Fred Fred may refer to: People * Fred (name), including a list of people and characters with the name Mononym * Fred (cartoonist) (1931–2013), pen name of Fred Othon Aristidès, French * Fred (footballer, born 1949) (1949–2022), Frederico Ro ...

and

Rosemary West Rosemary Pauline West (née Letts; born 29 November 1953) is an English serial killer who collaborated with her husband, Fred West, in the torture and murder of at least nine young women between 1973 and 1987;

while waiting at the Pitville Pump Room bus stop on Evesham Road, Cheltenham, for the 10.30pm Marchants Bus service via Bishops Cleeve to Gretton, where her parents lived. The Wests had first met while waiting to use the same bus route, from Cheltenham to Bishops Cleeve, four years earlier.

Discovery of body and aftermath

Partington's exact date of death will never be known. However, at twenty-five past midnight on 3 January 1974, Fred West admitted himself into the casualty unit at Gloucester Royal hospital with a serious laceration of his right-hand that required several stitches, leading to speculation that she was finally killed on 2 January 1974 and that she had been kept alive and tortured for several days in the cellar of the Wests' home in Cromwell Street before finally being murdered. Her remains were discovered there at 9am on 6 March 1994 alongside the knife West used to dismember them. Seventy two of her bones were missing. On 16 February 1995, Partington's remains were reburied in Exeter, Devon. Partington's sister, Marian Partington, wrote about the impact of Lucy's life, disappearance, and death in her memoir, ''If You Sit Very Still'', in May 2012. The book builds on ''Salvaging the Sacred'', an essay written by Marian and published in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide ...

Weekend'' in May 1996.Marian Partington, Salvaging the Sacred: Lucy, My Sister, originally published in The Guardian Weekend, 18 May 1996 and reissued by Quaker Books, 2004 The essay inspired a play by

Bryony Lavery Bryony Lavery (born 1947) is a British dramatist, known for her successful and award-winning 1998 play ''Frozen''. In addition to her work in theatre, she has also written for television and radio. She has written books including the biography ...

('' Frozen''), which premiered in 1998, and a feature film by Juliet McKoen, also entitled '' Frozen'' (2005). Lucy Partington was the

cousin Most generally, in the lineal kinship system used in the English-speaking world, a cousin is a type of familial relationship in which two relatives are two or more familial generations away from their most recent common ancestor. Commonly, ...

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living wage, living writing novels and other fiction, while othe ...

Martin Amis Martin Louis Amis (born 25 August 1949) is a British novelist, essayist, memoirist, and screenwriter. He is best known for his novels ''Money'' (1984) and ''London Fields'' (1989). He received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir '' ...

. He dedicated his novel '' The Information'' to her memory and writes about her life and death in his memoir ''

Experience Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience invol ...

''.

Discovery of body and aftermath

See also

References

Further reading