Fred and Rose West documentary cancelled by ITV just hours before broadcast

Former lodger of Britain's most notorious serial killer couple was due to reveal how she was lucky to escape with her life

ITV has cancelled its Fred and Rose West documentary just hours before it was due to air on Thursday.

Fred and Rose West: The Real Story with Trevor McDonald was scheduled to broadcast at 9pm but it has been replaced with a different programme.

The broadcaster said in a tweet the programme "been postponed for legal reasons and the film will be scheduled for a later date."

A former lodger of Fred and Rose West’s was due to reveal how she was lucky to escape with her life after hearing screams in the cellar where Britain’s most notorious serial killer couple murdered young women and girls.

Jayne Hamer was due to tell veteran broadcaster Sir Trevor about her time lodging at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, as a teenager in the mid-1970s.

The house was the site of a series of murders committed by the pair, including against two of their own children.

The mostly teenage girls were often tortured and raped before being killed and buried at the property.

“I heard screaming in the middle of the night, ‘Stop it, Daddy. Stop it, Daddy. Please stop it, Daddy’. It sounded like one of the children,” Ms Hamer was expected to say in the documentary, according to the Radio Times.

The woman, now in her 60s, was expected to tell how the screams came from the basement, and that she was still haunted from one occasion when Fred West took her down there.

Ms Hamer left soon afterwards, just a year before a fellow lodger was killed and buried in the basement.

Howard Sounes, a journalist who broke the story of the Wests’ crimes, wrote in the TV magazine that the question of how much Rose West was involved would be central to the film.