Lucy Katherine Partington (4 March 1952 – some time between 27 December 1973 and 2 January 1974; aged 21) was a British murder victim.
On the night of 27 December 1973, during her final year of reading English Literature at Exeter University,[1] she was abducted by serial killers Fred and Rosemary West 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.
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.
[3] The book builds on Salvaging the Sacred, an essay written by Marian and published in The Guardian Weekend in May 1996.