Shortly before midnight, the police received a tip from a citizen: they had heard the shocking screams of some children coming from an adjoining house. When a patrol came to do the pertinent verification, they found the door open and a trail of blood. Minutes later, the owners of the property arrived without realizing that the agent was guarding the scene of a gruesome crime.
“I can't remember more,” Clive said upon discovering that one of his best friends had brutally murdered his three underage children. The crimes perpetrated by David McGreavy, nicknamed by the press as the Monster of Worcester, shocked and horrified the whole of Great Britain in an unprecedented event.
David Anthony McGreavy was born on September 24, 1951 in Southport (Lancashire), the second of six children. Due to the profession of his father Thomas McGreavy, a sergeant in the British Army, the family moved quite frequently, which prevented him from making many friends during his childhood. One of them was Clive Ralph, who over the years became his lifeline. Not so for the friend, since our protagonist was for him the worst of his nightmares.
After leaving school in 1967, David enlisted in the Royal Navy (British Royal Navy) until his dismissal in August 1971. The military authorities court-martialed him after setting a mess hall on fire and kept him under guard for some time. custody. After his release, the young man returned to his parents' house.
However, the return of the prodigal son was a true hell for the parents: they had to deal with their problems with alcohol and their lack of permanent work. The situation reached such an extreme that the parents, fed up with the situation, decided to throw him out. Out on the street, the young man asked for help from his good friend Clive Ralph, who welcomed him into his house. It was 1972.
At the time, Clive was married to Elsie and they lived on Gillam Street in the Rainbow Hill district of Worcester with their three young children. The children were named Paul, four, Dawn, two, and Samantha, nine months, who welcomed his father's friend as a member of the family.
Everyone saw him as a wonderful man, a lover of children, who even acted "like a second father" to them. In fact, David's arrival was a breath of fresh air in the Ralph home because he took care of the little ones while the couple worked. It was his babysitter.
However, David's mild character took a radical turn as soon as alcohol was involved. For this reason he was arrested several times: he was drunk on public roads and made a scandal. But that didn't stop Clive and Elsie from mistrusting his friend. No one could imagine what would happen months later.
On Friday the 13th of April 1973, and as a regular routine at the Ralphs, Clive picked David up at the Vauxhall pub to look after the children while he went to meet his wife at work. Until then, the murderer had spent the afternoon drinking - he drank between five and seven pints of beer (three to four liters) - something that his friend was unaware of and the effects of which he did not reveal either.
During that time between Clive leaving David, meeting Elsie, and returning home together, our protagonist killed all three children. It seems that everything precipitated when the baby began to cry from hunger. David, driven mad by her cries, strangled Samantha and then hit her over the head until her skull was fractured.
He then slit Dawn's throat and strangled Paul with a wire. Then she went down to the cellar, picked up a pickaxe, and mutilated the bodies. Leaving a large trail of blood in the house, she dragged the corpses of the children outside and impaled them on a neighbor's wrought-iron spiked fence. Minutes later, the killer fled.
At that time, a neighbor had called the police when he heard the piercing screams of a child coming from the house. Minutes later, a patrol appeared and found the gruesome scene: the horror was "indescribable," Superintendent Bob Booth assured the media. Even Clive himself did not believe the news when he was told of the discovery at the police station: "I cannot recognize the man who did these things to my children."
Around four in the morning, the police operation found the whereabouts of the criminal and arrested him. “It was all too scary. It was me, but it wasn't me, how could I do it? ”, He justified himself as soon as they put the shackles on him. Once at headquarters, David confessed to the murders in great detail. "All he could hear was the kids, kids, damn kids," he said.
But when asked why he murdered three innocent children, David blurted out a chilling "that's what I've been trying to find out." According to his later explanations, it was all due to the incessant crying of the nine-month-old baby.
Three months after the crimes, on June 28, 1973, the trial against David McGreavy, dubbed by the media as the Worcester Monster, began, where he pleaded guilty to the charges. With no defense statement and no excuse for diminished accountability, the hearing ended quickly. It only lasted eight minutes.
The court sentenced the defendant to a minimum of 20 years in prison for "unspeakable acts of brutality that still sicken the people of Worcester when they remember the events," then-Deputy Mike Foster described.
For the next forty years, David remained under special protection in prison due to abuse and assault suffered at the hands of other inmates. A judge even ordered in 2009 that the name of David McGreavy remain anonymous under the initial 'M': it was a way of safeguarding his safety.
However, this gag decision was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2013. “People need to know who he is and what exactly he did: he is a monster. Why should his name be kept a secret? He took my three babies and ruined my life,” Clive Ralph said after anonymity was lifted.
After 45 years behind bars, a parole board authorized the release of the Monster. It appears that the killer had "changed considerably" and no longer posed "a significant risk to society." It was December 2018, although his release became effective six months later, on June 11, 2019.
That day, the Worcester Monster stepped on the street again while the parents of the murdered victims claimed that there was no justice. “I lost my children, my husband, my home, my sanity, everything, because of him. I will not find peace until I am dead and I rest with my babies," Elsie said in an interview. “The only thing that comforted me was knowing that McGreavy would be in prison for life,” she said. But now she won't even feel that relief.
