NARROW, terraced Gillam Street in the Rainbow Hill district of Worcester is quite unremarkable. Rows of flat fronted houses in the style of a typical urban Victorian neighbourhood. Yet 45 years ago it was the scene of the most horrific murders the city has ever known.

In the early hours of Saturday, April 14, 1973, a police dog handler searching for three missing children shone his powerful torch through the pitch black darkness on to a set of spiked iron railings between two back gardens and lit up their little bodies impaled on the fence. Mercifully, all were dead before they were put there. Nine-month-old Samantha Ralph had died from a compound fracture of the skull, her two-year old-sister Dawn’s throat had been cut and four-year-old brother Paul had been strangled.

PC Bob Rees was later to say it was by far the worst incident of his police career. “At first I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” he added. “During my police service I saw dead bodies of all shapes and sizes, but never anything to compare with that.”

Det Chief Supt Bob Booth, head of West Mercia CID and veteran of more than 70 murder enquiries, told a press conference he had never seen a more brutal murder in his life. He said: “I doubt whether any other police officer in the past or in the future will ever be confronted by such a scene.”

It didn’t take long to find the murderer. Clive and Elsie Ralph had left their children in the care of their lodger David McGreavy and he was missing. Within two hours he was found wandering not far away in Lansdowne Road. He put up no resistance when arrested and merely asked: ”What’s all this about?”

At first McGreavy, who had been drinking on the night of the crime, denied all knowledge of what had happened to the children, but within hours confessed to the triple murders at the Ralph’s home in Gillam Street.

Psychiatrists declared him sane and he pleaded guilty at crown court, being sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 20 years behind bars.

One medical theory put forward at the time was that McGreavy was suffering from “mania apotu”, a pathological reaction to drink, which triggers frenzied and abnormal acts. It is not the same as being drunk because it can be caused by quite small amounts of alcohol.

On the night of the murders, 21-years-old McGreavy, who was apparently a school friend of Clive Ralph, had been drinking in the Vauxhall pub in Worcester and was collected from there and taken back to Gillam Street to look after the children while Clive fetched Elsie from the Punch Bowl Inn, where she worked late as a barmaid.

When Clive left McGreavy in charge, all three children were asleep. That was the last time they were seen alive.

It transpired that some time after 10.30pm McGreavy lost his temper with the Ralph children. Baby Samantha awoke and began crying for her bottle, so McGreavy began shouting back at her. Of course this had no effect, so McGreavy placed his hand over her mouth and strangled her. He later beat her lifeless little body, causing a compound fracture of her skull. He then turned his attention to the other two children, both of whom were still sound asleep. Dawn was strangled in her bed and finally died when Mcgreavy slit her throat with a razor. Paul, was strangled with curtain wire as he slept.

McGreavy then mutilated all three bodies with a pickaxe and a razor. But it was his final act that caused hardened police officers to be left vomiting and shaken. Before leaving the house, he carried the children, one by one, out into the back garden and impaled each child on the wrought iron pointed spikes of the next door neighbours’ fence.

It was the noise – but fortunately not the sight – of this that caused the neighbours to call the police. Officers found the inside of the Ralph’s house bloodied and the children gone. The gruesome discovery of their bodies was made not long after.

But McGreavy’s conviction was not the end of this tragic affair. It emerged that on the morning of the murders, baby Samantha had been taken to Worcester Royal Infirmary by her mother with a suspected broken arm and severe bruising to her face. A doctor who examined her wrote on an admission paper: “Query – battered baby”.

The battered baby diagnosis was fairly new at the time and a subsequent behind closed doors inquiry report by South Worcestershire Hospital Management Committee found a “breakdown in communications” between hospital staff was the reason little Samantha was sent home. Although consultant Mr AC Clark, who made the ultimate decision, did so without examining the child’s case notes, which were available to him.

A Worcester Evening News editorial proclaimed: "It is patently clear all the facts have not been published. Many people will wonder why the factual details are so lightly treated they warrant a document that is just four and a half pages long. Not much of a return for an inquiry which called up to 20 witnesses and lasted two days.”

Amazingly, one of the people not called was Elsie Ralph. “I would have liked to have been there, but I have not been asked,” she said. “No-one told me about it.”