GILLAM STREET KILLER ENJOYS DAY OUT

The sight of the 54-year-old fiend sauntering in Liverpool on one of his regular unsupervised jaunts preparing him from his release from prison has caused revulsion in Worcester. Mike Foster, MP for Worcester, said "These were acts of brutality that still sicken people."

Lord Walker, the city MP at the time of the murders in 1973, said the Probabtion Service needed to handle the McGreavy case carefully.

City's disgust at the freeing of triple child killer

ONE of Worcester's darkest moments has once again been brought into the limelight after it was revealed a notorious triple child killer could soon be free.

David McGreavy horrified the nation when he killed Paul Ralph, aged four-and-a-half, and his sisters, Dawn Maria, two, and Samantha Jane, just nine months, in April 1973.

Paul had been strangled, Dawn was found with her throat cut, and Samantha died from a compound fracture to the skull.

In the most horrifying aspect of the crime, he then impaled their tiny bodies on the spiked garden railings of a house in Gillam Street, Rainbow Hill. He is thought to have killed them next door, where he was lodging with the children's parents.

Now the killer - who once challenged Moors Murderer Ian Brady to a fight to prove he was the most notorious - is preparing for freedom.

Mike Foster, MP for Worcester, has called for an order to be placed on McGreavy to prevent him returning to the Faithful City.

He said: "These were indescribable acts of brutality that still sicken the people of Worcester when they recollect the events.

"My gut instinct is that this man should spend the rest of his life in prison. His crimes were just as terrible as those of other notorious killers, such as Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, for whom life rightly meant life.

"But if he is released, I think that under no circumstances should he be allowed back to Worcester. The impact this would have on the city would be too great."

Lord Walker, who was MP for Worcester at the time of the brutal killings, agreed the Probation Service needed to be careful about who they released.

He said: "I still remember the terrible goings on in Gillam Street.

"Just lately, there have been a few high-profile releases, but the Probation Service needs to be careful. Some have been totally ill-judged and the case of McGreavy needs to be looked at.

"I have every sympathy with the family of the murdered children and their neighbours who still have to re-live what happened."

According to a national newspaper, McGreavy has had several days out from Ford jail in Sussex and spends his time roaming the streets of Liverpool and has been seen visiting an internet caf.

Speaking to the paper, the tots' mum, Dorothy Urry, said: "I cannot believe it. This man took three children's lives. He should have got the electric chair.

"Why should this man be let out of prison. He is still torturing me and this pain is going to be with me until the day I die."

The father of Samantha would have been equally horrified at the prospect of McGreavy walking the streets again.

David Furlong told this newspaper in 1996, when he knew he was dying of emphysema, that he would have no compunction in 'executing' McGreavy himself if he ever got the chance.

He said: "I'd have nothing to lose if I pulled that trigger. I've waited more than 20 years for him. I'd be thinking: 'You should die for what you did to my child."

"I don't think he should ever be allowed out. It's the feeling of this city. Everyone has the same feelings as me because it was children who were the vctims.

"When it's children it's so different because they are so defenceless. I can only imagine what they found in that house."

The residents of Gillam Street, only a handful of whom were living there at the time of the murders, have expressed their wish to draw a line under the events.

One woman, who did not want to be named, said: "I think the people of the street should be left to get on with their lives. I don't think the woman who lives at the house where it happened knows about it and there are a lot of new people.

"Someone who carried out such a crime should stay in prison for the rest of his life, and should certainly not be allowed back into Worcester."

Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust, also said McGreavy should remain behind bars for the rest of his life.

He said: "My view is there has to be exceptionally good reasons why any child killer should be released. The crimes are so horrific and barbaric that he should never, ever be allowed to be free.

"While he's allowed to walk free, the family still really feel the true life sentence.

"As if the murder of one child weren't bad enough. How many children do you have to murder, how many more do you have to kill these days before you serve a real life sentence?"

A Home Office spokeswoman confirmed that McGreavy was jailed for life in 1973 but said she could not discuss the case further.

She said it was "normal" for life sentence prisoners to be allowed out temporarily before their release.

She added: "All prisoners will be fully risk-assessed before being moved to an open prison or being allowed out of prison on a temporary licence. It's a tightly managed process.

"It happens as part of our commitment to rehabilitate prisoners, to help them reintegrate into society and also to test them.

When I arrived, only a bit of blood

One man who will never forget the day in April 1973 when the world learned of the horrors of Gillam Street is reporter Mike Grundy. Now, almost 33 years on, he recalls one of the grimmest assignments of his long career.

THE telephone at home rang at 4.45am to tell me a hurried Press conference was about to be held by top detectives at the city police station and would I go along. This was very much a rude awakening as I had been up until 4.30am the previous night covering the city and county council elections.

I drove down to Deansway and was as shocked as the other reporters present to be told that three toddlers had been murdered and their bodies impaled on iron railings behind a house in Gillam Street, Rainbow Hill.

With Evening News photographers Brian Peplow and Vaughan Willcox I went to the scene but was spared the horrific sight of the victims' bodies as they had already been removed.

All that was left was some

blood on the railings, which was obviously disturbing enough as I was the father of three young children myself.

I began interviewing neighbours

and learned that a professional photographer had been going around homes in the area in recent weeks taking family photographs. He had taken one of the three ill-fated children sitting on a settee with their mother.

Inquiries were made by our photographic department and within an hour the photographer and the photograph had been traced and appeared in the second edition of the Worcester Evening News on the afternoon of the murders.

The facts began to emerge gradually as the story hit the national and international media.

We learned that the babysitter, David McGreavey, had murdered each child in turn in different ways - one strangled, one with throat cut and one with a head fracture - and impaled their bodies on the Gillam Street railings.

Subsequently, too, popular Worcester family GP Dr Charles Romer revealed that he had dealt with the case of nine-month-old Samantha Ralph on the day of the murders. She had been taken to Worcester Royal Infirmary in the afternoon nursing a injuries to the body.

Dr Romer had been on duty at the A&E department and admitted Samantha as a suspected abuse victim. However, his note to this effect was not seen by a consultant, who let Samantha go back home at about tea-time.

I am surprised to learn that McGreavy is still in prison as I thought he had been freed after about 20 years of his term, which would have been in the mid-1990s.

While he was in, I think, Long Lartin prison, he became something of an artist and there was a furore when an exhibition of his work was planned in Worcester.

The day of the triple murders is indelibly engraved in my memories and was one of the dramatic milestones of my career -one I would rather have foregone.

How the horror unfolded in april 1973

David McGreavy became a lodger at the home of Clive and Dorothy Ralph in March 1973 after getting to know Mr Ralph at the Vauxhall public house, where they both drank.

The incident started the night before the murders, on Thursday, April 12. McGreavy had been left in charge of the three children - Paul, aged four, Dawn, aged two, and Samantha, nine months.

Mr and Mrs Ralph returned home just before midnight to be told by McGreavy that Samantha had been hurt and was bleeding from the mouth.

When they looked at her, they found her right eye bloodshot and her cheek bruised. Her right arm also appeared to be injured because she was not able to use it properly.

At McGreavy's court case it was learned that the next morning, on Friday 13, Mrs Ralph took the little girl to hospital because of her injuries. A doctor thought Samantha might have been subjected to some ill-treatment at home, and wrote a query on his report.

But a second doctor, who did not have any suspicions, and did not read the notes, send the toddler back home.

That night, according to what the judge read in court, Mrs Ralph went to work and McGreavy went to the pub.

Mr Ralph also left the house after putting the children to bed and went to collect his wife from work, but first went to get McGreavy to take him home to babysit.

The couple returned home just before midnight and discovered the house in a mess and a blood everywhere.

At 1.20am, a police officer found the bodies of the three children impaled on some metal-spiked garden railings between gardens.

Police found McGreavy at 3.05am in nearby Lansdowne Road. He was interviewed in a police car and then taken to a police station.

The next afternoon he began to cry and put his head between his knees. He said: "It was me, it wasn't me. She wouldn't stop crying. I put my hand across her face and carried on from there."

The judge in the case, Mr Justice Ashworth, said at the time: "There is only one sentence I can pass, and that is life imprisonment.

"But in this case, so appalling to the Crown, and in the public interest so grave as to risk any repetition, I recommend the sentence should not elapse before 20 years."