TRIPLE child killer David McGreavy is under lock and key once more after an outcry by villagers where he was due to be rehoused.

As we revealed last week, McGreavy, who killed three children in Gillam Street in Worcester in 1973, had been spotted in Liverpool unsupervised, in preparation for his imminent release from prison.

Arrangements had been made for him to stay in a village in Somerset, but after the villagers' outcry McGreavy has been moved to a category B

prison at his own request.

McGreavy brutally killed four-year-old Paul Ralph, and his sisters Dawn Maria, aged two, and Samantha Jane, nine months, and impaled them on railings in April 1973.

The secret plans for the killer to live with a Somerset couple had been leaked in their picturesque village of Charlton Horethorne.

Stableboy Dec Amiss, aged 52, a cousin of ex-England cricketer Dennis Amiss, said: "My daughter has just given birth to twins and I don't think this a good place for a child killer to be rehoused.

"It is a very unpopular move and the locals don't want it.

"It has been a topic of conversation and we aren't happy. We think maybe he should still be locked up. If he was in a different society, he would have been hanged."

Michael O'Connor, landlord of the village's pub, said: "We are worried about what we have heard. We really don't want this kind of thing here."

McGreavy was due to live with friend David Hartless and his wife Fiona.

Mr Hartless said: "I can only think that someone has leaked this information and now there is very little chance of David coming here after all this publicity."

McGreavy, aged 54, has now been moved to Lewes prison in East Sussex.

As this newspaper reported on Wednesday, residents in the Rainbow Hill area of Worcester, which includes Gillam Street, said they would be unhappy to see McGreavy released.