The Monster of Worcester:David McGreavy·Paul Ralph·Dawn Ralph·Samantha Ralph

David McGreavy was twenty-one and lodging with Clive and Elsie Ralph at their house on Gillam Street in Worcester. He had been dismissed from the Royal Navy, but the family liked him and trusted him with their children: Paul, four, Dawn, two, and nine-month-old Samantha. On the evening of April 13, 1973, Elsie was working a bar shift across the city, and Clive brought McGreavy home from a pub to mind the children.

He had been drinking heavily. The baby would not settle, and within about an hour that night he killed all three children. He then mutilated their bodies and left them on a neighbor’s spiked iron railings, where police dogs found them soon afterward. He was arrested in the early hours on Ombersley Road and confessed in detail.

In June 1973 McGreavy pleaded guilty to all three murders and was jailed for life with a minimum term of twenty years. The press called him the Monster of Worcester. He served forty-six years, much of it in protective custody. In 2013 the High Court lifted an order that had kept his name out of reporting on his parole reviews. The Parole Board approved his release in December 2018, and he left prison in June 2019 under conditions that barred him from Worcester.