A triple child killer who impaled his victims on spiked garden railings had his cloak of anonymity lifted yesterday in a major victory for ‘open justice’.
David McGreavy – dubbed the Monster of Worcester – had used human rights law to claim the public should be kept in the dark about his bid to move to an open jail.
But, after a legal challenge by the Daily Mail and other newspapers, the High Court quashed the secrecy order.
It removes the chilling prospect of the public not knowing if one of the most dangerous men in Britain is close to being released.
Last night, Dorothy Urry, the mother of his three victims, called for criminals to be banned from exploiting the Human Rights Act and said it was vital that Press freedom to report the workings of the criminal justice system be protected.
Her plea came as police seek to impose draconian restrictions on the identification of suspects.
‘Why shouldn’t criminals be named,’ asked Mrs Urry. ‘We don’t know who we’re walking next to these days – the public has a right to know.
'If he was to move next door, you would have to know exactly who and what he was. It may stop people doing what he did if they knew how it ruined lives.”
McGreavy, now 62, committed one of the most horrific crimes of the past 40 years when, on Friday April 13, 1973, he murdered the three children of Mrs Urry – who was then known as Elsie Ralph – and her husband Clive.
He was a lodger with the couple and had been babysitting at their Worcester home when the youngest child, nine-month-old Samantha, began crying for her bottle.
McGreavy went berserk, battering Samantha to death. Her brother Paul, four, was strangled and Dawn, two, had her throat cut. Police found their mutilated bodies impaled on a neighbour’s railings.
He was jailed for life, with a minimum term of 20 years. Since this term expired, he has been trying to secure his freedom but has yet to be released by the Parole Board.
Read more: David McGreavy can be named for murdering three children in 1973 | Daily Mail Online
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Ignoring the fact that he committed a terrible crime, it is an interesting conundrum for English Justice.
Life sentences in England have what are termed tariffs or minimum terms. These are set at a level decided by the judge for retribution, discouragement of others and safety of the community. A domestic anger murder might rsult in a tariff of 10-14 years, a mass sex murdered, child killer for sexual motives, police killer etc might attract a tariff of 40 years to whole life.
This man had a tariff of 20 years and since then the parole board considers that he no longer should be held in prison for any tariff reason. To leave prison it is necessary that a lifer be transferred slowly back to the community and this involves transition through a Category D Open Prison, visits out, then residence in a bail hospital.
Because of his notoriety it has been impossible to place him in a Cat D prison without placing him at risk. So he is stalled. The European Court of Human Rights have found (in the case of indeterminate sentences) that the Prison service owes a duty of care to allow prisoners’ progression to freedom if that is what the law calls for. The prison service cannot currently comply with the rules and the law.
Additionally the man was previously protected from general identification by a court order stopping the press covering his story. That has now been overturned. That will now require a new identity be created for him at the cost of many hundreds of thousands of pounds, and a correctly formatted gagging order on the press.
The question is:
How should the prison service act to allow his release?
