# 19: The Monster of Worcester (David McGreavy)

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 20 Jun 2023, 28 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/105f723ac/podcast/play/103880360/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-5-9%2F401851657-44100-2-596da0f0002e82f7.mp3

Today's episode is on the monster of Worcester, David McGreavy, oringally published on YouTube in April 2018. Trigger Warning: child death - more graphic details appear between 16:36 - 19.26 Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:05] Hello everyone, and welcome to Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[0:09] Neil, a true crime podcast where we crack open some of the most
[0:12] notorious cases in history. Given the topics that we'll be
[0:16] investigating, it goes without saying that this show comes with
[0:20] a content warning. The details can get a bit heavy
[0:23] and you might find some of the themes we discuss triggering.
[0:26] Listener discretion is strongly advised and check the
[0:29] description for some resources and further information.
[0:38] Today we're going to be talking about the monster of Worcester,
[0:41] and it does involve children. It is about the murder of three
[0:46] children. And I'm going to do this video
[0:49] more of like a biography style because I couldn't find a better
[0:52] way to do it. Really just the way that the
[0:54] storyline is, it makes more sense to kind of focus more on
[0:58] the killer rather than the killings.
[1:00] Quickly, before I do get into it, I just want to give my usual
[1:02] disclaimer that I mean absolutely no disrespect to
[1:05] anyone that I talk about in this video.
[1:06] This video is for educational and everything that I'm about to
[1:10] say is just information that I have found on the Internet and
[1:13] I'm compiling into one video. S David Anthony Mcgreevy was
[1:17] born in 1951 in Southport in England.
[1:20] He was the second oldest of six children to Thomas and Bella
[1:23] Mcgreevy. His father was a Sergeant in the
[1:26] army. I believe his mother was a
[1:27] housewife. And due to his father's work,
[1:30] the family moved around a lot. And this was all while David was
[1:32] still very young. And when I say moving around a
[1:35] lot, I don't just mean like around the UK.
[1:37] They would move to different countries, were in Germany at
[1:39] one point. And David and his siblings,
[1:41] because of this constant moving, they never really made friends.
[1:45] Like, they made friends in each place, but they never really had
[1:48] like, worthwhile bonds with other children.
[1:50] They only really had each other because as soon as they'd make a
[1:53] friendship, they'd have to move elsewhere and leave them.
[1:56] But other than that, David Mcgreevy had a really kind of
[1:59] uneventful, normal childhood. There was nothing really
[2:03] strange. It's not like he had no friends
[2:05] or no children to play with because he had five brothers and
[2:07] sisters, so it was relatively normal and he was quite a happy
[2:11] child. And he had really normal
[2:13] relationships with his family since they were the only kind of
[2:15] people that were kind of stable in his life.
[2:18] Him and all his siblings used to go on bike rides, they used to
[2:21] go skiing, obviously, depending on where they were at the time,
[2:24] they used to go for picnics and everything.
[2:26] They were normal kids. It was a normal life that he
[2:28] had. In 1967, aged 15, Mcgreevy left
[2:32] school and joined the Royal Navy.
[2:34] Now he was really passionate about this.
[2:36] He was really excited about this.
[2:37] This was like his dream job, all these 15 years of life.
[2:41] He really wanted to be in the Royal Navy and his father had
[2:43] his doubts. He didn't think that Mcgreevy
[2:46] was very, umm, committed. He just didn't think that he was
[2:49] cut out for the Navy. But regardless, David went and
[2:52] joined the Navy and when he was there, he began to change very
[2:56] quickly, as did a lot of men when they joined the Navy.
[2:59] It's a very different environment to what people have
[3:02] brought up in. There's a lot of competition.
[3:04] Everyone's young, everyone's desperate to be the best.
[3:08] Like, it's a very intense environment and so a lot of
[3:11] young men, when they joined the forces, they change a lot.
[3:14] It was very strict, it was very tough.
[3:16] And Mcgreevy became very stubborn, very cocky, very
[3:20] arrogant, and he eventually started getting in trouble for a
[3:23] lot of things, as did a lot of the men, because, well, they
[3:27] weren't men. They were boys.
[3:28] They were teenage boys. A lot of them would drink a lot.
[3:31] And so young boys drinking, of course they're going to get into
[3:35] trouble. And the things they would get in
[3:36] trouble for were just being drunk, starting fights, kind of
[3:40] pulling pranks on each other, like general mischief.
[3:44] But then at age 19, Mcgreevy got into trouble for something a lot
[3:47] more serious than any of his friends really got into trouble
[3:51] for. So on this day when he got into
[3:53] trouble for something quite serious, he was 19, He was drunk
[3:57] as he was most days, and he was on watch duty alone, and he was
[4:02] just up to his normal mischief. I think he got bored while he
[4:05] was on watch duty. And so he started walking
[4:07] around. And then he broke into an
[4:09] officer's wardroom, which is pretty much like an office, and
[4:13] he walked up to the desk and he saw a book on this man's desk
[4:17] and it said his name in it. It said David Mcgreevy.
[4:19] And in his kind of intoxicated state, he took that, just his
[4:24] name in a book. It had nothing else around it.
[4:27] Not that I know of nothing of importance.
[4:30] He took that to mean that he was getting sacked and that he was
[4:33] going to be given another job within the forces, but just not
[4:37] the one that he was in right now that he really liked.
[4:39] And of course he didn't like that he liked his job.
[4:42] He didn't want to be sacked. And so in his kind of drunk
[4:45] state of mind, he thought, well if I get rid of this then I
[4:48] won't be sacked. So he took this book, he put it
[4:51] in a bin that was already full of papers and he set fire to it.
[4:55] So he stood around and waited for a while for this fire to
[4:58] grow. And then when it got kind of out
[5:00] of control to the point where no one would be able to put it out
[5:03] and find the book in there, he then went and alerted other
[5:06] people. But he claimed at first that he
[5:08] didn't know how this fire had started.
[5:10] He claimed that he was just on watch and he saw a fire coming
[5:14] out of this wardroom. And so he went and found people.
[5:17] But the door to the wardroom was broken into like this story
[5:21] didn't quite add up. So Mcgreevy's higher ups
[5:23] interviewed him because this was suspicious.
[5:25] They didn't believe his story. And as he got talking, he
[5:28] decided to change his story. He said, yes, I did break into
[5:31] that room, but I didn't start the fire intentionally.
[5:34] He said that he was just in there.
[5:35] He was walking around reading things and he had a cigarette
[5:38] and then he dropped it in the bin and that is what started the
[5:41] fire. But his higher ups thought,
[5:43] well, why would he lie about that?
[5:45] Why wouldn't he just tell the truth in the first place?
[5:47] Because that's a fairly innocent story.
[5:49] And so they knew that he must have been lying again, and this
[5:52] fire must have been intentional. Mcgreevy was court martialed for
[5:55] the incident, which is essentially just like a military
[5:58] inside version of a court trial to determine whether he was
[6:01] guilty. And although he wasn't found
[6:04] guilty of arson, he was found guilty of negligence.
[6:07] And because this wasn't the first time he'd gotten into
[6:09] trouble, he was given a 90 day punishment, kind of like a
[6:13] sentence. But I don't really know what
[6:16] they did with him in that 90 days, whether he was isolated or
[6:19] what. And at that same time, he was
[6:21] also given a psychiatric evaluation, although the results
[6:25] of that have never been released, not even to his
[6:27] parents. Just no one knows what came of
[6:31] that test. Some people say that's because
[6:33] they found something bad and so they didn't even want to tell
[6:36] his parents. Other people say, well, maybe
[6:38] they found nothing and that's why they didn't bother telling
[6:41] anyone because there's no point. And then other people just
[6:44] believe that maybe they never did this test, or maybe they did
[6:47] the test but then they kind of lost the results or they didn't
[6:50] bother to calculate the results or whatever.
[6:53] But, you know, I don't really know what happened there.
[6:56] In January of 1971, when Mcgreevy was around 19 years
[7:00] old, one of his friends in the Navy suggested that he began
[7:03] writing to his sister, the friend's sister.
[7:06] And so Mcgreevy did. This friend's sister's name was
[7:09] Mary, and the two of them wrote letters to each other twice a
[7:13] week for four months. And these letters quickly got
[7:16] very intense. They were like really long love
[7:19] letters, 5-6 pages each and it was very intense.
[7:23] So intense that in April the two of them met for the first time.
[7:27] They met each other one weekend and then the next weekend they
[7:30] were at a social event together and Mcgreevy proposed to Mary
[7:34] and she said yes. The two of them had known each
[7:36] other for a week and they began planning a wedding, and as of
[7:40] that point, they would see each other like once a month.
[7:42] Obviously, because Mcgreevy was away with the Navy and David's
[7:46] family did not approve of Mary. She had a lot of health
[7:49] conditions with her back and her spine, and she thought that one
[7:53] day she would be paralyzed from it.
[7:55] Whereas Mcgreevy's mother didn't quite believe that.
[7:58] She thought that Mary just wanted sympathy.
[8:01] She was a hypochondriac. She wanted something out of
[8:04] David Mcgreevy. I don't know what his mother
[8:07] thought in particular, but she just didn't like Mary.
[8:10] She didn't want her son with her.
[8:12] But of course, Mcgreevy was very stubborn.
[8:14] He was very arrogant. He wasn't going to let what his
[8:17] mother thought change anything. He really liked Mary, and so he
[8:20] stayed with her. In August of that same year,
[8:23] Mcgreevy was discharged from the Navy.
[8:25] When he was around 19 or 20 years old.
[8:27] They couldn't find the exact age and I also don't know the exact
[8:31] reason why he was discharged, whether it was something to do
[8:34] with the fire or just general bad behavior because he was
[8:37] badly behaved a lot of the time. I don't know if there was a new
[8:40] incident that caused him to be discharged, I don't know if it's
[8:43] public knowledge. I personally couldn't find
[8:45] anything so I'm sorry about that.
[8:47] But either way, David just appeared at his parents house
[8:49] one day out of the blue. Just saying I'm out.
[8:52] David and Mary plan to get married at the end of that year
[8:55] around Christmas time. Although now obviously he didn't
[8:58] have a stable St. of income and neither did Mary.
[9:01] And Mcgreevy wanted a big wedding.
[9:04] Mary didn't really care. She was perfectly happy just
[9:07] going to the registry office, signing papers, having a very
[9:10] like low key ceremony. But he wanted everything.
[9:13] He wanted the big traditional church wedding or nothing.
[9:17] And then rather abruptly, on New Year's Eve of 1972, Mary called
[9:22] off the engagement with David Mcgreevy and split from him
[9:25] completely. She never gave like a major
[9:27] reason why she did this, but she's always cited a few
[9:30] different reasons. She always felt that she never
[9:33] should have accepted the proposal in the 1st place.
[9:36] She felt it was very rush. She said.
[9:38] Obviously his mother not believing her health issues took
[9:41] a toll on their relationship because he stopped believing her
[9:44] health issues. He just wasn't very supportive
[9:47] of her, very helpful with that. And she also just said that she
[9:51] felt that he maybe had more feelings for her than she had
[9:54] for him. Obviously, he was desperate to
[9:56] get this wedding, and she was a lot more chill about it.
[9:59] She wasn't that bothered. And so she felt it was kind of
[10:02] unfair. After the split from Mary, David
[10:05] stayed at home with his parents. He was going from job to job.
[10:09] He was a chef at one point, he was a laborer.
[10:12] He always got sacked from these jobs.
[10:14] He had no direction, no purpose in life.
[10:17] He was just kind of cursed in like whatever happened happened.
[10:21] He had no motivation to do anything.
[10:23] He didn't go out much, he didn't really have friends, his
[10:26] alcoholism was getting worse, and at this point he was only 20
[10:30] years old. He stopped helping about around
[10:32] the house, he didn't do any chores, and he also couldn't
[10:36] really contribute to rent due to his lack of employment.
[10:39] And at this point, his parents were pretty sick of having him
[10:42] about because he wasn't doing anything.
[10:44] And so they decided to kick him out.
[10:46] And so he had to go and try and find a place to stay.
[10:50] And he was just kind of staying on streets and in hostels for a
[10:53] while. And then Mcgreevy got in touch
[10:55] with an old school friend named Clive Ralph, who was married to
[10:58] a woman five years younger than he was named Elsie Ralph.
[11:02] Clive and Elsie had been married for five years.
[11:04] Like I said, they married when she was 16 years old because
[11:07] that is when she fell pregnant with their first child, Paul.
[11:11] Two years later, they had a second child named Dawn Maria.
[11:14] And then when they met Mcgreevy again, she was pregnant with a
[11:18] third child. Clive and Elsie lived in a
[11:20] little area in Worcester named Rainbow Hill.
[11:22] When Mcgreevy asked if he could stay with them for a while while
[11:26] he kind of got himself back on his feet.
[11:28] The oldest child, Paul, was 4 at the time.
[11:31] When Mcgreevy moved in, Dawn was 2.
[11:34] And then just a couple of months after he moved in, Clive and
[11:37] Elsie had their third child, a little daughter named Samantha.
[11:40] The home they lived in was only very small, it only had two
[11:43] bedrooms and now they were sharing 2 bedrooms between 6
[11:47] people. So Clive and Elsie would sleep
[11:50] in their bed in the master bedroom and they would have the
[11:53] 2 girls, the two youngest children in their cots in that
[11:56] room and then in the other bedroom was the oldest son,
[11:59] Paul, who was four years old and David Mcgreevy sharing a bed.
[12:03] So the arrangement for him staying there was that he would
[12:07] pay £6 a week towards the rent. He would occasionally cook for
[12:11] the family. I think he cooked every Sunday.
[12:14] He would cook us like a Sunday roast and he would play like a
[12:17] standing father whenever Clive would be away for work because
[12:21] he was a lorry driver. So he would often be away for
[12:23] like weeks at a time, days at a time.
[12:26] And so Mcgreevy would be like a second parent, a third parent.
[12:30] And unlike with his parents, Mcgreevy really was keeping up
[12:34] to his side of the deal with this.
[12:36] He would keep up with his payments.
[12:37] He would keep up with his side of the deal.
[12:40] He'd cook, he would look after the kids.
[12:41] He loved the kids. All the neighbors said that he
[12:44] was so good with the three children.
[12:46] They said that he was like a second father to them.
[12:48] Elsie always said that he was so just.
[12:51] He adored the kids. The neighbors recall him being
[12:54] very friendly, very well educated.
[12:56] He was just a delight to have as a neighbor.
[13:00] They were aware of his kind of darker side when he would drink,
[13:04] but everyone just kind of learned to keep away from him
[13:06] when he drank. But they knew that he would get
[13:08] angry and he would lose his temper and he could get violent
[13:11] sometimes, although he was never violent to the Ralph family up
[13:15] until this point. When baby Samantha was seven
[13:18] months old, Elsie Ralph decided to go out and get a job so she
[13:21] could get more money for the family, which had just grown by
[13:24] another member. And so she went and got a job
[13:27] behind a bar as a barmaid. And this meant that Mcgreevy now
[13:31] kind of worked full time as a babysitter for the family.
[13:34] He would always look after the kids while Elsie was doing like
[13:37] night shifts at the bar. It's not night shifts, but you
[13:40] work evenings at a bar. And so Mcgreevy would put the
[13:43] kids to bed. He would give Samantha her milk,
[13:46] like he would bath them, get them ready for bed, everything.
[13:49] And like I said, he loved the kids.
[13:50] So he really didn't mind this. He actually kind of liked it.
[13:53] He liked talking with them, playing with them, putting them
[13:56] to bed, things like that, because he really felt like a
[13:58] father to them. And then on the night of Friday
[14:00] the 13th of April 1973, Elsie was working at the bar as normal
[14:05] that evening and she was actually closing up.
[14:08] And whenever she would close up the pub, Clyde would come and
[14:10] pick her up afterwards. But before she did close up, the
[14:13] two of them would have a drink first, like 3 drinks.
[14:16] And so they were sat there, they had this drink, everything was
[14:18] nice, everything was normal. And then they set off back home
[14:21] where the three kids would have probably been in bed at this
[14:24] point and Mcgreevy would have been waiting for them.
[14:26] But on this particular day, when they returned home, they parked
[14:30] the car and then they walked over to the house.
[14:32] But instead of being greeted by Mcgreevy at the door, there was
[14:36] just police everywhere, all over there from Garden, all up the
[14:39] street. And the police just said to them
[14:41] there's been a murder, we need to take it to the police
[14:44] station. And that's all that Elsie really
[14:46] remembers. And Elsie immediately broke
[14:50] down. She was panicking, she was
[14:52] hyperventilating. And there was actually an
[14:54] ambulance at the scene. And so one of the doctors came
[14:58] over and gave her an injection to kind of calm her down.
[15:01] And so that's one of the reasons why she can't remember a lot.
[15:03] And she eventually kind of came round at the police station.
[15:06] Her and Clive were sitting there and the police broke the news to
[15:10] them that all three of their children had been murdered.
[15:13] So earlier that day, David Mcgreevy had been to the pub
[15:16] with a friend, which was a fairly common occurrence for
[15:19] him. He would get drunk most
[15:21] evenings. He and his friend had between
[15:23] 5:00 and 7:00 pints each. They were playing cards, they
[15:26] were playing darts. It was a very normal night.
[15:30] That was until an argument broke out between the men.
[15:33] Mcgreevy actually put out his cigarette in his friend's kind
[15:36] of half drunk pint of beer. And so his friend wasn't happy.
[15:40] So they started shouting at each other, they started fighting and
[15:43] they were separated. So Clive came to this pub to
[15:45] pick up his drunk friend David Mcgreevy, who was causing
[15:48] trouble in this bar. And then he took him home to the
[15:51] house to look after the three kids, put them to bed and
[15:54] whatever while Clive went to pick up Elsie from the pub.
[15:57] And like I said, whenever Clive would go and pick up Elsie from
[16:00] the pub, he would be there quite a while because they'd sit and
[16:02] have a drink together. So Mcgreevy knew that he had the
[16:06] house to himself for about an hour, somewhere between 10:15
[16:10] and 11:15 PM that night. And already very angry, David
[16:14] Mcgreevy lost his temper with the Ralph children.
[16:17] And it started because baby Samantha was crying for her
[16:21] bottle of milk, which is something she did every night.
[16:24] So now I just want to give you the warning really quickly.
[16:26] It is going to get graphic. It's not the most graphic think
[16:30] I've ever had, but obviously with it being about children, I
[16:34] do just want to put this warning in here.
[16:35] So Mcgreevy has actually never really told the story in much
[16:39] detail. He's said bits and bats about it
[16:42] to police, but we don't know like in what all the things
[16:46] happened, why things happened or really even how things happened.
[16:50] All we know is that baby Samantha was first seven month
[16:54] old. Baby Samantha was crying for her
[16:57] milk and so David began shouting at her.
[17:00] He wanted her to shut up, but obviously she's a baby, she
[17:04] wants a milk. And so he went up to her and he
[17:06] put his hand over her face and smothered her.
[17:10] And they believe that is actually how she died.
[17:13] She was suffocated. So she was dead at this point.
[17:17] But that wasn't enough for Mcgreevy.
[17:19] He began beating her, beating her so bad that he gave her a
[17:23] skull fracture and this is a 7 month old baby.
[17:27] He then goes to the other two children, who I believe were
[17:29] asleep in their different rooms at the time and I don't know in
[17:34] what order, but he killed both of those children too. 3 year
[17:38] old Dawn was found with her throat cut and four year old
[17:42] Paul was strangled to death. And then, just as with Samantha,
[17:47] that wasn't enough for Mcgreevy. He continued with this attack
[17:51] even after the children were dead.
[17:53] He went to the basement of the Ralph home and got a pickaxe.
[17:57] And then he returned to each of the children's bodies 1 by 1 and
[18:02] mutilated them with it. But even still, he wasn't done
[18:05] there. And this is the worst part of it
[18:07] all. He then took each of the
[18:09] children's bodies out to the back garden one by one, picked
[18:13] them up and impaled them on the garden fence.
[18:17] So they were just there stuck on the fence.
[18:20] So then Mcgreevy fled the scene. I don't actually know where he
[18:23] went. I don't know if he knows where
[18:25] he went because he was very drunk, but at this point
[18:27] neighbors had heard a lot of noise coming from the house.
[18:29] They'd heard banging, they'd heard screaming and crying from
[18:32] the children, they'd heard him making noises, they'd seen
[18:36] lights going on and off in different rooms at different
[18:38] times. And so they'd called the police.
[18:41] So police arrived at the address not really knowing what to
[18:44] expect. They kind of thought it must
[18:46] have been a domestic argument, maybe domestic violence in some
[18:50] degree. They had no idea what they were
[18:53] about to walk into. They walked to the front door,
[18:56] they knocked on it. No one answered.
[18:58] And so they decided to go around the back of the house.
[19:00] And that is when they saw the bodies impaled on the fence.
[19:04] So the area was quickly cordoned off and police began thinking,
[19:08] who could this be? And immediately, of course, they
[19:10] thought of the parents. The parents were nowhere to be
[19:13] found. Maybe they'd killed themselves
[19:15] inside the house. Maybe they'd run away after
[19:17] they'd done this to their children.
[19:19] So police went and broke into the house, but there was #1 in
[19:23] there, of course, there was just a lot of blood.
[19:26] So like I said, before Clive and Elsie arrived home, they parked
[19:30] elsewhere. And then they started walking to
[19:32] the house and they seemed very normal.
[19:34] They were smiling, they were talking to each other.
[19:36] They didn't seem like two people that just brutally murdered
[19:40] their three children. So police tactfully didn't say
[19:43] much about the murders to them. Like I said, they just said
[19:46] there's been a murder. They didn't say it was their
[19:48] children. They didn't say how many
[19:50] children. They just took them to the
[19:51] police station. They let Elsie calm down.
[19:54] Obviously, she'd been injected with like, a calming drug.
[19:58] And then they just let them talk.
[19:59] They let them give their alibis. So as soon as police found out
[20:02] that Elsie had been at work and Clive had also been at the pub,
[20:06] and they both kind of had really solid alibis, they ruled them
[20:09] out as suspects. And then they began thinking
[20:12] about who else this could have possibly been.
[20:14] And just a side note from that Clive and Elsie were never
[20:18] allowed to see their children again.
[20:20] So they weren't allowed to see the crime scene.
[20:22] Obviously, it was so gruesome. So police didn't want them
[20:25] there. And I've spoke about this in a
[20:27] couple of cases before, a couple of older cases.
[20:30] They sometimes didn't let the family of victims see the body
[20:33] if police deemed it to be traumatic.
[20:36] And so they didn't let the parents see their own three
[20:40] children ever again. So they didn't know that when
[20:42] they left them that evening with Mcgreevy, that would be the last
[20:46] time they ever saw their kids. So police continued questioning
[20:49] the couple and and they quickly found out that the only other
[20:52] person with access to this house was David Mcgreevy.
[20:55] And so they went out looking for him because no one had any idea
[20:59] where he was. It took a while to find
[21:01] Mcgreevy, but eventually at 4:00 AM that morning or around 4:00
[21:06] AM, they found him surprisingly close to the Ralph home.
[21:09] So he must have been for a walk quite far away and then kind of
[21:13] walked back towards it and he was very drunk again.
[21:16] So police went up to Mcgreevy in the street and arrested him.
[21:19] And he actually said, what's all this about?
[21:22] He was really trying to deny any knowledge of this whole
[21:26] incident, this whole situation. Of course, police didn't fall
[21:29] for it at all. And so they took him for
[21:31] interrogation and he was questioned for hours.
[21:34] He was denying it all the way into the next day until
[21:37] eventually he said it was me, but it wasn't me.
[21:41] So I don't know if he's trying to say like, it was me, like I
[21:44] did that, but it wasn't me in my head.
[21:47] Like I was so drunk that I didn't know what I was doing or
[21:50] like maybe he was overtaken by anger or something.
[21:53] So he then went on to tell police what he'd done to the
[21:57] children. So Mcgreevy said, I put my hand
[22:00] over Samantha's mouth and it went from there.
[22:02] It's all in the house on Paul. I used a wire.
[22:06] I was going to bury him, but I couldn't.
[22:08] I went outside and put them on the fence.
[22:11] All I could hear is kids, kids, fucking kids.
[22:14] He never really gave an explanation or a motive as to
[22:18] why he did this. He said it was because Samantha
[22:21] was crying. So that was the thing that kind
[22:23] of kicked it off. But why did it last for so long?
[22:26] Why did he kill the other two children?
[22:28] Like, why did he carry on even after they were dead?
[22:31] And one of the strange things that confuses everyone about
[22:35] this case is that Samantha always cried for her bottle.
[22:38] Babies do. That's that's how you know that
[22:40] they want their bottle and he would deal with it every night.
[22:43] He loved these kids or it seemed as though he loved these kids.
[22:47] Obviously he can't have if he if he did that to them, but he was
[22:50] really good with the kids up until this point.
[22:52] He would always feed them. He would always get them ready
[22:54] for bed. He would always give Samantha
[22:56] her bottle when she wanted it. So what was so different about
[23:00] this night? Like, yes, he'd been drinking,
[23:02] but he always drunk. And it's not even like he just
[23:05] got violent. Like it was just a violent
[23:07] outburst. He murdered three children and
[23:10] carried on after they were dead. It's something that's really
[23:13] baffled psychologists and everyone that's looked into this
[23:17] case for a long, long time. How you can go from just normal
[23:21] life to them one day just being a triple murderer within an
[23:25] hour. Elsie herself found it very hard
[23:27] to get her head around for a long, long time because she'd
[23:31] seen Mcgreevy be so good with these children.
[23:33] Like I said, he acted like a second father to them.
[23:37] So she just couldn't understand it.
[23:39] She couldn't really believe it for a long time.
[23:42] Some psychiatrists have suggested that maybe there was a
[23:45] sexual motive to these crimes and that's why he isn't giving
[23:49] the motive because you don't want to give that kind of
[23:52] motive. However, there was no evidence
[23:54] of sexual assault on these children that night or ever.
[23:59] Up until this point, there never been any red flags, any evidence
[24:03] at all. And so that's been deemed an
[24:07] unlikely theory. Of course it's possible, but a
[24:10] lot of psychologists don't believe that one.
[24:12] On June 28th, 1973, David Mcgreevy appeared in court and
[24:16] within 8 minutes of this trial, he pled guilty.
[24:20] He never really gave an excuse or any kind of reasoning or
[24:26] motive, anything. He just pled guilty and accepted
[24:30] the consequences. David Mcgreevy was sentenced to
[24:33] three life terms but actually only given a minimum of 20
[24:37] years, which he served 40 of, and most of this 40 years he
[24:42] spent in protected conditions, obviously because he'd killed
[24:46] three children. People that commit crimes
[24:48] against children are the lowest of the low in the prison
[24:52] hierarchy and they get attacked by other inmates a lot.
[24:56] He was physically attacked. He was given like physical
[24:59] threats and things. Inmates would go into his room
[25:02] and urinate and defecate and spread it all over the walls,
[25:06] all over his clothes. And so he was really protected
[25:09] for a long time in prison. In 2006, Mcgreevy was
[25:13] transferred to an open prison in Liverpool, which is still a
[25:18] prison sentence. You've still got to be there on
[25:20] an evening and on a night and everything, and it's still kind
[25:23] of cell conditions, but during the day you can go out and get a
[25:27] job and kind of integrate your way back into society.
[25:31] Open prisons are for people that police and like officials
[25:35] believe will one day be back in society.
[25:38] Although he wasn't in this open prison for long before
[25:41] newspapers identified him, they found out where he was and like
[25:45] his kind of routine and everything.
[25:47] And they followed him and they took pictures.
[25:49] And of course they were all over the newspapers front page of
[25:52] every news article. And a judge deemed that this put
[25:56] Mcgreevy in danger. And so he was sent back to like
[25:59] a proper prison where he was kept there and it wasn't open
[26:03] and he couldn't leave again. In December of 2018, David
[26:07] Mcgreevy had a parole hearing. Now he's had many of these over
[26:11] the years where they've kind of discussed letting him go, but
[26:15] they've always been denied. He was never going to be let go.
[26:17] But then in December of last year, so just a few months ago,
[26:21] one of the kind of officers or the people in these hearings
[26:24] stood up and said he had changed considerably over the 45 years
[26:29] that had been in prison. And it's looking very likely
[26:32] that David Mcgreevy will be let out of prison and just be in
[26:36] society again. The circumstances surrounding
[26:39] his parole, I believe, are still being discussed.
[26:42] Obviously, because they've got to protect Elsie and Clive.
[26:45] He can't go anywhere near them. Those are normally the rules.
[26:49] I believe he's still in prison until that's sorted.
[26:52] I couldn't find whether it had been sorted yet.
[26:54] I couldn't find whether he's out yet.
[26:56] And there's actually no plans to give him any kind of anonymity.
[27:00] That's been really widely discussed around this case.
[27:04] Like, should he be given anonymity?
[27:06] Because you can't deny he is probably going to be in a lot of
[27:09] danger when he leaves. He's probably going to have a
[27:12] lot of people trying to track him down, trying to attack him,
[27:14] trying to kill him. And they are very aware of that.
[27:17] And his kind of lawyers and everyone are trying to fight for
[27:20] that and trying to give him anonymity.
[27:22] And of course, you've got the usual side of it, that he
[27:25] doesn't deserve it. He chose to commit those crimes,
[27:28] so he should choose to deal with the consequences.
[27:31] But I'm not going to say anything.
[27:32] Let me know what you think. Should he be kept anonymous?
[27:36] Should he be given a new identity?
[27:37] Or should he just be out in the world as David Mcgreevy and have
[27:40] to deal with potentially being murdered for his murders?
[27:49] Thank you so much for listening to usual disclaimer.
[27:52] At this point, I just want to say that if you've been affected
[27:54] by any of the topics we discussed today, please check
[27:57] the description where we've left some helpful resources.
[28:01] If you want to hear more cases like this one, make sure to
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[28:09] And if you really enjoyed, I'd love it if you could leave a
[28:12] rating and a review too. Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[28:15] Neil is an Audio Boom Studios production.
[28:18] See you next time.

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