The Bogey Man

A report on the local news this morning brought back to me an event that overshadowed my childhood, as I grew up in Worcester. Michael Foster, MP for Worcester, is saying that convicted murderer David McGreavy should not be allowed to return to Worcester once he is released from his 30+ year jail term, since Worcester is the scene of his crimes, and the crimes were so horrific, and the damage to the town itself was so great.

When I heard this, I didn't know who David McGreavy was. It was only the mention of "horrific murders of three small children" that dislodged the memory. And even then, I couldn't be sure. The memory was real enough (albeit hazy), but was it a memory of a real event or just a local legend, concocted to keep small children on the straight and narrow?

What I remembered (before doing a bit of research just now) was that, sometime in the early 70s, a man had taken three small children and impaled them on the iron railings at the bottom of his garden. I never knew why he had done this, nor what had led up to it. No grown-up ever wanted to supply the details. All I knew for sure was that the murders had taken place in Gillam Street, which is just a few yards from where I lived for a while as a child.

Up until we moved there, I had always put this crime down to the bogey man. (Aged around nine, me and some friends were convinced we had found where THE actual bogey man lives, and went looking for him. Brave or what? But that's another tale...) Who else could do such a crime? The bogey man had come and taken these kids and killed them, just like in the fairy tales. Simple. Crime solved (to my young mind). But then, moving into this new street, someone said "See them iron railings over there? That's where he skewered the kids." But again, that's all I got. Some rusty railings, a local legend.

Bogey man? Surely this crime couldn't really have happened? When things like this go on, everyone knows about it. It's all over the news, all over the country. The place becomes famous for that one macabre event (Dunblane, Hungerford, Soham...) But no, I asked around once again and was told this HAD happened, but still no one wanted to talk about it. Brushed under the carpet. Let's talk about nice, respectable things, and leave the past to the past.

Why? Why can't we talk about this killer, and those poor forgotten kids? I wanted answers. What did those kids do to deserve it? Why did the man want to do such a thing? Those railings over there - are they still the same railings that dripped blood, years earlier? Did people look out of their windows and see the children there, and scream?

Don't be so morbid. You're sick. How can you disrespect the dead like that?

For me, having this issue hushed up cast a grim light over the whole "city" of Worcester. It seemed to me that I was growing up in a place where stuff like that can happen, but respectable people ignore it, don't want to dirty their minds with it. Maybe it's too painful to face. When this happened, in 1973, I would have been 2 years old and my brother 4. I can see (being a dad myself now) how it would have filled my mum with anguish, especially now I know that the killer was not even the kids' father, but a lodger (ie: someone from outside the family unit). But even so.

This is what happens, quietly, in Worcester.

Small children.
Iron spikes.
A drunk man.

I'm aware that things would be different now. If this happened now, it would be all over the news. There would be true crime books about it, documentaries. Sick jokes circulating the internet, tour guides... Maybe a souvenir iron spike turning up on Ebay. We're open about these things now. We accept that they happen. We feel OK with that frisson of pleasure, when we think about what happened out there in the big bad world. We're facing up to it, embracing it... NOT sweeping it under that dirty, hideously out of date Axminster carpet. But is it really any better? We accept that these things happen, but should we?

Q. When three kids are brutally murdered, which is the better response?

a. Sweeping it under the carpet.
b. Dragging it out into the media glare.
c. Other?

Coming back to this morning, as I listened to the local news, it seems that this David McGreavy is coming up for parole, and people are wondering where he's going to be heading. I don't know what I think about that. In my heart I know that someone who can do that to kids should be snuffed out himself in the most painful of ways. He should die without pity or dignity, with spit on his face and salt in his wounds. But then I also know that the law, though much abused, must be upheld. A crime is committed, the perpetrator is caught, arrested, convicted, incarcerated. Everyone is happy. The citizens can put it all behind them and sleep safely in their beds, even if they'll never look at an iron railing the same way ever again. And then what?

Then the bogey man gets out.

Then the bogey man comes home.