The UK Parole Board Has Lost Its Collective Mind

If you thought Friday The Thirteenth was an American film franchise, think again. Seven years before the release of the first film so named, Britain had its own Friday The Thirteenth. On Friday, April 13, 1973, David McGreavy was babysitting for Clive Ralph, the man who had taken him in after his own parents threw him out. Clive and his wife Elsie had not only an eight month old baby girl but another two year old daughter and a four year old son.

Elsie was working a shift at a local public house; the Ralphs were saving for a home of their own; McGreavy had babysat for them before, and there was of course not the slightest indication of the horror that was to come. McGreavy had been drinking, and, annoyed that the baby would not stop crying, he battered her skull in, cut the throat of her sister, and strangled their brother. Then, as if that were not enough, he mutilated all three bodies with a pickaxe handle, and finally impaled them on the railings outside the house.

Proud mother Elsie Ralph (later Urry) with the only extant photograph of her young family.

McGreavy stood trial at Worcester Crown Court on July 30, but as he pleaded guilty there was no trial as such, only a sentencing hearing. Capital punishment had been abolished in England, in practice if not in theory, only seven years earlier, so the judge, Mr Justice Ashworth, gave him the mandatory life sentence with a tariff of twenty years. If the latter sounds unduly lenient, it is doubtful if he believed McGreavy would ever be released. Incidentally, nine years earlier, the same judge had presided over the trial of Gwynne Evans and Peter Allen, the last men to be hanged in Britain. They were executed simultaneously at different prisons.

Mr Justice Ashworth died in 1975; McGreavy was seriously assaulted in prison the same year, but by 1995 he had been transferred to an open prison. Broadly speaking there are two types of prisoners who are sent to open prisons: low risk, non-violent offenders, and longer term prisoners, including murderers. With the abolition of capital punishment, those murderers who are considered safe to be released are sensibly walked back into society gradually, including open prison, day release, and perhaps a half-way house. But surely the authorities could not be considering releasing a man who had butchered three human beings, babies, under such circumstances, or indeed any circumstances? Guess again! In 2006, McGreavy was allowed out of prison unescorted. Clearly someone at the Home Office or elsewhere in the civil service was outraged, and tipped off a tabloid newspaper. After McGreavy was photographed walking the streets of Merseyside, the balloon went up. He is now believed to be back in a closed prison, certainly he was after 2006, but incredibly the Parole Board is again considering his release.

There are a number of petitions on Change Dot Org that have been set up hopefully to stop this. The one at this link

https://www.change.org/p/uk-parliament-triple-child-killer-david-mcgreavy-should-never-be-released-from-prison

has attracted the most support, but to date far fewer than the petition to keep the Black Cab Rapist behind bars. But for considerable public pressure, John Worboys would have been released after serving only ten years, but earlier this year, the High Court quashed the Parole Board’s decision, and Worboys will now remain behind bars for the foreseeable future.

David McGreavy — Friday The Thirteenth for real.

If you think the David McGreavy case was an anomaly and Worboys pulled the wool over the Parole Board’s eyes, think again. Two years ago, Colin Pitchfork was recommended for parole, and has even been allowed out of prison on day release. If the name is not familiar to you, Pitchfork was the first murderer to be brought to book by DNA profiling. In November 1983, he raped and strangled the underage teenager Lynda Mann. In July 1986, another teen was given the same treatment. His other crimes include allowing a none-too-bright teenager to take the rap for the second murder. Pitchfork was convicted in 1988.

Then there is the case of Jane Andrews. She attracted considerable media attention on account of having once worked for a member of the Royal Family. In September 2000, she battered and stabbed her lover to death while he was asleep. In trying to avoid or minimise her responsibility for the crime, she lied persistently, but was convicted the following year. By 2009, when she was already being groomed for release, she absconded from an open prison. In spite of this, she was paroled in 2015, but was recalled to prison this year after harassing a former lover.

To lock up a man or a woman for one year or even one month, is a terrible thing, and to do so for decades on end is unthinkable, but what is the alternative? Clearly the Parole Board believes that at some point even the most depraved of killers should be unleashed on society.

There is though yet another reason the Pitchforks and McGreavys of this world should not be released, that is the sheer cost, because such men will always be the targets for vigilante attacks, not from the families of their victims but from the type of people who think justice should be done properly, or from those simply out to make a name for themselves. Although they are also at risk in prison, it is easier to prevent this sort of thing there by keeping them separated from other inmates.

Should McGreavy in particular be released, he would need to be given a new identity. When rapist and would-be murderer Larry Singleton was paroled after only eight years, the locals were so outraged that he was forced to live in a trailer in the grounds of San Quentin Prison until his parole ended. After that, he moved back to his native Florida where seven years later he stabbed a woman to death.

Rather than face the cost of supplying McGreavy and people like him with new identities then monitoring them closely just in case, the Ministry Of Justice would do much better to spend this scarce money on the rehabilitation of ordinary prisoners, most of whom are selfish or weak rather than simply evil. In the United States, the Trump Administration is doing this. A man who is released from prison with no family ties, no home and scant worldly possessions is already half-way to serving a life sentence on the installment plan, and that’s before we begin talking about drug problems, literacy, work skills, etc.

If the Parole Board does not recognise this simple truth, it should be abolished and replaced with a new institution, or staffed with people who do. Another factor that should be considered is Legal Aid. Pitchfork was granted Legal Aid to challenge his tariff. At a time when the Legal Aid budget is being cut to the bone, double child killers should be sent to the back of a very long queue. Not every reprobate deserves a second chance.

[The above was originally published on Medium, December 6, 2018].