Real Monsters: David McGreavy, The Friday the 13th Murders

Samantha’s crying cranked in David’s aching head like a Dante-esque buzzsaw from one of the inner Circles of Hell that Friday night April 13, 1973.

He. Could. Not. Take. It.

His week was hard enough.

“Oh, WHY did I drink so much tonight?” he thought as he tried to get much-needed rest in the next room while waiting on the children’s parents Clive and Elsie to arrive home from Elsie’s shift as a popular local bartender.

They should be only about 20 minutes, David thought, pillow over his head to try to keep out the loud machinations of the demon spawn in the next room.

The incessant wailing made him glad his relationship fell apart – that he was 21 and not saddled with kids.

Then that one moment’s bliss was obliterated again by the crying in the next room.

The Kids. Kids. Kids.

Unemployment was making David feel (generously) “neutered” in having to lean on good friends like this – even though he rather liked the children: Paul (5), Dawn Maria (2), and Samantha (almost 1).

Still, like rusted nails on a chalkboard, the high-pitched crying made his skin crawl. The sound was visceral, lighting a fire in his bones – all-consuming, hellish, and causing flashes of sharp pain in his forehead and behind his eyes.

KIDS-The KIDS-KIDS

It felt like some unseen force was impaling his organs from the inside. He yearned to jump out of his skin and escape because…

He. Could. Not. Take. It.

That was when an idea hit what was left of his brain: still taking trips off the diving board into the pool of warm beer and Irish whiskey that his liver and brain were floating in.

The Kids. THE Kids. THE KIDS!

(the cadence and volume of the word echoing in his ears like a siren’s song from Hades.)

He stumbled down the basement stairs looking for a blunt instrument. Something had to be done…

(his heart going into overdrive – adrenaline powering it like a spark plug! The pain was intensifying! Sharp like a pickaxe split his skull!)

THE KIDS-KIDS-KIDS! KIIIIIIDDDSS!

What resulted from the drunken actions of one man would tear Great Britain apart in grappling with an unspeakable national tragedy. Yet, David McGreavy did not just kill three children as we shall see.

It would also stir profound existential questions about human nature as a whole; specifically, what can drive a normal man to become the “Monster of Worcester” by engaging in a psychotic level of bloodshed that will forever be known in England as the Friday the 13th Murders?

The answer is a case study on what may be the single most important and unseen motivator for seemingly unexplainable violence from people with no prior history of it...