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The Friday 13th Killer

It was a typical day, just like any other – Friday the 13th. Perhaps it was just a horrible coincidence that the following events were to occur on such an inauspicious day.

On most Fridays, the 13th comes and goes, but in the more innocent times of 1973, on this specific Friday the 13th, a monster was born. A crime without any seeming motivation is now recalled as one of the most shocking crimes that the nation had ever witnessed.

The man forever afterward would come to be known by several names; The Real Friday the 13th Killer and sometimes as The Monster of Worcester. Before that, he operated under the much more familiar moniker of David McGreavy.

In 1973, David was just 20 years of age, and things were not going too well. He had suffered a string of job losses, a broken-off engagement, and found that he was no longer welcome to live with his parents.

He needed assistance, and it was his friend Clive that came to his rescue. Clive invited McGreavy to live with his family, which included his heavily pregnant wife Elsie and their two other children, 3-year-old Paul and 1-year-old Dawn.

McGreavy paid the weekly rent and sometimes cooked Sunday roast dinners. And loved the children, frequently playing with them, and generally acted like a father. On occasions, he was even interested and involved in discussions about child discipline. It seemed a happy arrangement that worked for everyone.

Elsie soon gave birth to her third child, Samantha, and shortly afterwards returned to the workforce. Both couples were working and earning money, and the need for McGreavy to perform regular babysitting duties increased.

On this Friday, the 13th in 1973, McGreavy had been drinking heavily that evening at the local pub and had quickly downed 5-7 pints of beer and had even gotten himself involved in a minor flare-up. Clive collected him from the pub and drove him back home to act as a babysitter while he went to pick up his wife from work.

Between the timeframe of 10:15 pm and 11:15 pm, McGreavy became disturbed and aggravated by the constant crying of one of the children, and something about the baby’s non-stop crying caused McGreavy to snap. The man who loved children vanished, and in his place stood the Monster of Worcester.

Clive and Elsie returned home late that evening only to discover that police were already present on the scene, with no sign of McGreavy. The couple was taken to the local police station and informed of the fate of their children.

All three children met their end in three different ways. 9-month-old Samantha was the first victim and succumbed to a skull fracture, 4-year-old Paul was strangled with wire, and two-year-old Dawn had her throat slit.

As if the murders alone had not been tragic enough, what was to follow was even more baffling. McGreavy would desecrate the bodies. Firstly, he mutilated the bodies via the use of a pick-axe, and in the final act of madness, he impaled the children on the wrought iron fence of a neighbour’s house.

It was an act that reverberated around the country, and the neighbourhood with the innocuous-sounding name of Rainbow Hill, Worcester, would never be the same.

McGreavy left the house, and the police found him walking the streets in the early hours of the next morning. His initial denials did not last long, and he began answering questions, confessing that “It was me, but it wasn’t me. All I could hear was kids, kids, f… kids”.

The Real Friday the 13th Killer would go on to be sentenced to multiple life terms, with a minimum imprisonment of 20 years, and had to spend most of his time behind bars in protective custody. The earliest he could be released was 1993.

Repeated parole requests had been turned down, but after 46 years in custody, McGreavy’s release was finally approved and took effect in June 2019. According to reports, he is a much-changed man who now accepts responsibility for all he has done. Nevertheless, the terms of his release mean he will be subject to exclusion zones for the rest of his days, and his acts on Friday the 13th ensure that he will go down in history for all the wrong reasons.

Stay tuned for further On This Day in Crime series articles coming soon. In the meantime, on this Friday, the 13th, the Dark Stories True Crime Walking Tours will naturally be running throughout Sydney, Newcastle, Brisbane, and Maitland. Stay safe today and be sure to avoid black cats, don’t walk under ladders and be careful not to break any mirrors!

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Shootout in Razor Gangs Central

by Davros Dark

This story is an excellent example of the effectiveness of the Pistol Licencing Act 1927, which did so much to bring forth the Razor as a weapon in the Razor Gangs wars that were starting to heat up in the Sydney streets.

On the evening of December 28^th, 1931, when a man named Roberts approached a young woman, Renie, on William Street. He said that he wanted her to live with him as a “lady of the night”. The business of “white slavery” was thriving in the area at the time, with young women kidnapped and forced to work the streets for various local gangs. Roberts himself was known to police as a small-time underworld figure, under the alias Paddy Reynolds, and for threatening people with a gun or a razor.

Renie just laughed at Roberts, so he drew a revolver, pointed it at her and said: “Either you live with me, or I will shoot you. I will see you here at 6 p.m.” He then jabbed Renie several times with the gun. Renie ran home and told the man she was living with, James White, what had happened. White was a decent man who made his living “selling dolls and little toys to crowds of happy children at every showground”, including each year at Sydney’s Royal Easter Show. When Renie told him what had happened, White said: “I will see the chap that threatened to shoot you.”

The couple met Roberts on the corner of Kirketon Road and William Street just after 6 pm. It was quite busy, with lots of people around. White confronted Roberts: “What is the idea of pulling a gun on this girl?” Roberts replied, “Mind your own business, or I’ll blow your head off.”

White didn’t back down… so Roberts stepped out onto William Street and started firing. Terrified men, women and children scurried away for their lives as White ducked behind a pole for cover. He pulled out his own revolver and shot twice at Roberts, who backed away across Williams Street, firing four shots in quick succession; one of these almost hit Renie, who ducked just in time, the shop window above her head smashing into pieces.

Roberts reached the other side of the street. Blood was streaming from his chest, and he swayed where he stood. White’s gun had jammed, so a constable took him into custody. He calmly handed the gun over, saying, “I have a licence.” Thank goodness for that! On the way to the police station, White said: “Fancy these mongrels coming out and victimising women.”

Meanwhile, another constable had gone to Roberts, who said: “He got me.” Roberts pulled open his coat to reveal a large amount of blood. He was taken to hospital, where he died half an hour later.

Pistol Licences Act - Licenced or Unlicenced

At the trial, Renie testified that she had been threatened by shady members of the underworld. On one occasion two of them had forced their way into her flat. “You little copper!” said one. “You don’t think you’re going to give evidence for White, do you? If you do, you’ll cop something for yourself.” Despite this, Renie had bravely taken the stand, and White was found not guilty on grounds of self-defence… in further good news, the timing of his release meant that he was just in time to sell his wares at the Royal Easter Show.

And as for Roberts? Nobody, not even his relatives, said they had any association with him, and after the post-mortem was concluded, no one came forward to collect his body.

But most importantly of all, the Pistol Licences Act had done its job because – just for the record – no one in this case was shot by an unlicensed pistol.

If you want to learn more about the Razor Gang Wars, then you might be interested in doing the tour sometime. Or else book in for any of our other tours in Sydney, Newcastle, Maitland and Brisbane.

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The Belanglo Forest Story

by Davros Dark

For many young tourists in Australia, hitchhiking was once the travel method of choice. It was adventurous, exciting, and perhaps best of all, it was cheap. But in the early 90s, there was a series of killings that struck fear into the hearts of Australia’s travellers, uncovering the most notorious killer the country has ever seen.

Brits Caroline Clark, 21, and Joanna Walters, 22, had met at a backpackers hostel in Sydney in 1992. Both seeking the trip of a lifetime, they’d joined forces for their Australian adventure. They hitch-hiked around the country together, and in April the pair set off towards New South Wales. But when their families didn’t hear from them for a number of weeks, they knew that something had gone terribly wrong.

It would be 5 months before their bodies were discovered, buried in the thick terrain of the Belanglo State Forest. Walters had been stabbed 14 times, in an attack so frenzied it had severed her spine, while Clark had been shot 10 times in the head. The find was certainly a horrific one. But it was only the start of the nightmare that was to follow.

Three years earlier, young Australian couple Deborah Everist and James Gibson had also set off on a hitchhiking trip, planning to travel almost 400 miles to a music festival near Albury. Like Carl and Walters, however, they would never return home. In October of 1993, their bodies were discovered in a remote part of Belanglo Forest. Gibson had been stabbed to death, while Everist had been beaten so badly that her jaw was broken; her skull fractured in two places.

That same year, three more victims were found in Belanglo. The first was Simone Schmidl, a 21-year-old German tourist who was last seen in January of 1991. Her body bore the now familiar hallmarks that police had come to expect. But this time, there was clothing at the scene that didn’t belong to Schmidl – a sinister clue that there were more victims to be found. A few days later, on 4th November 1993, the bodies of Gabor Neugebauer, 21, and Anja Habschied, 20, were discovered in shallow graves. Gabor had been shot in the head, while Anja had been decapitated with a machete or sword. To this day, her skull has never been found.

Now with 7 victims, police were left with the task of finding who had committed these awful crimes. The breakthrough came on 13th November 1993, when police received a call from England. The man on the other end of the phone was 24-year-old Paul Onions, who had been backpacking through Australia 3 years prior. He said that when heading out of Casula, he had hitched a ride with a man named ‘Bill’. After a few hours of driving, ‘Bill’ had started to act strangely. When they were less than 1km from Belanglo Forest, ‘Bill’ pulled the car over, and brought out a gun. Onions fled into the path of oncoming traffic, where he managed to flag down passing motorist Joanne Berry. Together, they sped away from ‘Bill’, and reported the incident to the Bowral police. Around the same time of Onions call, police received another from local woman. She had her suspicions about a gun-loving man from town. The man’s name, she said, was Ivan Milat.

Milat had an extensive criminal record, including arrests for robbery and rape. Not only that, but Milat owned a car similar to the one that Onions and Berry had described, and was known to go by the name of ‘Bill’. It looked as though police had their man.

In the early morning of 22nd May 1994, fifty police raided Milat’s home. Once inside, the evidence was damning. As well as weapons matching those used in the murders, police found cameras, a tent, clothing and sleeping bags belonging to the 7 victims. The first item found – a postcard – was addressed to none other than ‘Bill’. With that, Milat was charged with 7 counts of murder. After numerous delays, including Milat’s dismissal of his own lawyer, he was eventually found guilty on 27th July 1996. He was handed life without the possibility of parole, and spent the next 25 years appealing his sentence.

If Ivan Milat was responsible for any more murder, we’ll likely never know. He passed away on 27th October 2019 following a diagnosis of oesophageal cancer, maintaining his innocence to the bitter end. If Milat had any more secrets, he took them to his grave.