Homeless man admits stabbing to death Stourbridge mother and son, 13, who took him in TWICE and gave him a job

A homeless man shouted ‘Die, you bastard!’ as he viciously stabbed the father of a family who took him in twice.

Aaron Barley turned on the kind-hearted Wilkinson family, who fed him and found him accommodation, stabbing a mother and her son to death and attempting to kill her husband.

On the first day of his trial at Birmingham Crown Court on Tuesday, Barley, 24, admitted murdering Tracey Wilkinson and son Pierce, 13, in their home in Stourbridge, West Mids, in March.

He had already admitted attempting to murder Mrs Wilkinson’s husband, businessman Peter, by stabbing him in the face, abdomen and neck.

The Wilkinsons’ daughter, Lydia, 19, was away at university at the time of the attack.

The Wilkinson family had tried to help Barley turn his life around on two occasions before his attack.

Recalling the attack, Mr Wilkinson, who was seriously injured, said: “He said ‘Die, you bastard’ as he stuck the knife into me.

“I said to him after he’d stabbed me, ‘Aaron we tried to help you’, and he stuck the knife into my stomach and said ‘Die, you bastard’.”

Barley was fed, helped with accommodation and even given a job after Mrs Wilkinson found him on the street.

Barley, who appeared in the dock alongside four custody officers wearing a blue T-shirt, spoke quietly when entering his pleas on Tuesday.

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Mrs Wilkinson, 50, was pronounced dead at the scene after suffering stab injuries, while Pierce died after being taken to hospital.

Mr Wilkinson, 47, managed to phone the emergency services after being stabbed six times and spent 11 days in hospital recovering from his wounds.

Barley had already murdered Mrs Wilkinson and her son then lay in wait for Mr Wilkinson to return home.

‘I opened the back door and, as I did it, he jumped out from behind a wall in the kitchen, all dressed in black, with a big knife held over his head and started stabbing me with it,’ said Mr Wilkinson.

‘From that point I grappled with him for a short period of time and he stabbed me six times – he stabbed me twice in the face, twice in the abdomen and twice in the back.’

“There’s no motive, there is no explanation.

“My personal feeling – and this is purely my personal feeling – is that he’d lost his job, he lost his flat. And he decided that because his life was going bad ways, he was going to take it out on the people that had cared and looked after him.”

Barley stole Mr Wilkinson’s 4×4 car to flee the scene but crashed it into a wall after a collision with a police car. He was arrested after a short foot chase.

It emerged after the attack that the Wilkinsons had helped Barley off the streets around a year earlier – after Mrs Wilkinson saw him keeping warm in a cardboard box outside a Tesco store.

Barley, described as a “chaotic” individual who was known to the police, was also given a job at one of Mr Wilkinson’s businesses but left on amicable terms after starting to take drugs.

The Wilkinson family provided Barley with food, friendship and even a job in the year before he launched his deadly knife attack.

Explaining how his wife met the homeless 24-year-old outside a supermarket in March last year, Mr Wilkinson said: “She was shopping one day at Tesco in Stourbridge and she came out and Aaron was keeping warm in a cardboard box, and she was taken aback by this and decided off the cuff that she wanted to help him.

“She took him in her car to Dudley Council to get help and from that point he lived in a hostel for a few days, organised by my wife.

“Even though he was in a hostel, he had no money and food, so Tracey would organise breakfast and dinner for him every day, be it at our house or somewhere else.”

Mr Wilkinson has detailed memories of conversations with Barley, including one over an evening dinner at his family home.

He said: “I just tried to get a feeling of what he felt and what he wanted in life.

“I can remember quite vividly him saying to me ‘I just need somebody to give me a chance, I need somebody to give me a lucky break’.

“After that – maybe three or four weeks later – I actually employed him.

“We decided that we would like to help him, so I employed him at one of the businesses that I run down in Newport in South Wales.”

However, Barley, who lived in Newport after taking up the job as a general labourer in April last year, went off the rails in September and left on apparently amicable terms.

Mr Wilkinson recalled: “He started taking drugs and, as a business, we had to let him go.”

After Barley returned to the West Midlands, he had no contact with the Wilkinsons until early November when he was found asleep on their driveway.

Mr Wilkinson added: “I believe he’d been on the streets and had been badly beaten. My wife, being the compassionate soul that she was, decided that as a family we should help him again.’

Once again, they found accommodation for Barley, even paying for it themselves.

Recalling a meal he shared with Barley around a month before his wife and son’s murder, Mr Wilkinson said: “I shared a curry and a couple of bottles of beer with him. I dropped him off back at his flat.

“That was it for about three weeks – the next time I saw him he was sticking a knife into my shoulder.”