Homeless Aaron Barley, pictured in a court sketch, has admitted the murders of a woman who tried to help him and her schoolboy son
A homeless man who turned on a family who had befriended him has admitted murdering the mother and her 13-year-old son in a knife attack in their home.
Aaron Barley, who was fed, helped with accommodation and even given a job after Tracey Wilkinson found him on the street, pleaded guilty to killing her and her son Pierce on the first day of his trial at Birmingham Crown Court.
Barley, 24, brutally stabbed Mrs Wilkinson, 50, and 13-year-old Pierce at the family’s £440,000 gated home in Stourbridge, West Midlands, on March 30.
Husband Peter Wilkinson, 47, was also critically wounded in the attack but survived following life-saving surgery.
Barley, of no fixed address, appeared before Mrs Justice Carr in the glass-panelled dock at Birmingham Crown Court today wearing a light blue t-shirt and dark blue jogging bottoms.
Flanked by four security guards, he stood emotionless with shoulders slumped as he admitted two counts of murder.
Mrs Wilkinson’s husband Peter was left seriously injured in the attack at the house and only learned his only son was dead after waking from life-saving surgery.
He spent six days in intensive care after suffering stab wounds, lacerations to his face and nerve damage in the attack. He needed 97 stitches.
Tracey Wilkinson, 50, and son Pierce, 13, were stabbed in their home in Stourbridge in March
Peter Wilkinson and his daughter Lydia arrive at Birmingham Crown Court this morning
The couple’s 18-year-old daughter, Lydia, feared she might lose her entire family after the attack on March 30.
Speaking after the attack, Mr Wilkinson described how his ‘happy family bubble’ had been destroyed.
He said in April: ‘We were such a tight unit as a family… we laughed a lot, joked a lot, loved each other and our dog.
‘Our lives revolved around each other – that’s gone now, and it’s devastating. Our lives have just been shattered, we’re a family that’s been wrecked.’
He was aware he had lost his wife when he was rushed to hospital, but it was not until he regained consciousness following surgery that he was told his son had died as well.
‘I’d been semi-conscious until I went into theatre, and I knew that we’d lost Tracey,’ he said earlier this year.
‘But it wasn’t until I woke up from the anaesthetic that I realised we’d lost Pierce too – it was the first question I asked. I was so drugged up, it just didn’t hit home for a long time.’
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