Violent serial criminal from the age of 12
THE Wilkinson family’s middle class lifestyle in a dream home on the edge of open countryside was completely alien to Aaron Barley.
A product of incest who was born into a large and disjointed family, Barley, 24, was neglected by his parents and then orphaned by the age of seven.
He became a teenage parent after spending much of his childhood in foster care or children’s homes, including one where he was drummed out at the age of 11 after threatening to stab a fellow resident.
The killer then ended up in a hostel, where he was remembered only for his cannabis habit and rage-fuelled arguments with a girlfriend.
Barley’s mother, Jayne, a factory worker, was one of at least six siblings, while his father, Brian, a carpet fitter-turned-publican – who was 19 years her senior – was the youngest of eight. But family sources told the Daily Mail his mother was the illegitimate child of one of his father’s four brothers, all of whom are dead.
A psychiatrist who assessed Barley sugtive gested his parents being ‘uncle and niece... might account for his dysmorphic appearance’.
Mr Barley died of cancer in 1998 when Barley, his youngest son, was just four.
His widow moved from Birmingham to Blackpool, but died after suffering a heart attack two years later.
Peers at Hunters Hill Technology College in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire – a special school for children with ‘significant social, emotional or behavioural needs’ – say Barley was a popular, if cocky, troublemaker. A schoolfriend said: ‘He would say things about raping people’s sisters. He tried to bully people but they always put him in his place.’
Barley left the school in Year 9 after a fight with other pupils. Around the same time, he made newspaper headlines after going missing with two friends.
Hugh Holt, an uncle of the double killer, told the Mail he last saw his nephew when he was a boy of around 11, and remembered how he was treated as a hindrance by his mother and father. Another rela- recalled that Barley and his sister, who is said to be ‘beyond distraught’ at what her brother has done, were sent to separate foster families.
By the age of 16 Barley was living in a charity-run hostel in Birmingham, catering for ‘care leavers, teenage parents, young offenders and young people at risk of homelessness’. He ticked every box.
Barley spent much of his time telling sob stories about his drunken, abusive parents – who he claimed were still alive.
Another uncle, who asked not to be named, said the killer seemed ‘absolutely fine’ when he last spoke to him six months before the killings in March.
The relative, who had tried to take Barley in after the deaths of his parents, added: ‘He had a flat and a job.
‘He spoke to me as if he had his life sorted, these people had taken him in. I can’t think what possessed him.’
Barley told neighbours he planned to move elsewhere with a friend. In reality he had lost his job at Peter Wilkinson’s engineering firm in South Wales after relapsing into drug abuse. By then, he was said to have developed a sexual interest in men as well as women.
Kay Jones, 39, who lived close by, described his sudden transformation to double killer as ‘unbelievable’.
She said: ‘Aaron was always such a lovely young man when he was here. He was renting a nice little flat and working full time. He told me he was working on highway maintenance and hoping to save up enough money for his family to join him.’
Four months later Barley repaid the Wilkinson family for their generosity and kindness in setting him up with a flat back home in the West Midlands in the most bloody and brutal fashion possible.
Birmingham Crown Court was told he had racked up the first of his 21 convictions as a 12-year- old for actual bodily harm. His other offences include possession of a firearm, arson, assaulting a police officer and possession of Class B drugs, as well as inflicting grievous bodily harm on an ex-girlfriend.
He beat the woman in excess of 50 times with a piece of wood, before snapping it and attempting to stab her with it.
He was sentenced to a spell in a young offenders institute.
‘Drunken and abusive parents’