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Today it is exactly 36 years since Barry Williams went on a killing spree in West Bromwich, leaving five dead and many more injured. Neighbour Graham Chambers speaks for the first time about the atrocity to ANDY RICHARDSON.

Graham Chambers has a recurring nightmare. He answers his front door to find serial killer Barry Williams smiling at him. The killer raises a gun and blasts him in the face. That’s when Graham wakes up.

It is a terrifying encounter he has had time and time again over the 36 years since his next-door neighbour in West Bromwich snapped and went on a murderous rampage that left five people dead.

Williams shot Graham’s neighbours and his best friend dead. Then he shot Graham’s mum for good measure. His dad was hit by a ricocheting bullet. Thankfully, both his parents survived the shooting.

But the scars left by the terrible events of October 26, 1978 run deep. And the mental wounds have been re-opened by the shocking news that Williams, freed from Broadmoor, looked set to repeat the massacre last year.

Under the new name of Harry Street, the killer had been amassing an arsenal of weapons at his new home, and had been arguing with his new neighbours about noise – just as he did the day death came calling.

Graham decided to speak out for the first time on today’s anniversary of the Andrew Road massacre, both to face his demons and to warn that Williams, under whatever name he may choose, must never be released again.

“I have a recurring nightmare,” he admits. “There’s a banging on the front door. I open it to be faced by Williams and he blasts me in the face with a gun. He has haunted my dreams.”

Graham was just 19 years old when Williams killed his neighbours George and Iris Burkitt, and their son Phillip. The crazed gunman then shot Judith Chambers in the stomach, and a stray bullet hit Joseph Chambers’ arm.

Williams went on to kill another two people as he fled across the Midlands, murdering Mike Di Maria and his wife Liza after he had pulled up to their service station in Nuneaton in his getaway car.

Graham, now 56, from Wednesbury would have been in the firing line himself had he not moved out of the house just a few weeks earlier to get married.





“Moving out when I did probably saved my life,” he says. “But I vividly remember the day of the shootings. I got a call from my uncle to say the people had been shot in Andrew Road, and I raced round.

“I arrived on the scene and it was horrific, like a scene from a horror movie. We lived two doors away from Williams, with the Burkitt family in between. There were police everywhere.

“My friend Phillip was lying dead on the floor with a blanket over him. I was physically sick when I saw what had happened.

“Then there was blind panic because my parents were nowhere to be seen. I was told they had been taken away in an ambulance, but I had no idea if they were dead or alive, or what their injuries might be.

“Our family were the lucky ones really. My mother was seriously injured but survived, and my father was shot in the arm. My sister Angela was only 13 at the time and, thankfully, had been at a friend’s house.

“The physical wounds healed for them but the mental scars remained. My father never spoke about the incident but he wasn’t the same man afterwards. He became more introverted. My parents split up a few years later, and I believe the incident played a part in that.

“The stress they both suffered was immense. Dad died in 2008.

“The Burkitts were a lovely family. I was close friends with Phillip and he played in my football team. He used to tell me about the problems they would have with Williams. The family would be kept awake with the noise of drilling in the middle of the night.

“Williams complained that they were noisy but the Burkitts were the perfect neighbours. It was all in his head.”

There had, says former sheet metal worker Graham, been warning signs.

“He was such an unpredictable man,” he recalls. “You wouldn’t hear anything from him for weeks, but then he would just snap.

“One day I was with three friends, just chatting on the street. Suddenly Williams burst out of his house and rushed at one of them. He grabbed him with such force and threw him over a fence. He then just rushed back into his house without saying a word.

“On another occasion he knocked another friend of mine off his bike as he rode in the street – for no reason at all. We never reported it to the police, In those days you didn’t, you just got on with things.”

Graham remembers another incident where an angry Williams knocked on his door.

“He told me someone had broken into his car and had stolen 200 home-made 9mm high velocity bullets from it. He was looking straight through me as he said it, almost daring me to disbelieve him.

“The way he looked at me chilled me to the bone. He was trying his very best to intimidate me.”

In another incident Graham’s father questioned Williams one day after he heard a loud bang when he was out in the garden.

“My dad saw Williams hanging out of the window and asked him if he had shot a a gun,” says Graham. “Kids often fired pellet guns but this was a large weapon and made a tremendous bang. He had obviously fired the gun out of his window but denied it was him.”

The killer’s own mother, Hilda, apparently had concerns about him.

“My mother and Hilda were friends,” says Graham. “One time Hilda told my mom that she had concerns about his behaviour. Williams was out one day and she took my mom into the house, and into his bedroom.

“She showed my mom an arsenal of guns he had stored in his bedroom and hundreds of home-made bullets. My mom was taken aback by what she saw but at that time he had never threatened anyone with a gun.

“Nowadays you would report something like that to the police but in those days things were different.”

In another bizarre twist Graham reveals how a neighbour once told him he had thrown buckets of water over Williams after discovering him in flames in his parents’ garage in what was assumed to be a suicide bid.

“He told me he had heard a commotion and discovered Williams was on fire. He started throwing buckets of water over Williams, who said to him ‘Let me burn.’ After the shootings he told me he wished he had just let him burn.

“I would like to see capital punishment brought back for people like Williams. He was an evil, evil man, who destroyed so many lives. To think that he might have done it again after being freed beggars belief.”

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Barry Williams was sent to Broadmoor in 1979 for his killing spree, after admitting manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

But he was released in October 1994, and set up home just six miles from the scene of the massacre, sparking outrage.

Williams was moved to Wales where he married, and had a daughter, before returning to Birmingham – this time under a new name.

People living in Hazelville Road, Hall Green had no idea that the man they knew as Harry Street was a multiple murderer.

But on October 15 last year he was arrested at his home after reports that he had been threatening his new neighbours.

The Bomb Squad was called when police discovered he had home-made explosives and an arsenal of weapons hidden inside.

The escalating row with his neighbours about noise had chilling echoes of the events leading up to the West Bromwich massacre.

On October 6 this year 70-year-old Street appeared at Birmingham Crown Court and admitted three charges of possessing a firearm, one charge of harassment and one of making an explosive device. He was detained indefinitely and this time may never be released.

Graham Chambers says he was stunned when cops came knocking on his door in October last year to alert him to the arrest.

“I couldn’t believe he had been released and was living on our doorstep under a new name,” he says.

“When they told me they had found weapons at his home and he had been threatening his neighbours, my heart nearly stopped.

“It brought it all back to me. I think he may have been days, perhaps hours, away from carrying out another killing spree.

“Thank God a policeman made investigations into his past. In my opinion, that has certainly saved many lives.

“He should never have been released in the first place and to let him slip under the radar for so long is shocking.

“Now he is behind bars for a second time I hope the lessons have finally been learned.”