Peter and Tracey Wilkinson did all they could to help homeless Aaron Barley - providing him with food, shelter and even a job in the year before he launched a deadly knife attack on their family.

After the 24-year-old pleaded guilty to murdering Mrs Wilkinson and her 13-year-old son Pierce at their Stourbridge home, Mr Wilkinson has told how they offered Barley sanctuary when his wife found him shivering and begging outside her local Tesco.

Explaining how his wife met Barley outside the supermarket in March last year, Mr Wilkinson said her efforts to help him were typical of her kind nature, which also saw her volunteer to help the elderly.

Mr Wilkinson, 47, was also attacked along with his daughter Lydia. He managed to phone the emergency services after being stabbed six times and spent 11 days in hospital recovering from his wounds.

In his own words, Peter Wilkinson describes his family's ordeal

“My wife was a very compassionate woman. She wouldn’t see harm come to anybody, she liked to help people.

“She did a certain amount of voluntary work helping old people. She was very chatty and made people feel at ease."

On how his wife first encountered her killer

"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.

“So 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. That was in March 2016.

“Things developed from there. 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.