Peter Wilkinson tells how he wished he'd never met Aaron Barley who stabbed his wife Tracey and son Pierce to death at their Stourbridge home

Company director Mr Wilkinson paid a moving tribute to his wife Tracey who along with son Pierce was fatally stabbed by Barley, aged 24, at the family's Norton home on March 30 as he was out walking the dog.

Barley, of no fixed address, had been lying in wait in the back garden of the family's detached Greyhound Lane home before launching the murderous morning attack on 50-year-old Tracey and 13-year-old Pierce (pictured below).

Mr Wilkinson said he and Tracey had been helping Barley to try and get back on his feet - finding him a job, helping him to secure accommodation and they even had him over for Christmas dinner.

He said Tracey had met Barley one day after shopping at Tesco in Stourbridge and he added: “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.”

Mr Wilkinson described his wife of 16 years as a “very compassionate woman” and said: "She wouldn’t see harm come to anybody, she liked to help people.”

Mr Wilkinson said Tracey (pictured above) would organise breakfast and dinner for Barley every day - “be it at our house or somewhere else”.

He said he recalls a conversation with Barley when he asked him what he wanted in life and he was told ‘I just need somebody to give me a chance, I need somebody to give me a lucky break’.

A few weeks later Mr Wilkinson found him a job at one of the businesses he runs in Newport, south Wales, and at first he was a good employee “doing general labouring, working on a busy yard” to wash, clean, load and unload crash barriers.

But in September 2016 he went off the rails. He said Barley started taking drugs and “as a business we had to let him go” - adding: “It was very amicable. He knew that that was the case because of what he’d been doing.”

He said Barley told him he’d taken drugs because his mother had recently died but that turned out not to be true.

It is believed he then moved back to Birmingham - and in late October/early November Peter discovered Barley asleep in the corner of the family’s driveway “covered in bruises” after apparently being beaten up.

Mr Wilkinson said: “My wife being the compassionate soul that she was, decided that as a family we should help him again.

“In a similar vein to what we had done last time, we managed to get accommodation for him. We paid for some accommodation ourselves for him.

“My wife wouldn’t see him back on the streets so over the next couple of weeks we managed to get council accommodation sorted.

“And he would do general jobs for us, for other members of my family as well, in order to earn some pocket money for food and cigarettes. And he was generally very grateful.

“From that point onwards, I think through ’til Christmas he’d got some part-time work or some cash-in-hand work. And then at Christmas last year he spent Christmas Day with us.

“He had Christmas lunch with us. I remember he wrote my wife a card saying ‘To the mother that I never had’. My wife was very caring and he treated her a bit like a second mother.

“He then, in January, got some full-time work. He’d got a new flat. We were very happy for him. We still saw him then once or twice a week - he would come for dinner.

“And then in early March, he came round one night - the last time I saw him. I bought a curry and I shared a couple of bottles of beer with him. I dropped him off back at his flat in Brierley Hill that night.

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

He said Barley, dressed all in black, jumped out from behind a wall in the kitchen, armed with a kitchen knife, as he returned from taking the dog a walk.

He said he grappled with him but was stabbed six times - twice in the face, twice in the abdomen and twice in the back.

He added: “I thought he was going to carry on stabbing me but I then heard my car going off the drive.

“I got up, went into the kitchen and phoned the emergency services, at the time not thinking I was too badly injured.

“Then I remember looking around and seeing this huge trail of blood across the floor, which was my blood. I then went back out into the back garden, sat in a chair and I remember talking to the person on the other end of the phone and realising that I was actually dying. I could feel my lungs filling with fluid and I could feel energy draining from me.

“The next thing I remember is ambulances turning up and I can remember hearing helicopters overhead and the police arrived.

“An ambulance man tended to me immediately. I remember him jabbing something into me, which is probably what kept me alive.

“I also remember telling the other ambulance men to go into the house. I remember vividly one coming out behind me and saying ‘one deceased and one in cardiac arrest’. I knew at that point that I had most likely lost Tracey and Pierce. Then I was taken to the QE.”

Mr Wilkinson said he thought he was going to die.

Daughter Lydia was also told to expect the worst after arriving at hospital.

She described the moment she saw her dad “with countless machines hooked up to him, a lot of doctors around his bed” and she said: “I remember thinking at that point in time that I was going to lose him as well because nobody could survive that state.”

The biology undergraduate student (pictured above) told how she realised something terrible had happened after a phone call from her boyfriend who had heard about an incident, and she discovered it was her family at the centre of an unfolding tragedy after a photograph of her house with police tape around it appeared in a Google search.

She said she called the police to ask if it was real after her parents failed to answer the phone.

The awful news was broken to her after officers were sent to her halls of residence in Bristol and on her way back to the Midlands she feared she would be planning a triple funeral.

After realising there was nothing she could do to save her mum and brother she says hoping her dad would survive became her sole focus “because he was the only thing I had left in life”.

She sat with him “for a long time”, holding his hand and hoping “he was going to be ok” and she said: "From that point on it was a case I lived every day for dad. We would stay at the hospital for hours a day just to be with him.”

While hoping for a miraculous recovery for her dad, the brave teenager also had to identify the bodies of her mum and brother.

She said: "I stroked their hair. I was with my liaison officers and my boyfriend and I just stayed there because I knew that was going to be the last time I saw them in my life.”

Paying tribute to her "stunning" mum, she said: “She had a beautiful personality, she knew fashion extremely well - better than anyone else I have ever known.

“She was just very caring and helpful. She loved her family - she was very invested in her family and I was very, very close with my mum.

“I was due to come home the day after and pick out a dress for my university ball.

“To have my best friend taken from me in life at such a young age is a hardship I would never wish on anyone. Because it has to be the most awful experience. Especially when something happens… I can’t ring her up any more.”

She described her younger brother as “handsome, funny, clever” and said: "He was very personable, everybody made friends with Pierce.”

She said Tracey and Pierce (pictured above) loved to watch films together - adding: “Their favourite pastime was on a cold winter’s day to get under a blanket together and watch films such as Star Trek or Star Wars.

“They both shared a unique a passion for the Carry On films and they very much loved each other, as much as we all loved each other as a family."

Mr Wilkinson described his wife as a "beautiful woman with a heart of gold", adding: "She was stylish, she was elegant. She was very compassionate.

“She cared for others and it’s just so tragic that after trying to help people and to help Aaron that he should turn on us in this way for no apparent reason.”

And he added: “I wish we had never met him - I wish my wife had never set eyes on him.”

Mr Wilkinson (pictured above), who spent 11 nights in hospital, said although the physical scars left from the attack would heal - “the mental scars never will”. He said Lydia had been his “absolute rock”, adding: "She’s everything to me. We do lots and lots of things together, we always have done. We are a very close family.

“We are still a very close family but we are two people instead of four.

"Lydia’s fortitude and strength and her love for me is beyond belief.”