Petition to keep killer Alan Giles behind bars

Quinton student Kevin Ricketts was just 16 when he was kidnapped and murdered by Giles, formerly from Oldbury.

But his devastated mother Carole Ricketts, of Northfield, has said she will do 'everything in her power' to try to stop Giles getting parole.

Giles went on the run for nine days in October last year after fleeing from an open section of HMP Hewell.

The 56-year-old was later arrested in Alcester and was given a further six month sentence on top of the life term he is already serving.

But Mrs Ricketts has called for him not to be given parole or to be allowed within 100 miles of her family.

She said she was 'absolutely terrified' when he escaped.

And the 56-year-old added she should have been told Giles was in an open prison just eight miles away from her home.

She said: "Giles is pure evil. He must have been born evil. He has no conscience at all but he has not got mental problems." Grandmother-of-eight Mrs Ricketts said her son was 'quiet and shy'.

"Kevin's shyness was almost a disability," she said. "He wouldn't even have shouted for help when he took him. He targeted Kevin because he was weak – people pick on the vulnerable.

"He said Kevin struggled. That it a lie- Kevin wouldn't have put up a fight, he didn't know how to fight."

She added: "Kevin was my best friend, my beautiful boy.

"We all miss him every day, we miss his laughter."

Kevin was abducted as he was supposed to catch a bus to South Birmingham College where he was a carpentry student. The bus stop was just 100 yards from his home but at around 7am on January 31 1995, as he left to go to college, Giles abducted and later murdered him.

Giles was jailed for the teenager's murder in 1997.

But for three years afterwards, Giles refused to say where he had buried Kevin's body.

A year after being jailed, Giles phoned police from his cell to confess to the killing and where he had buried the body.

Giles had previously been in a relationship with Mrs Ricketts' daughter Elizabeth but she had left their seven-year relationship.