Parents Who Kill--Shocking True Stories of the World's Most Evil Parents

by Carol Anne Davis

  Philpott’s new love interest, Heather Kehoe, was 14 when he met her and 15 when he took her virginity. The pair moved in together in Nottinghamshire just after her 16 birthday and she quickly became pregnant, producing a son. Her paramour liked his women to bear him lots of children as he saw this as proof of his virility: he would later boast that he had a child that he’d never seen, fathered while he was still in the army. He said that condoms spoiled sex. Heather gave birth to a second son but Philpott became enraged and hit her, claiming that he wanted a daughter. (Ironically, it is the man who determines the gender of the child.)

  Mick had been charming and funny when he courted Heather but, now that she was isolated from family and friends, he showed his true colours and often threw her out into the back garden. Cold and frightened, she sometimes had to sleep in the dilapidated outside loo. Neighbours saw her with bruises and black eyes but she refused to admit that she was a victim of domestic abuse. When she threatened to leave Philpott – and his worst nightmare was to be deserted by a lover – he held a knife to her throat and reminded her what had happened to a previous girlfriend who had left. One day when he’d thrown her into the garden yet again she leapt over the fence and just kept running. He swore that he’d take their children from her but, after a lengthy custody battle, she won.

  SECOND MARRIAGE

  Various girlfriends followed then, in 2000, he set up home with 19-year-old Mairead Duffy and her baby son from a previous relationship, Duwayne. Mairead was from an Irish family of travellers and had been abused by a previous boyfriend who had shaved her head.

  She was soon pregnant with Philpott’s child and he made it clear to her that she must never go on the pill: he had seven brothers and sisters and wanted to create a large family of his own. He also liked to keep his women pregnant as this made them less attractive to other men and more reliant on him.

  In 2001 he started an affair with another single mother, 16-year-old orphaned Lisa Willis, and within weeks had moved her into the council house that he shared with Mairead. In May 2003 he married the latter: she wore a formal white wedding gown and white veil and he wore a grey morning suit and was the life and soul of the party. Lisa, seven months pregnant with his child, was happy to be their bridesmaid and he would later consider divorcing Mairead to marry her so that both women could have his surname. The years passed with one or both women expecting yet another Philpott child.

  Despite being the husband from hell, it seems that Mick Philpott was a good father who regularly showed affection to his offspring. One of his sisters, Charmaine, would later tell a reporter that the children ‘adored their dad and followed him around as if he was God.’ He read to them, taught the older ones to play pool and installed a climbing frame, trampoline and swimming pool in the garden. He took some of them fishing and also played football with them. He bought a mini bus and took them to school in the morning, collecting them and driving them home again at night.

  He also drove his women to work and back but refused to let them have their own front door keys or bank accounts, instead getting their wages – both worked as hospital cleaners – paid into his account. He also had welfare benefits for the children paid to him direct. He added a conservatory to their council house and set up a games room with a full-sized snooker table, also installing a caravan in the garden which he could use as a love nest, having sex in it with Lisa and Mairead on alternate nights.

  The women became very close, particularly after Mairead confided in Lisa that she’d been abused when she was younger. She was outgoing during her work as a hospital cleaner but became quieter in his presence and concentrated her energies on feeding and looking after the kids. Lisa was also subjected to increasing control and soon learned not to speak back to Philpott when he was in one of his moods. That said, she was his favourite and he referred to her as his queen and his princess.

  In 2007, he appeared on the Jeremy Kyle programme with Lisa and Mairead, on a show called Father To 15 – Wife And Girlfriend Pregnant Again. His children with them were being entertained backstage. Kyle told Mick Philpott that he should find a job but complimented him on the youngsters saying that they were well dressed and well behaved. Others would vouch for this: the children were doing well at school and social services were not involved with the family. The Philpotts had a roast dinner every Sunday and invited Mick’s octogenarian mother around: she lived half a mile away from the Victory Road house and loved spending time with them all. She did not share Mick’s aversion to work and had only retired from her factory job with Rolls Royce at the age of 70.

  During his slot on the Kyle show, Mick Philpott clearly loved being the centre of attention. He refuted suggestions that he was workshy, saying that his job was looking after his kids. He boasted that he had what most men wanted – two women to have sex with – and claimed that they were a typical happy family. Both women said that this was the case but he had obviously coached Mairead and was jeered by the audience after whispering to her ‘just tell them what we said.’ The family had hoped to get a bigger council house (they only had three bedrooms) after appearing on the show but instead received hate mail from members of the public, incensed that their taxes were being used to fund such an unorthodox life. The children were subsequently bullied at school and the women were laughed at for sharing one man between them: they became defensive and withdrawn.

  But Mick preferred negative attention to no attention at all and eagerly agreed to take part in various newspaper and television interviews, sometimes showing off his love of karaoke. He also appeared in a show about the benefits culture in which MP Ann Widdecombe found him a job, though he didn’t turn up. She ascertained that, despite working and being entitled to various child benefits, neither woman knew how much money came into the house each month as Philpott received it all. Widdecombe and Philpott clashed and he became very angry, referring to women as ‘bitches’ and towering over her threateningly.

  Despite his obvious hatred of women, Mick Philpott still wanted to have sex with them and often chatted up women in the pub even when he was out with his wife and mistress. He admitted in an interview that he’d been unfaithful to them. In 2011 he and Mairead took up dogging in nearby woods and she got pregnant by another man and had an abortion at her husband’s insistence. Police cautioned Philpott after he hit her in the house and dragged her outside by her hair.

  Mairead remained devoted to him and refused to leave, even when her relatives begged her to flee from the increasingly tense atmosphere at 18 Victory Road. But Lisa Willis was tiring of the crowded house and the intermittent abuse. She told Mick that she was taking the children to the swimming baths but instead fled to a women’s refuge with them. (This author used to work for a women’s refuge and the women were typically fleeing from men with similar personalities to Mick Philpott. That is, they were physically or verbally violent and controlling and made the women feel like second-class citizens but often went to pieces when their lover fled.)

  Mairead was so upset when Lisa left that she took an overdose. Mick Philpott was at first tearful and he too took pills and alcohol to numb the pain but soon became incandescent with rage. He had lost the woman he claimed to love and had also forfeited £1,000 a month in benefits.

  He began to phone the local police on a regular basis demanding that he be given custody of the four children. He claimed untruthfully that Lisa was threatening him and his family. He also located her (she had tracked down her sister on Facebook so at last had some support) and warned her that he’d have her beaten up if she went nightclubbing locally, telling her to watch her back. He’d previously told journalists, when referring to his desire for a council house, that ‘one way or another’ he would get what he wanted. And now he hatched a devastating plan to frame Lisa for an arson attack…

  RESIDENCY ORDER

  On 11 May 2012 he and Lisa were due in court regarding a residency order for their four children. The day before, Mick Philpott phoned the police again and said tha
t she had threatened his children. This was later proved to be untrue.

  In the early hours of the 11th, the emergency services received a call from an almost hysterical Mairead saying that their house was on fire and that six children were trapped inside. Mick could be heard shouting in the background and also sounded distressed. Neighbours made heroic attempts to reach the youngsters but were beaten back by the heat and thick black smoke. The fire brigade arrived within four minutes of the 999 call, but it was already too late.

  All six children were found in their beds and had been overcome by fumes in their sleep. Mick Philpott’s biological children with Mairead, 10-year-old Jade, nine-year-old John, eight-year-old Jack, six-year-old Jesse and five-year-old Jayden were dead whilst Mairead’s son from a previous relationship, Duwayne aged 13, was gravely ill.

  Paramedics carried the children into the garden and desperately began to perform CPR but they were beyond resuscitation. Philpott broke through the cordon, kissed his dead daughter then walked away, joining Mairead in a neighbour’s house. Onlookers were surprised that the couple didn’t want to be near their loved ones bodies or spend time with Duwayne, who had survived the smoke.

  The police took the couple to see Duwayne but Mick refused to enter the teenager’s room and said he had to be at the residency hearing for his four children with Lisa Willis. Police were also surprised when he touched Mairead up at the hospital and spent half an hour in a hospital corridor whispering to one of his friends, Paul Mosley. They had no idea that Mosley had had a threesome with the couple hours before.

  Duwayne was visited by the Father of St George’s, the Roman Catholic church where the family worshipped, and by various Philpott relatives, all of whom were more concerned about his condition than his mother and stepfather. He had been sleeping face down in a top bunk bed when the fire started so his features were undamaged but he had inhaled potentially lethal fumes and remained on a life-support machine.

  Two days later, Duwayne died. By now the investigation had found petrol at the foot of the stairs, so they knew that the fire had been started deliberately. Lisa Willis was arrested but she had no grudge against the youngsters who she had treated as her own and was swiftly released.

  Mick and Mairead said that they had been with their friend Paul Mosley until 1.30am when he left to return to his own house. The couple had allegedly fallen asleep in the conservatory whilst having a cuddle on the settee and had been woken by the fire sometime after 4am, exiting the house via a downstairs door before finding a ladder and attempting to rescue the children who they thought were all in the back bedroom upstairs.

  Mick was overhead at the hospital telling his wife that ‘It wasn’t meant to end like this.’ And, in the back of a police van, Mick was heard to ask Mairead ‘Are we sticking to the story?’ Increasingly suspicious, police put them up in a Premier Inn (their house was a burnt wreck and a crime scene) and bugged their room.

  On 19 May, just over a week after the fatal fire, they listened as Mick urged Mairead to perform a sex act on their mutual friend Paul Mosley. The authorities would later allege that Mosley had taken away the petrol can from the scene of the fire and that Mairead was now giving him sexual pleasure to keep him on their side.

  By now they had thoroughly investigated Philpott’s background and knew that he had a history of over reacting when a lover left him, including the attempted murder of Kim Hill. He was also awaiting his court date for a road rage incident in which he had punched another driver in the face whilst the children cheered from the mini bus.

  PAUL MOSLEY

  Because the media focus was on the parents and the dead children, Mosley has remained a shadowy figure. A father of two who was living with his partner Helen, he was a long-time friend of Mick Philpott and held the man in high regard. Both men had served prison sentences, Mosley for a robbery committed when he was in his teens. He had worked for Boots the chemist but had recently been on sick leave for Dupuytern syndrome, a hereditary condition which can cause the fingers to curl towards the palm. It is often painless but Mosley’s palms were hurting and he was considering having surgery.

  Paul resembled Mick so much that they were often mistaken for brothers. He had always held down a job but had increasingly been unduly influenced by Mick, a man who would go for weeks without a bath and who often smelt strongly of perspiration. Over time, Paul Mosley became equally scruffy and wore similarly casual clothes. He was a regular visitor to Victory Road and sometimes had sex with Mairead whilst Mick watched.

  Mosley acted oddly after being questioned by police, telling friends that he would make thousands from selling his story. He was enraged when they kept the coat and shoes he was wearing that night plus his wallet and his laptop. Though he had often taken Mick’s sons to football matches and had watched TV with them on the night of the fire, he seemed indifferent to their deaths.

  SUSPICIOUS MINDS

  Meanwhile, both police and public watched as Mairead and Mick also showed an appalling level of indifference to the six murders. The pair insisted on holding a press conference to thank the public for helping them but made no plea to the killer or killers to give themselves up. And, though Mairead made a distraught face and often buried her head in her husband’s shoulder, she failed to produce a single tear. Mick’s eyes watered and after the conference he collapsed in a side room but seemed to recover with suspicious haste and was soon chatting amicably with police officers.

  On hearing that locals from the estate had set up a fund called ‘Catch Me When I Fall’ and raised £15,000 for the funeral (£3,000 of which had come from the travelling community) he asked for the money that was left over to be given to him in the form of Argos vouchers. He also asked a friend to sell the teddy bears which had been left as tributes outside the house. He said that he and Mairead would use some of the money to have a big party: the elderly couple who lived next door had spent a lot of time with the Philpott children and were deeply upset. Mairead did indeed use some of the money to buy new pink trainers and showed them off proudly to everyone.

  Fifteen days after the fatal fire, locals were horrified when the Philpotts turned up at a nearby pub and she sat on his knee, giggling. She also went up to some younger men who were playing pool and ground her hips provocatively against their rear ends. The pair, wearing matching trilby hats, drank vodka and Jack Daniels and Mick went onstage to sing two songs by Elvis, namely ‘My Boy’ and ‘Suspicious Minds’. Everyone at the pub knew who they were and what had happened to their children and there was such enmity towards them that they were asked to leave. Their fellow drinkers were so concerned that they contacted the police who were able to watch the bizarre performance as it had been captured on CCTV.

  Further investigation found traces of petrol on the clothes of both Philpotts and of Paul Mosley and the three were arrested and charged with six counts of manslaughter.

  A RECKLESS PLAN

  The trial opened at Nottingham Crown Court on 12 February 2013. Some of Mick’s friends said that he had been driving them to a darts match a few days before the fire when he’d taken a call and told them it was from someone threatening to burn down his house with the children inside.

  And, shortly before the residency hearing, he’d gone to see the headmistress of the local school, telling her that his children with Lisa would be back in his custody soon and might be starting school on Monday. He’d told the same story to several mothers at the school gates, adding that he had ‘something up his sleeve’ and telling them to ‘watch this space.’

  Lisa Willis gave evidence from behind a screen, testifying that Mick had plagued her with texts and phone calls after their separation and had been very threatening though she admitted under questioning that he had been a good dad.

  Paul Mosley took the stand and said that Mick had let the children stay up on the night of the fire to watch Britain’s Got Talent. Duwayne, the eldest, had stayed up later to play pool with them. After all of the children had gone to bed he’d ha
d sex with Mairead over the snooker table: she had been high on cannabis at the time. He said that he had left the Victory Road house shortly after this and denied offering a relative thousands of pounds to help him leave town after the fire.

  Mairead was surprisingly self-assured when she took the stand and said that she had loved her children and would never do anything to hurt them, though she admitted writing seven suicide notes. She was unable to explain why traces of petrol had been found on her clothes.

  Mick said that he rarely washed (this was true – neighbours said that he often smelled strongly of body odour and had done so on the night of the fire), only splashing his face with water when he got up in the morning, so he alleged that the petrol on his trainers and trousers could have been there for several weeks.

  It took the jury less than eight hours to return a verdict and all three adults were found guilty of manslaughter. The judge, Mrs Justice Thirwall, accepted that there had been no intention to kill the children: the couple had believed that Mick Philpott could enter an upstairs window and save them, being hailed a hero. But he had been unable to knock a large enough hole in the window in order to climb through. The fire had spread quickly creating toxic gases including cyanide and the youngsters had died in their sleep. Philpott had wanted to frame Lisa Willis and gain custody of four of his children, but had inadvertently killed six. The jury only heard of his previous convictions after the end of the trial.

  On 4 April the 56-year-old was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of 15 years before he becomes eligible for parole. He showed no emotion. The judge told him that he had been the ‘driving force’ behind the fire and added ‘Your guiding principle is what Mick Philpott wants, Mick Philpott gets.’ As he was led away, his sister Dawn shouted ‘Die Mick, die’ from the public gallery and Philpott responded by holding up two fingers in an obscene gesture. Most of his relatives have subsequently publicly disowned him: they are grieving for their dead nephews and niece whilst having to contend with cruel comments from locals simply because they share Philpott’s name.