Mairead Philpott and Paul Mosley were both sentenced to 17 years and must serve half before being released on licence. Lisa Willis and her children have been given new identities.
The authorities plan to demolish the death house at 18 Victory Road, Allenton and its neighbouring property as the council has stated that no one wants to live in – or next to – a house where six children died. Locals hope that they will replace it with a memorial park.
Mick Philpott has started his sentence at Wakefield Prison, one of Britain’s toughest jails, where he is being kept in a secure unit for his own safety. As a child killer, however inadvertently, he is at risk from other prisoners and knows that they would gain kudos by attacking him.
DAVID CASS
A car mechanic who worked in Southampton, David Cass went around with a group who were at least 10 years younger. In his late twenties, he was dating girls in their mid-teens. He went out with a teenager called Emma for a month, and, when she ended it, he threatened to commit suicide.
Shortly after the break-up, he began to date Emma’s best friend, Kerrie Hughes who, at 16, was 13 years his junior. A fantasist, he told her that he owned several houses and had £47,000 in the bank.
A fortnight after they met, she moved in with him at his home in Eastleigh, Hants, and within four months the couple were expecting their first baby. They went on to have two daughters, Ellie and Isobelle, and David was an excellent father, changing nappies, giving the children baths and spending time playing with them. Their little faces would light up when he came into the room. Both parents loved the children dearly and took numerous photos of them looking happy, well dressed and well fed.
But David was apparently controlling and there were many arguments, culminating in his storming out in late summer 2008. He moved into a caravan close to his workplace and again began to threaten suicide. Kerrie, who still loved him, was alarmed at the thought of him killing himself, but her friend Emma reminded her that he’d made such threats before and hadn’t carried them out. It didn’t occur to anyone that he would harm the children as he had always been such a devoted dad.
Three weeks after the split, on a Friday, David arrived at Kerrie’s house and offered her £250 if she’d have sex with him. She refused. The following day, Saturday 20 September 2008, he was due to have the children overnight. He arrived as arranged at 2pm and again asked if they could have sex ‘for the last time.’ She said no.
David then took Ellie, age three, and Isobelle, age 14 months, to his caravan. There, the little girls drew pictures and played with their dolls, teddies and bouncing balls. Only their father knew that they had mere hours to live.
At 5pm on the Sunday, he phoned Kerrie and said that he was about to give the girls their evening meal before bringing them back, that he and she could bathe them and put them to bed. She could hear the children laughing in the background and all seemed well. But, within the hour, the 33-year-old smothered them to death in the caravan. He phoned his wife again in tears and this time she couldn’t hear any sound from her daughters so she asked him where they were. He said ‘they’re sleeping’ and when she said ‘but it’s dinner time,’ he said that they were ‘sleeping forever.’ He added that he was going to kill himself, that soon he’d be sleeping too. He said that he would always love her, then hung up the phone.
Hoping against hope that it was a cruel joke, Kerrie phoned her mother-in-law but David Cass wasn’t there. The 20-year-old phoned the emergency services and told them the most likely locations to find her husband and their children, namely his caravan or his workplace. Police raced to the caravan and found both tiny corpses. Breaking into the adjacent garage where Cass worked, they found that he had hung himself.
Afterwards his mother said that, though he’d done the wrong thing, he wasn’t a monster and that he had killed himself rather than lose custody of the children he professed to love. Kerrie said that she would go to his funeral, telling the Daily Mirror: ‘I’ll regret it if I don’t go. It will be very hard and I can never forgive him for what he did. But we shared a lot together.’ She also paid tribute to her daughters, saying ‘They were the happiest, funniest, prettiest little things a mum could hope for. I feel so lucky to have had them and I will miss them for ever.’
ROBERT THOMSON
June married Robert Thomson in June 1981, despite her friends begging her not to. She’d later allege that he was controlling from early on in the relationship and that he’d become violent by the following year when she was pregnant with their first child. The violence apparently included being knocked down stairs, having her eyes blackened and being raped. During the next four years they had two sons and a daughter. The latter, Michelle, was eventually diagnosed as having severe learning difficulties – even in adulthood she would only attain a mental age of five.
June left Robert on four separate occasions during the next two decades, but she always returned to him. Around about the millennium they had a fourth child together who they called Ryan.
Robert remained controlling, insisting that he be paid Michelle’s disability allowance and Ryan’s child benefit. If he fancied a late night takeaway, he thought nothing of getting his wife out of bed and sending her out to buy it. By now their oldest son, Shawn, had left Scotland and moved to England, as he apparently hated his father. Their second son, Ross, also left but returned after the couple soundproofed his room. By now the family were living in a cottage in Buckhaven, an old coastal fishing town on the east coast of Fife, where they kept a low profile. Michelle was obviously going to be dependent on the Thomsons for life, but she had a series of carers who looked after her in her own home.
One of the carers alleged that Robert had molested her, and police quizzed him twice about this, though the case didn’t go to court. But it was the last straw for June Thomson and, in 2007, she told him that she was leaving him forever and filing for divorce. By now, their children were all adults, apart from seven-year-old Ryan. Robert seemed devoted to Ryan and often played football with him. He had also built him a play area behind the house. He similarly spent time with 20-year-old Ross, often taking him for a game of pool. As such, June Thomson had no qualms about leaving their offspring with him for extended visits, though she wanted them to live with her.
DEATH THREATS
But Robert was devastated at the end of their 27-year marriage and told his brother that he was contemplating suicide. When June moved into a flat, he became increasingly withdrawn.
Later, the 50-year-old lorry driver and machine operator told workmates that he was worried about paying maintenance – June was seeking a £50,000 settlement plus £250 a month – and feared that he might lose custody of the children. On 2 May 2007, the couple attended a court hearing and she was, as he feared, given custody.
Knowing that he’d lost control, Robert Thomson became increasingly enraged. He apparently told one of Michelle’s carers that he was going to kill Michelle and then himself, but the carer didn’t take him seriously.
The following day, June was preparing to move into a new flat in Markinch with 25-year-old Michelle and seven-year-old Ryan. She left them both at her former cottage, where her ex-husband and her son Ross were still residing, whilst she got organised. June noted that her husband was very stressed and angry, but she had no reason to believe that he’d harm the children, thought that his rage was wholly directed at her. She left, and neighbours looked on approvingly as Robert played with his offspring in the garden, kicking a ball around with Ryan and pushing Michelle on her swing.
He took them to Kirkcaldy for a few hours, where they visited a supermarket and a burger bar. When they came back that afternoon, Ryan went to his bedroom to play a computer game and Michelle went to her room to play with her favourite doll.
At about 4pm, Robert Thomson told Ross that he needed further groceries, gave the youth £20 and sent him back to the supermarket in Kirkcaldy which they’d visited earlier. Now that he had the house to himself, he wrote his wife a suicide
note which said not to blame herself and that he would take care of the children. He added that there had already been ‘too much pain, lies and hurt.’ Towards the end of the note he suggested that she should ‘move on alone.’
Sometime during the next hour, he stabbed 25-year-old Michelle a total of 14 times and seven-year-old Ryan 12 times. One of the knives broke partway through the second attack and he switched to another and kept on stabbing. The blood which spattered over the walls and floor of Michelle’s pretty pink bedroom testified to the fact that she’d put up a tremendous struggle: though she had the mentality of a five-year-old, she had the strength of a typical 25-year-old woman in her physical prime. Afterwards, Robert Thomson tucked the children into their separate beds and showered – when Ross returned at 5.45pm, his father greeted him wearing a dressing gown. Ross went out again shortly afterwards to collect his girlfriend and brought her back to the house an hour later, after which they watched a DVD.
Meanwhile, Robert Thomson had gone to the marital bedroom, got into bed and used a large knife to cut his wrists. He also stabbed himself in the stomach. Fifteen minutes later, June Thomson arrived at the house, went up to Ryan’s room and saw that he appeared to be fast asleep. She pulled back the bedcovers to find her dead son staring up at her, blood on his abdomen and stab wounds visible on his sides.
Racing to Michelle’s room, she found her daughter dead in bed and blood everywhere. She began screaming ‘He’s killed them’ and Ross came downstairs to see what was happening. Going into the double bedroom, they found Robert Thompson in bed, bleeding from his injuries. He was taken to hospital in Dunfermline where he was later interviewed and charged. Upon his recovery, he was transferred to Carstairs mental hospital but found to be sane and was moved to Perth Prison.
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
Journalists attempted to find details of the couple’s relationship prior to the tragedy, but they had kept themselves to themselves and rarely socialised. A neighbour who lived some distance away said that they had seemed a normal couple, if very quiet, and that Robert had sometimes had a few pints at the local pub or played pool with Ross. He’d appeared to dote on his children. When she’d first heard that the cottage had become a murder scene, she’d assumed that he’d killed June but not his offspring. Other locals echoed this view, saying ‘surely a father wouldn’t kill his own bairns?’
LIFE
Thomson admitted his guilt from the start, which meant that he automatically got a life sentence. This was handed down in September 2008 at Edinburgh High Court. His face flushed and heavily veined, his hair thinning and his expression bleak, he looked much older than his actual 51 years. Judge Lord Menzies told him: ‘What you have done, and what you have pleaded guilty to, is indescribably awful.’ June was in court to see justice being done. Afterwards she talked about the day of the murder, saying ‘he must have been planning to punish me by killing them.’ Later still she described him as ‘full of pure evil.’
The following month, Robert Thomson was returned to court to hear the extent of his sentence. He was told that he must serve 17 years before becoming eligible for parole.
AN EDITOR’S PERSPECTIVE
One of the journalists who covered this Fife case in depth was Jerzy Morkis, a former chairman of the Society of Editors in Scotland and the current editor of the East Fife Mail. In November 2008, we spoke about the case and I asked him why local people had made statements such as ‘surely a father wouldn’t kill his own bairns.’ Why were people in such denial about the existence of this particular crime?
Jerzy, who has 30 years’ journalistic experience, replied ‘It wasn’t a case of people being in denial, the horrors of parents who kill their children or a parent killing the entire family are well enough publicised – the community was aware crimes like this happen. What it wasn’t prepared for, and no community would be, is it happening right in your midst. To everyone on the outside of the Thomson family they seem to have been perceived as fitting that term ‘normal’. Of course they had their trials and tribulations but Robert Thomson held down a job with a long-established reputable firm, his wife worked, they both seemed committed to their family, had their own cottage on the edge of town… then, suddenly, behind their four walls this happened.’
He continued: ‘The fact the father was immediately in police custody after the horror led to what could be described as a muted disbelief. Even the subsequent court case, the national media coverage, Mrs Thomson’s own thoughts, none of this has really helped the community understand why this happened. It’s known what happened but there’s not a satisfactory explanation of why. Robert Thomson isn’t saying; perhaps he doesn’t even know. June Thomson launched a petition to have the home bulldozed. There has been solid support for that which perhaps provides an indication of community feeling. To many people, the cottage is a painful and constant reminder of something incomprehensible.’
So was this the worst case of a homicidal father that he’d reported on? Jerzy confirmed that it was. ‘Thankfully murders remain few and far between in Fife and I’ve never reported on a filicide case like this. Hopefully, this area will never see another but, of course, since the Thomson case there have been others nationally – the Christopher Foster case in September took familicide into every home. There you had a case where Foster almost tried to erase his family’s entire existence – wife, daughter, pets, livestock, property, all destroyed. The Thomson case was different and his victims were deliberately the most vulnerable in his family. And there is something even darker about that. Again, the case will always stick out, not just because of the brutality of the crime, but because there are no clues which help comprehend his act.’
I note that Thomson appears to fit into the revenge category of fathers who kill, willing to murder his children in order to hurt his ex-wife. Jerzy replies: ‘The revenge theory is the closest we do have to an explanation but there are aspects there that don’t provide all the answers. There has been very little real information on the dynamics of the Thomson family, and especially the dynamics between husband and wife. Certainly there is now the perception that Thomson had always to be in control and the break-up of his marriage and family propelled him towards this twisted revenge.’
‘The fact that his two children suffered such multiple stab wounds undermines the “cold calculated” theory but, then again, the fact he moved from one room to another to repeat the attack does add credence to the entire premeditated view. Revenge, rage, frustration, even sacrifice perhaps? All were there and while we will maybe never be able to understand what was going on in Thomson’s head, I think none of us likes to focus too much on the terror Michelle and Ryan will have felt as someone they loved and trusted inflicted such agony on them.’
Finally, does he view family killers like Thomson as mad, bad, sad or a combination? And, judging by his mailbox to the East Fife Mail, how do his readers regard such men?
‘There’s definitely a combination of factors at work; they will vary from one individual to another and as to what the common link is that makes you slaughter your children or family, we’ll probably never know. There’s a tragic hopelessness to the parents who kill, then take their own lives. These are cruel, bleak incidents. Did Thomson really mean to kill himself, or couldn’t? The answer to that brings another chilling factor into this case. As for our mailbox, I don’t think we received a single letter. Unlike a death we’d had a short time before, no teachers would speak, no neighbours… The community went very quiet, there hasn’t been a communal outpouring of grief. There were reports of June Thomson attracting a stalker, there have been many reports and articles in the national media since the case, the petition to have the house demolished… all of this has probably distorted how people feel. In some respects, there hasn’t been a time for community reflection, the tragedy is still ongoing.’
Ironically, within days of this interview, another Scottish-based father, Ashok Kalyanjee, admitted murdering his two sons earlier in 2008, in wha
t also appeared to be a revenge attack.
ASHOK KALYANJEE
Born in India, Ashok relocated to Britain with his parents in 1991 when he was in his late twenties. Later, he worked behind the counter of a post office in Royston, Glasgow, where he appeared to be a lonely man who befriended the local children by giving them sweets. Worried parents eventually complained to his boss, after which Ashok confined himself to offering chocolates to the occasional woman whom he hoped to date. He spent many of his evenings at the local bingo hall where he would drink eight or nine pints and become visibly depressed.
In March 2001, he married Giselle Ross but insisted that they spend their honeymoon night at his mother’s house despite the fact that the latter could only speak Punjabi. Throughout their marriage, he returned to his ailing mother’s flat most nights for dinner (he was apparently her only source of companionship) and he also took his laundry there. He also spent time at the casino and amassed large gambling debts. The couple had a son, Paul, but the relationship remained strained and, in July 2004, they divorced. But they continued to sleep together and their second son, Jay, was born in January 2006.
Ashok was enraged when Giselle didn’t put his name on the birth certificate and refused to believe that Jay was his, though a DNA test proved his paternity. But neighbours said that he appeared devoted to both boys and that it was clear they loved spending time with him. Giselle was also an excellent parent and the boys were happy and well liked in the community.
Parents Who Kill--Shocking True Stories of the World's Most Evil Parents Page 13
