Parents Who Kill--Shocking True Stories of the World's Most Evil Parents (12 page)

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.

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.

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.

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 had 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.

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.

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.’

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.