Child deaths blaze trio face prison

Mick and Mairead Philpott are facing jail today for killing their six children in a house fire.

The couple were convicted of six counts of manslaughter – one for each of their dead children – at Nottingham Crown Court on Tuesday.

Their friend Paul Mosley will also be sentenced after he too was found guilty of the same charges.

Trial judge Mrs Justice Thirlwall was expected to sentence the trio yesterday but wanted more time to reflect having heard mitigation on behalf of the three.

Philpott, 56, his 32-year-old wife and Mosley, 46, were all found guilty of killing Jade Philpott, 10, and her brothers John, nine, Jack, eight, Jesse, six, Jayden, five, and Duwayne, 13, in the fire at their home in Victory Road, Allenton, Derby in the early hours of May 11.

It emerged in court that unemployed Philpott was on bail for a violent road rage incident at the time of the children’s deaths.

A week before the fire he had appeared in court and admitted common assault but denied dangerous driving after punching another driver who he thought had pulled out in front of him at a roundabout.

In addition, in 1978 he was sentenced to seven years in prison after he repeatedly stabbed a former girlfriend and received a concurrent five-year sentence for grievous bodily harm with intent after also attacking her mother.

In 1991 he received a two-year conditional discharge for assault occasioning actual bodily harm after he headbutted a colleague, and in 2010 he was given a police caution after slapping his wife and dragging her outside by her hair.

The trio started the fire in an attempt to frame Philpott’s ex, 29-year-old Lisa Willis, after she left the family home with her children three months previously.

Former MP Ann Widdecombe, who met Philpott while she was making a documentary about the benefits system, described him as a “very controlling, very manipulative, entirely egocentric man”.

He had “tremendous pent-up aggression”, she said, and his unpredictable behaviour during filming occasionally caused her to flinch.

The three are due to be sentenced at Nottingham Crown Court this morning.