Parents Who Kill--Shocking True Stories of the World's Most Evil Parents (11 page)

T
he ending of a marriage or cohabitation – especially one which has produced children – is never easy. But, at least the person who chooses to end the relationship has made the positive decision to move on. In contrast, the person who has been ditched can be left with feelings of rage and hate.

Men who have previously been violent towards their partners often continue to terrorise them after a formal separation – indeed, a battered woman is most at risk immediately after she leaves her aggressive spouse. A percentage of these men will get their own back on the woman who has deserted them by killing their offspring. Sometimes, in an act of especial cruelty, they will phone their ex-wife seconds before they kill the children and tell her to listen to their dying cries.

Most of these men take their own lives, or at least attempt to. There are around 520 such murder-suicides in America every year. In Britain, fathers kill approximately 16 children
annually, usually following the breakdown of their relationship with their wife or girlfriend. Of children killed by a parent, 53 per cent are murdered by their fathers and 47 per cent by their mothers.

A househusband who lived off welfare benefits, Mick Philpott had been violent towards women throughout his adult life and treated them as servants rather than equals. His reckless plan to frame a lover for leaving him would rob six innocent children of their lives…

Philpott’s determination to completely control his partners was in evidence at 19 when he thought that his 15-year-old girlfriend Kim Hill was wearing too short a dress. Enraged that she might be attractive to other men, he shot her with a crossbow. On another occasion he took a hammer to her knee. Like most abusive men, he was good at finding young and vulnerable victims and persuading them that they were partly to blame for their own abuse.

Philpott was superficially gregarious and could be the life and soul of the party. He liked to sing and dance and knew just how to impress Kim so she repeatedly forgave him and even agreed to get engaged. At this stage in his life he had thick black hair and was neatly bearded, showing no sign of the toothless, prematurely balding man that he would become.

But after two years of her boyfriend’s fiery temper and attempts to control her, Kim had had enough. She waited until he returned to his army unit and then sent him a letter in July 1978 breaking off their engagement. It seemed the ideal time to escape when he was stationed far away. But, determined to wreak his revenge, he went AWOL and travelled to her home in Spondon, Derbyshire, breaking into her bedroom in the early hours of the morning and stabbing her 26 times. When
her mother, a nurse, intervened he stabbed her too, inflicting 11 serious wounds. He would later tell a friend that he attempted to damage all of Kim’s major organs during this prolonged attack. He caused lifelong damage, the knife penetrating both lungs, her liver (she would go on to develop liver cancer), bladder and one of her kidneys. He told paramedics ‘You’re wasting your time with that one. She’s a goner.’ She did indeed stop breathing but paramedics brought her back to life.

Convicted of Kim’s attempted murder – and of GBH towards her mother – he was sentenced to seven years, of which he served less than half.

For the next 20 years, Mick Philpott continued to intimidate and manipulate women. He married Pamela Lomax in 1986 and they had three children but she found him increasingly domineering, though she was too afraid to leave. Philpott cheated on her with other women and she even found him in bed in their house with one of his teenage lovers. She was secretly relieved when he left her for someone else.

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.

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…

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 that 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.