Stop it daddy! Girl’s cry ‘as dad with a knife dragged her inside house to her death’
A CHILD cried for her mother and screamed ‘Stop it daddy!’ before she was stabbed to death by him, a jury heard yesterday.
Mylee Billingham’s mother sobbed in court as she described watching her ex-partner drag their eight-year-old daughter into his home by her coat hood.
In a desperate 999 call Tracey Taundry, who had arrived to collect Mylee, pleaded with the police to hurry to the scene, shouting: ‘He’s got my baby inside, he’s making her scream.’
Mylee was stabbed ‘ right through’ her chest and died in hospital, jurors were told.
They heard earlier that William Billingham had been struggling to deal with bisexual Miss Taundry’s three-month-old relationship with another woman when he carried out the ‘swift, deliberate, clinical and brutal’ attack in January.
Miss Taundry, who is mother to three of Billing-relationship ham’s six children, told jurors she had agreed that Mylee could have a sleepover at Billingham’s bungalow.
Billingham, 55, went on to post a picture on Facebook of the child eating pizza in bed there that evening. But soon after it was taken, Mylee complained of having a sore throat and asked for her mother to collect her.
Miss Taundry, 34, was dropped off near the property by her girlfriend and was met by Billingham and then Mylee at the door.
But she told jurors that as she walked away from the bungalow to go home with her daughter, she heard a ‘tink’ sound – and turned around to see Billingham picking up a kitchen knife from the doorstep. Giving evidence from behind a screen, Miss Taundry said Billingham then said: ‘It’s not f****** happening’. When she asked him what he meant Billingham, who was known as Bill, ‘came towards me and had the knife to my neck’. She added: ‘He said: “I’m going to kill you.”
‘Mylee was on my left side. I turned to her and pushed her, to move her. I started running back away from the house and slipped.
‘Mylee was standing on a drain by the front door. She was crying. She was shouting “Mummy! Stop it daddy, mummy!” He went towards her and grabbed her by the hood. He dragged her back in the door.’ Miss Taundry said her daughter was still shouting for her as the door slammed shut.
A transcript of the 999 call made by Miss Taundry outside the house was read to the court. She told an operator: ‘Please hurry up. He has dragged my baby inside the house, he’s got my baby inside. He is making her scream. He has got a big knife and is going to stab her.
‘He has got a knife in his hand. He has got my baby and has a knife. What if he has f****** stabbed her? She was screaming “please daddy don’t”.’
Miss Taundry went on to tell the operator she thought Billingham had been drinking, before adding: ‘I am in a new and this is what it’s about.’ Police got into the housing association property in Brownhills, West Midlands, after spotting a spare key and were confronted by a ‘terrible’ scene inside, with Billingham lying on top of the ‘grey’, blood- covered child on the kitchen floor.
His breathing was laboured as a result of two self-inflicted stab wounds.
Mylee died of a single, six- and- a- half- inch stab wound to the chest. Injuries were found on her hands, suggesting she had tried to defend herself.
Billingham spent three weeks in hospital before he was charged with murdering his daughter and threatening to kill Miss Taundry. Prosecutor Karim Khalil QC said Billingham told police he felt ‘as if he had lost his other children to the internet and that he didn’t want to lose Mylee the same way’. But he added: ‘The killing is most likely explained by the jealousy [he] felt towards Tracey Taundry and her new partner.
The court heard Miss Taundry had a seven-year relationship with Billingham until around 2010, and for the next seven years the pair had treated each other as ‘friends with benefits’.
Billingham denies murder and making a threat to kill at Birmingham Crown Court. The trial continues.
‘She went silent within seconds’