The most selfish act imaginable...
Father who stabbed daughter through the heart in jealous rage over her mother is guilty of murder
A FATHER who stabbed his eight-year-old daughter to death after her mother started a lesbian relationship was convicted of the child’s murder yesterday.
William Billingham, 55, thrust a blade into the chest of little Mylee after dragging her into his bungalow by her coat hood as the child screamed: ‘Please daddy, no.’
Just over an hour earlier, Billingham had posted a picture of an apparently happy Mylee eating pizza on a bed at his housing association property.
‘It’s the most selfish act you can think of’, Detective Inspector Jim Colclough said after yesterday’s conviction.
Billingham attacked the child to get back at his bisexual former lover, Tracey Taundry, three months after she started a new relationship with girlfriend Lindsey Andrews, jurors were told.
Yesterday the jury took just one hour and 15 minutes to convict Billingham of Mylee’s murder, and of making threats to kill Miss Taundry, who had arrived to collect the child from his home moments before he grabbed a kitchen knife which had been concealed by the doorstep.
Following the conviction, it can be revealed that the father of six, the brother of TV’s SAS Who Dares Wins star Mark Billingham, has a history of threatening violence towards past lovers when they have left him.
Julie Cadman, 53, who had a daughter, Melissa, now 27, with Billingham, told how the factory worker flew into a rage when she told him she was leaving him.
Mrs Cadman, who also has two other children from a previous relationship, told the Daily Mail how the pair’s drink-fuelled relationship fell apart 16 years ago after she grew tired of his violence. Billingham went on to strike up a relationship with Miss Taundry, a brunette 21 years his junior.
Mrs Cadman, from Norton Canes, Staffordshire, said: ‘Bill would smash up the house after he had been drinking. When I told him I’d found somebody else, he held me at knifepoint and threatened to kill the three kids.’
Meanwhile, Mandy Reece, 55, the mother of Billingham’s eldest two children, told police that she came home one afternoon after telling Billingham their relationship was over – and found him hiding under a bed with a knife.
Billingham had also threatened to jump from a balcony with their young son following their split in 1990.
Dr Philip Joseph, a consultant forensic psychiatrist who assessed Billingham for the prosecution, told jurors at Birmingham Crown Court the incidents described by Mrs Reece suggested ‘a longstanding problem in his ability to deal with the end of relationships’. Mylee, who was known to relatives as Moo, died from a chest wound in hospital after emergency services were called to Billingham’s bungalow in Brownhills, West Midlands, last January.
Prosecutor Karim Khalil QC said Billingham and Miss Taundry had been together for around seven years until separating seven years ago.
But they maintained a ‘friendswith-benefits’ relationship until Miss Taundry began seeing Miss Andrews last October.
The two women attended court to see Billingham convicted yesterday, with Miss Taundry breaking down in tears amid restrained shouts of ‘Yes’ as the verdicts were announced.
Billingham sat emotionless in the dock with his arms in bandages, after attempting to kill himself part-way through the trial.