Philpott ‘a reckless, stupid killer’
London – Michael Philpott was a man who ruled his house like a ‘‘kingpin’’, disrespecting the two women he lived with and revelling in beating the system, a former government minister has said.
After Philpott’s conviction yesterday for killing six children, Ann Widdecombe, the former Conservative MP who met him during a reality television show, described him as ‘‘disgusting’’.
Philpott, 56, who fathered 17 children, was convicted of six counts of manslaughter for starting a fire at his home in Derby while six children, five of them his, were asleep upstairs.
The police said that the crime, which he committed with his wife, Mairead, 32, and a family friend, Paul Mosley, to frame his former mistress, Lisa Willis, was a ‘‘reckless act’’ that was ‘‘off the scale with stupidity’’.
Members of the Philpott family welcomed the guilty verdicts. His sister, Dawn Bestwick, said that ‘‘justice had been served’’, and Mairead Philpott’s family released a statement saying that the children had been taken away ‘‘in the cruellest way imaginable by the very people who were supposed to love and protect them’’.
The jury had heard during the two-month trial that the plan had never been to kill the children, rather to start the fire and rescue them from the house, with Philpott becoming ‘‘a hero and a victim at the same time’’.
He would then have a better chance in a fight with Willis over who should care for the children he had had with her. She had for 10 years shared the cramped threebedroom house with Philpott and his wife before leaving with her five children.
But the plot went ‘‘disastrously and tragically wrong’’, the Crown Prosecution said, when the fire spread and they were unable to get into the children’s bedrooms upstairs from the garden.
Jade, 10, John, 9, Jack, 8, Jesse, 6, and Jayden, 5, died without regaining consciousness. Duwayne, who was 13, died in hospital a few days later.
Philpott was described throughout the trial as ‘‘controlling’’ and manipulative, a man who found Willis’ decision to leave ‘‘absolutely unacceptable’’.
Five years before the fire, Widdecombe had met Philpott, who had been dubbed ‘‘shameless Mick’’ by the tabloids. At the time he had two women, no job and more children than he could count on two hands.
In what was one of the most bizarre pairings in reality television history, Widdecombe, a scourge of the ‘‘benefits culture’’, was supposed to help him to get work.
‘‘Mick was clearly the kingpin of that family,’’ she said. ‘‘He ruled the roost – that was quite obvious. The women were besotted.’’
She thought that he had shown neither woman much attention while she was in the house, nor had he seemed particularly caring, addressing them both as ‘‘bitch’’. ‘‘That was how he spoke to them. He said he would service one and then the other. Disgusting. There was no respect there.
‘‘I got a very clear impression that he was not involved in terms of looking after the children. It may be too sweeping a statement, but I think one of the reasons for two women was that he had twice the level of help,’’ she said. ‘‘I think it was easier for him if there were two women there.
‘‘By and large when somebody sits down in a normal household, small children climb all over them – that did not happen in that household, at least I don’t remem- ber seeing it happening. It struck me that he was indifferent towards them.’’
She said she believed that Philpott saw children as ‘‘meal tickets’’, an excuse not to work and a guarantee of future income and, she added, he rejoiced in it. ‘‘He was very well known in the area, as ‘shameless Mick’.
‘‘He loved the limelight, revelled in it. He was very proud. He was beating the system, wasn’t he? He got the rest of us to work to pay for him.’’
Yesterday, after hearing the verdicts, Philpott, wearing a grey suit, white shirt and pink tie, crossed himself and was heard to say: ‘‘It’s not over yet.’’
Widdecombe said that she, too, fears this will not be ‘‘the last we hear of Michael Philpott’’. Speaking about the possible sentence he faces, she said: ‘‘He could be out in 15 years. By which time he will be in his seventies. Time enough to start again?
‘‘Another woman, another large series of children, you and I pay for it,’’ she said.
‘‘I bet that’s his plan.’’