Out of prison: Pilot whose abuse drove partner to kill toddler
TENDERLY carrying his small child, Peter Chilvers looks every inch the doting father – but his evil past tells a very different tale.
Because this is the Ryanair pilot whose terrifying abuse drove his flight attendant fiancée to kill their toddler son before trying to end her own life in a case that shocked Britain.
While shattered Magdalena Lesicka serves 15 years for manslaughter, 34-year-old Chilvers – given 18 months for the campaign of cruelty that drove her to her crime – is out on licence.
And he is now enjoying life with his new family after serving less than a THIRD of his sentence – an early release that has horrified Magdalena’s family as well as domestic abuse campaigners.
Our exclusive picture shows thug Chilvers with one of the two children he now has with stewardess Lisa Spencer, who he was seeing behind his fiancée’s back.
Chillingly the youngster is about the same age as his dead son.
Frightened Magdalena, 34, knifed 23-month-old son James to death in August 2017 before trying to cut her own throat and then hang herself.
When she faced court, the Crown accepted her defence that she killed James following a breakdown induced by the “deliberate, relentless and ultimately overwhelming psychological torment”
I am genuinely terrified he’ll do this to someone else. His abuse destroyed me MAGDALENA WHOSE TORMENT DROVE HER TO KILL SON AND ATTEMPT SUICIDE
inflicted by Chilvers. The pilot made her eat hairs he had plucked from his head, squeezed her nose as they kissed so she could not breathe and forced her into sexual acts against her will.
The court heard he had portrayed a “landscape of unending misery if she did not comply with his demands”. And when she tried to leave their home in Wincham, Cheshire, near Manchester airport he repeatedly threatened to kill her if she took James with her.
In one phone call the airline captain – earning up to £150,000 a year – screamed at her: “I will be living with my son – fight me on this, you won’t win. You haven’t got the resources.”
Magdalena, from Poland, was jailed for manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility in 2018 – and Chilvers faced trial the following year.
Under pioneering new laws, he was convicted of controlling or coercive behaviour and handed an 18-month sentence at Manchester Crown Court.
Magdalena gave evidence and submitted a victim impact statement at his sentencing in which she branded him a “controlling monster”. She said: “It is important the public understand what his abuse did to me. It destroyed me. I
tried to leave but he wouldn’t let me. I had no power. I am genuinely terrified he will do this to someone else.”
The court heard that when Chilvers first heard that Magdalena was pregnant with James, he had demanded she have an abortion. On the phone from a holiday in New Zealand with his parents,
Chilvers said having a baby would “ruin his career and life”. In messages, he called Magdalena a “monster”, a “bitch” and a “selfish **** ” for wanting to have the baby.
Judge Patrick Field said Chilvers, of Northwich, Cheshire, had shown “no more than a hint” of remorse and had treated Magdalena as his “sexual property”. When approached this week, Chilvers’ family did not comment. The pilot has told friends he wants the “truth to come out”. Magdalena’s mother Iwona told us yesterday: “I can’t even call him human. Magdalena was completely dependent on him.”
The Ministry of Justice said: “Offenders
released are subject to strict licence conditions – if they break these we don’t hesitate to return them to custody.” A source said Chilvers was released last May under a “home detention curfew” which subjected him to electronic tagging and supervision.