Philpott trial: Judge needs more time for sentencing

A MOTHER and father who killed their six children in a house fire will find out today how long they will spend in prison after the judge said she wanted more time to consider their sentences.

Mick and Mairead Philpott and their friend Paul Mosley, who were convicted of manslaughter on Tuesday, were due to be sentenced at Nottingham Crown Court yesterday.

But trial judge, Mrs Justice Thirlwall adjourned the case, saying: “I want to reflect further before moving forward to the sentencing exercise.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Philpott, 56, his 32-year-old wife and 46-year-old Mosley were each found guilty by a jury of six separate counts of manslaughter following an eight-week trial. Earlier, the judge heard that Philpott had previously served time in prison for attempted murder and at the time of the blaze was on bail for a violent road rage incident.

In 1978, he was jailed for seven years after he repeatedly stabbed a former girlfriend when she decided she no longer wanted to be in a relationship with him.

He also received a concurrent five-year sentence for grievous bodily harm with intent after he attacked the woman’s mother as she rushed to her daughter’s aid.

A week before the fatal fire at the family home in Victory Road, Derby, Philpott had appeared in court and pleaded guilty to common assault but denied dangerous driving. He was awaiting trial.

The court heard that he punched another driver, whose teenage daughter was in the car, after Philpott swerved in front of him and forced him to stop because he believed he had pulled out in front of him at a roundabout.

In 1991, he received a two-year conditional discharge for assault occasioning actual bodily harm after he headbutted a colleague, and in 2010 he was given a police caution after slapping his wife and dragging her outside by her hair.

Anthony Orchard, QC, representing Philpott, said his client’s conviction for attempting to murder his previous girlfriend was a “long time ago” and there was no evidence of anything like that being repeated. But the judge interrupted and told him: “There’s been violence in every single relationship, has there not?”

Prosecutors said the trio started the fire in an attempt to frame Philpott’s ex, 29-year-old Lisa Willis, after she left the family home with her children three months earlier.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

She and her five children, four of them fathered by Philpott, had lived with the couple and their six children at the family home for ten years until she became unhappy with the domestic set-up.

In mitigation yesterday, the defendants’ barristers told the judge the Philpotts loved their children and never intended to cause them any harm. Mr Orchard said: “Despite Mr Philpott’s faults, he was a very good father and loved those children.”

The fire was part of a plan which went “disastrously wrong”, Mr Orchard said, because they did not realise how quickly the fire would take hold at the semi-detached council house and leave them unable to rescue the sleeping children from their beds.

But the judge interjected and said: “If the plan had been successful, the effect on the children would have been this, would it not – they would have been awoken in their beds with their house on fire and their father coming in to rescue them. A terrifying experience.”

Related topics: