Smirking
Philpott’s
gesture of defiance

“Shameless Mick”, as he was known to residents on his estate, showed no remorse as he was jailed with a minimum 15-year term for being the “driving force” behind the plot to start the house fire in a bid to win custody of his children.

He and wife Mairead, along with Paul Mosley, were each found guilty of six counts of manslaughter on Tuesday after a trial at Nottingham Crown Court.

Judge Mrs Justice Thirlwall told him: “You are a disturbingly dangerous man. Your guiding principle is what Mick Philpott wants, Mick Philpott gets. You have no moral compass.”

Mairead, 32, and 46-year-old Mosley were both jailed for 17 years.

The fatal blaze that tore through the house in Victory Road, Derby, was started in an effort to frame Philpott’s former mistress, Lisa Willis, after she left the family home with her five children.

She had lived in the three-bed council house for 10 years with the Philpotts and their six children until she finally fled.

The judge said Philpott, 56, had become “obsessed” with 29-year-old Miss Willis and his plan to blame her for the fire and get his children back at a pre-scheduled court hearing on May 11 last year – the same day as the fire – was “outside the comprehension of any right thinking person”.

She added: “It was a wicked and dangerous plan.”

Members of the Philpott family, who were sitting in the public gallery, broke into applause as the judge finished sentencing. One shouted: “Die, Mick, die.”

“Your own babies,” another called out.

Philpott, who had wiped tears from his eyes as the judge spoke to him, smiled and made a crude hand gesture towards the public gallery as he was led away.

The unemployed father, his wife, and Mosley killed Jade Philpott, 10, and her brothers John, nine, Jack, eight, Jesse, six, Jayden, five, and Duwayne, 13, in the fire at their Allenton home.

Even if the plan to rescue them had worked, it would have been a harrowing ordeal, the judge said.

“Their terror was the price they were going to pay for your callous selfishness,” she said. “In fact they paid with their six young lives.

“They had no chance of survival and I am quite sure that when you set that fire you were not thinking about them because you simply did not care.

“You were going to get your own way.”

Mercifully, the children’s deaths were swift and appeared to be pain-free, she added.

Mairead, who wept as she was jailed, was another of Philpott’s “chattels”, the judge said.

She told Mairead, who will serve half of her sentence before release, that she believed her grief was real but said she should not have put her husband first.

“These were your children; your first responsibility, surely, was to them. Instead you joined in with his plan. Putting his obsession with Lisa above the safety of your children.”

Mosley, who showed no emotion, “enjoyed the attention ... gained from your proximity to the fire”, the judge said.

Outside court, family members said justice had been done.

Andy Lyons, Mosley’s brother-in-law, said: “We don’t have an eye for an eye. We’re not a Third World country but the sentence is the best that the judge can give and makes England the greatest nation in the world.”

Senior investigating officer Detective Superintendent Kate Meynell, of Derbyshire police, said: “Six innocent children died as a result of the actions of their parents, the very people who should have protected them against danger.

“The Philpotts and Paul Mosley showed no regard for the safety of the children and, since the fire, have shown no remorse for their actions.”