World's Most Evil Killers - Season 2, Episode 3 - Mick Philpott - Full Episode | Forensic Files

-On Friday, the 11th of May, 2012, a fire ripped through a family home in Derby in the East Midlands.
Trapped inside and fast asleep were six young children. -The fire brigade were in the house
flashing lights everywhere. I pushed to the front of the house, and I could see the firefighters bringing the children out,
some in blankets, and the ambulance were trying to resuscitate some of them. -Firefighters and paramedics battled in vain
to save their lives. All six children died. The youngest was just 5 years old. -The damage to the house is drastic, and there is no way
that those poor six children could possibly have escaped. Smoke inhalation alone would have been deadly.
-But this was no accident. As Mick Philpott, the children's father, wept in front of the British public,
he was hiding a sinister secret. He had deliberately started the fire. -I think that the most tragic part of this case is the fact
that six children's lives were lost in Mick Philpott's attempts to basically rescue his own ego.
-Mick Philpott had set out to look like a hero, but he'd ended up as one of the world's most evil killers.
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ As news broke across Britain in May 2012 that six young children had died inside a burning family home
on Victory Road in Allenton, Derby, the entire nation were in shock. The parents, 56-year-old Mick Philpott
and his wife, 31-year-old Mairead, were unharmed but completely heartbroken. Their five sons and one daughter,
aged between 5 and 13 years old, were dead. Former neighbor to the Philpotts, Daniel Stevenson,
witnessed the horrific event. -My brother woke me up, and that's when I looked out of the window,
seeing a thick black smoke coming from the house. I got out of bed, got dressed, put pajamas on,
trainers, run out the door, went straight to the property. Just wanted to help, so...
There was no way of getting in through the front, so I went around the back, climbed over the caravan,
dropped down the other side. I got into the back garden, and I seen Mick and Mairead
there, and he was crying, screaming, shouting. -Despite brave attempts from the emergency services,
nobody could get inside. The fire was just too ferocious. -Fire coming out of that box,
fire coming from around the sides of the doors. -By the time it was safe to enter the house,
it was too late. Five of the children, 10-year-old Jade and her brothers John, Jack, Jesse, and Jayden had all lost their lives.
13-year-old Duwayne died later at hospital. However, it wasn't a tragic accident.
Unbelievably, the house fire was part of a deliberate plan. Mick Philpott had masterminded everything for his own benefit.
-I think that Mick Philpott did an incredibly evil and incredibly selfish thing.
He was essentially looking to get revenge for a perceived wrong against him by a woman who he thought was under his control.
-His story begins over 60 years ago. Mick Philpott was born in 1956. He grew up in Derby as part of a large Roman Catholic family.
-It would have been an environment in which his parents' attention was diluted across many children,
so he wouldn't have been the center of attention by any means, and we know that his mother worked very hard.
She had a job at a factory that she only retired from when she was quite old. So he didn't appear to come from an unusual background
by any means. -In 1975, aged 19, Philpott joined the army. He began to show signs of a violent temper,
especially towards his girlfriends. It would repeatedly land him in trouble. Local journalist Martin Naylor recalls the events
that led to Philpott being arrested in 1978. -When Mick was a youngster, I think 19 or 20, maybe 21,
he ended up with a conviction for attempted murder for which he was sentenced to seven years in prison.
The story with that is that he had a girlfriend back in Derby. He was stationed wherever his regiment were.
She'd had the temerity to send him a Dear John letter ending their relationship,
so he decided to go AWOL from the army, rock up at her house in Derby, and attack her with a knife.
And then when her mother tried to intervene, he attacked the mother, too. -Despite his seven-year sentence for attempted murder
and grievous bodily harm, Philpott served just over three years. He was released in 1981.
-From that point onwards, Philpott set about controlling every woman he had any contact with
and to do so in the most outrageous way. -Those who knew Philpott were surprised to hear
just how violent his past had been. -I know Mick can handle himself, so, like, if anyone was intimidating towards him,
he wasn't afraid to pump his chest out and stand up to them and so forth, so I know he had quite a strong, like, reaction
when people kind of pushed him. The bit that shocked me was, I didn't know that he had tried to kill his ex-partner.
-After his release from prison, Philpott had a series of volatile relationships.
In 1986, at the age of 30, he got married for the first time and fathered two sons and a daughter.
He later had a two more children with a teenage girlfriend and began to have several relationships simultaneously.
By the time he was 50, Philpott had fathered a total of 17 children. -I think he would have gone for any woman
that would go for him, but in his case, he went for younger girls, usually girls
who were very upset and down and depressed either because they came out of a bad relationship
or they were mistreated by their parents, girls that had no self-esteem. You can pick them out of a crowd.
You know, they think they're ugly. They think that they're inadequate. They think that they cannot have a boyfriend,
that everybody hates them, that the world hates them. All they need is a little bit of love, is somebody to be there
and show them that they are beautiful, that they matter, that they are somebody,
and he knew how to do that. He would approach the girls that were, like, at the lowest they could be, and he would be that person.
-In 2000, he met Mairead Duffy, a 19-year-old single mother. But within a year, he'd met a 16-year-old
who became another of his conquests. She, too, was a single mother at 16. In 2003, Philpott marries Mairead Duffy
but keeps his full-time live-in mistress. In fact, she is the bridesmaid at the marriage to Mairead Duffy.
It becomes a ménage à trois, both bearing his children, living in a council house in Allenton near Derby.
They are -- well, one could only describe it as extraordinary. -Mick Philpott was a man who was incredibly manipulative,
incredibly controlling, and had managed to basically convince these two women over a course of several years that this was,
you know, a really good thing, that actually they were lucky to have some of his attention.
-In 2006, 50-year-old Mick Philpott was unemployed and living on benefits in a council house with his wife,
Mairead, his mistress, Lisa, and their ever-growing, far-from-traditional family.
-He had approached the Telegraph to say that he was living in the house with his wife
and his then-girlfriend. They had children together. There were lots of them there,
and he wanted a bigger council house, so he thought that by coming to his local newspaper,
he would get a bigger council house. So we ran the story. The following day, it was picked up on by all the nationals,
especially some of the more right-leaning ones, as you can imagine. One of them, I think one the tabloids dubbed him
"Shameless Mick" and the kind of, the media-frenzy roller coaster went on from there.
-In 2007, Philpott appeared on "The Jeremy Kyle Show" to talk about his large family and his lifestyle.
He began to draw attention from the general public. -He becomes quite famous as a benefits scrounger
because he significantly never has a job and is claiming at one point £60,000 a year
in benefits as well as being given a house. He parks a caravan effectively at the side
of the semi-detached council house he's living in, in which he alternates. He sleeps there one night with the wife, Mairead Duffy,
and the next night with his mistress, as though he's some kind of emperor. -I think that Mick Philpott
breathes the oxygen of publicity. -I think he absolutely regales in being the center of attention.
He loves being talked about, and I don't think the nature of attention matters very much to him.
It doesn't matter if it's positive attention or negative attention as long as people are talking about him.
-Philpott enjoyed his newfound fame and went on to appear in other television programs.
-He then participated in a program about benefits culture with the MP Ann Widdecombe,
and he would have been absolutely loving the attention. He was basically having his malevolent ego fed
from every angle here, but what he really didn't care about was the impact that this had on his family.
His kids were bullied at school because of the attention that they got through him being in the press.
His partner and his wife were basically labeled as stupid and ignorant, but that didn't matter.
As long as people were talking about him, that's all that he cared about. -I wish I found it comical. I found it despicable.
There is nothing about it that I find admirable. Philpott saw himself as some kind of grand figure,
effectively bragging about his success with women, his success in scrounging on the benefits.
-Mick Philpott is somebody who has to be in control. He has always got to be the one making the decisions,
and other people basically have to pander to his every whim. -Philpott's wife and mistress both worked
as part-time cleaners. -But far from being a source of their own income and a source of independence for them,
he would basically take all of their wages. He would be the one who drove them to work,
dropped them off, and picked them up. He wanted to be fully in control of these women's lives.
They didn't have their own house keys. -In 2012, 56-year-old Mick Philpott was living with his wife, his mistress
and their 11 children in a council house in Derbyshire. By now, Philpott was known nationally
as a benefits scrounger, but little was known about his controlling behavior, his volatile temper, and his obsession with sex
that included regular threesomes with his wife, Mairead; and a friend, Paul Mosley.
-There were, like, 11 kids in the house. It's a small house, two sexual partners,
and he used to bring a friend for sex parties and stuff. It's a horrible environment with the kids in the house and stuff,
and you're doing all this. So it doesn't take an expert to realize, "Okay, this is not a good situation."
-And these sexual exploits of Mick and Mairead didn't stop at home. -There was an incident where they went out
dogging in Allestree Park, and there are people who live in Derby and know Derby
and know that Allestree is a relatively affluent area, and to hear that, you know, people have been going there
to watch other people having sex in cars sort of comes across as quite a shock, and so...
It was seedy. -In February 2012, Philpott's mistress, Lisa, decided she'd had enough of life in the dysfunctional household.
She moved out with her five children and demanded custody. -A lot of people won't have that courage,
but she just decided, "Look, enough is enough." She did the right thing. She didn't go up to him and say, "I'm leaving you,"
because I think if she tried doing that, he would overpower her because he was a violent person and say,
"No, you're not leaving," or maybe lock her in. He would have done something, but she did the right thing.
She walked away first and then sent him a message and said, "I'm gone," you know, and then he couldn't find her anymore.
-This was a point at which Lisa had decided to take control, to take her children, and to go to a women's refuge,
and the key thing here is that Mick hadn't decided that that was okay. He was the one that decided when relationships were over.
He was the one that decided what happened on a daily basis. So the fact that Lisa had betrayed him
by taking that power away from him, it was only going to result in something really alarming in return.
-Lisa moving out left financial implications for Philpott. Not only did he lose her income as a cleaner
but also the benefits he received for their children. The custody hearing was set for May the 11th.
Philpott concocted a plan to ensure the children would be returned to Victory Road.
-Out of the vanity and arrogance of the man; together with his wife, Mairead; and Paul Mosley,
the kind of live-in sometime lover; they hatch a scheme to set fire to the house in Victory Road
in an effort to provoke the council to give a bigger house but also to blame his mistress.
She will not get the custody of the children. It is an extraordinary, bizarre plan.
-I think Mairead was very much under Mick Philpott's control at this point in time.
I think he would have quite easily have talked her around into actually being a part of this.
-It was a badly devised plan. For me, what convinced him is his own stupidity. He was self-absorbed.
He thought that he was the king. You know, he got all the girls he wanted, and he could control them and everything,
and maybe Philpott thought that he was that intelligent, that it was that easy to devise a plan
that he could get back on the girl. So he probably sat down, wrote down the plan very quickly,
"This is what we're going to do," right? Very easy. -In the early hours of Friday, May the 11th, 2012,
the same day as the scheduled custody hearing, Philpott, aided by his wife, Mairead, and their friend
Paul Mosley, poured petrol through the letter box and set the family home alight.
Six of Philpott's children were sleeping upstairs. -The fire that he set, that they have set between them,
takes hold at a pace far greater than they could possibly have conceived, and the house is literally filled with smoke
in a matter of instants. In his typically vainglorious way, Philpott makes a particularly appalling 999 call saying,
"My children are inside." -They was on the phone to the emergency services, I believe, and they were saying,
"Me house is on fire and, me baby, me baby," and the officer, they told the emergency service,
"My neighbor is here." It was very, like, misty because everything was just happening so fast.
I attempted to go into the house. I got as far as the kitchen and couldn't go any further.
The smoke was just too thick. It was choking, black. I couldn't see anything, so I had to come back out.
There was ladders on the side going up to a window. I tried climbing up to there,
and there was a ratchet in the window where Mick's been trying to smash in, I think,
and now smoke coming from that window. I then came back down the ladders, and I climbed up on to a wooden frame,
what he's been building on to his conservatory. -The damage to the house is drastic,
and there is no way that those poor six children could possibly have escaped. Smoke inhalation alone would have been deadly.
-I climbed up to the window to see if any of the windows were open. None of them were open.
Then I put one of the windows through with a wrench from the other window. I chucked it at the window.
It smashed straight through. I then continued putting the window through with the pickaxe on the roof, smashing all the window up.
I was about to climb into the property and, again, couldn't see nothing, couldn't hear nothing, couldn't hear no screams.
-When the fire service arrived, the desperate attempts to save the children continued.
The local press soon got wind of the unfolding drama on Victory Road. -I was on the early shift on the morning of the fire,
and I could hear that the news desk phone was ringing, so I made a bit of a dash for it.
I grabbed the phone, and it was the on-duty police press officer, and she said to me,
"We're just letting the local media know early that there's been a really big house fire in Allenton,
and five kids are dead." Within about 5 or 10 minutes of knowing that it was in Victory Road, I phoned the local news agent,
who I know because I'd done previous stories with him. He answered the phone, and I said,
"Joker, it's Martin from the Telegraph," and he said, "It's Mick Philpott. It's Mick Philpott's house,"
and I didn't even have to ask him what it was about. He knew, and he'd blurted that out straight away.
-Shocked neighbors began to spill out on to the street as the full horror of the tragedy became apparent.
-I think nearly the whole street was out in the front. The fire brigade were in the house,
flashing lights everywhere. I pushed to the front of the house, and I could see the firefighters
bringing the children out, some in blankets. I think they used the blankets to try and protect them
a bit more, and the ambulance were trying to resuscitate some of them. ♪♪ I was just hoping the kids would survive and recover.
I just didn't really know what to think at the time, didn't know what had happened,
didn't know what had caused the fire. I just didn't know anything. -Tragically, five of Philpott's children died at the scene --
10-year-old Jade, 9-year-old John, 8-year-old Jack, 6-year-old Jesse, and Jayden, who was just 5 years old.
Their older brother, 13-year-old Duwayne, was rushed to hospital in a critical condition
but would later succumb to his injuries. -It almost defies self-deception. It is disgraceful, but at the outset,
the police believe that this is something that is genuinely a tragedy -- six children, no adults in the house.
You might ask, "Why weren't there any adults in the house?" -Forensic experts arrived at the scene
and began to look for clues to determine the source of the fire. Daniel Matthews was part of the team.
-Mostly, the house was pretty much undamaged. The roof was intact. The walls are intact.
The front door was noticeably more damaged than anywhere else and also the window on the landing.
There's a small window on the landing upstairs that had been damaged by the fire
and had dropped out, but apart from that, the only way that you could really tell there was a fire
at the house was by small signs of some soot coming out from the vents at the top of some of the double-glazed windows.
The fire had started in the entrance hallway behind the front door, and from there it had spread
a little bit into the living room, but mostly it had spread up the stairs. The window at the very top of the stairs was open
a little bit, and that had been breached by the fire. Now, obviously, fire tends to go up and out,
so effectively, the stairwell from the fire in there would act almost like a chimney in that the fire
and the hot gases and the fumes would all mostly go upstairs. -In cooperation with the fire investigators, the forensic team
needed to find out if the blaze was accidental or if someone had started it on purpose.
-We had an arson dog handler with us that day, and that dog is trained to indicate
on various different ignitable liquids such as petrol, diesel, white spirits, and the things that we commonly see in arsons,
and the dog clearly indicated that he thought something was present. So we would take a sample from that area,
and then it would be sent for analysis, and the analysis determined that petrol was there.
When I completed my scene examination, I was able to say that the fire had been started deliberately.
-As the sun rose on the morning of Friday, May the 11th, 2012, the true horror of the house fire on Victory Road in Derby
became apparent. Investigations had revealed that the blaze which had killed six children had been started deliberately.
Bereaved father Mick Philpott had seemingly made desperate attempts to save them,
but in reality, he had orchestrated the whole thing to try and win custody of five of his other children from his former mistress.
-I think Philpott thought that nobody would ever leave him because he was so amazing.
So I think it was a combination of everything. When somebody leaves you, there's another thing happens with the human brain.
It's like jealousy automatically happens, right? For one reason. We are all, and in Philpott's case even more
because he was so self-absorbed -- you think you are the best thing on Earth. -Mick Philpott's plan
was essentially to exact revenge on Lisa. He'd moved from trying to control her by keeping her in a relationship with him
to trying to destroy her for leaving it. He was vile towards her. He made threats towards her through other people.
She was incredibly frightened, and what he was trying to do was, essentially, create a story,
create a set of events that he could blame her for. -I think what convinced him that this thing would work
was himself, you know, his stupidity and his self-absorption that he thought, "I'm too good. This plan is infallible."
-On Saturday, the 12th of May, the day after the fire, Philpott's ex-mistress, Lisa, and her brother-in-law
were arrested on suspicion of starting the blaze. It seemed that Philpott's plan to frame her was working out,
but they were soon released without charge. Police were treating the deliberate fire
as a murder investigation after it was confirmed that petrol had been found inside the letter box.
-The police start to talk to the neighbors, who point out that Philpott is this conceited pig of a man,
and they begin to put together what actually happened. They find evidence of a petrol can.
They find a glove. -Detectives began to grow suspicious of the Philpotts and their possible motives.
On Wednesday, the 16th of May, 2012, Mick Philpott held an emotional press conference,
unaware that he was the police's number one suspect. -Didn't Philpott know that the police is experts
on reading people, you know? They have people who are trained for years on reading body language, facial expressions,
eye movements, voice intonation, you know, everything. -Philpott appeared to be distraught
when he faced the cameras with a visibly grief-stricken Mairead. He started to thank people who tried to help
on the night of the fire. -And, of course, the four firemen, the police, the ambulances, the doctors, the nurses,
literally everybody who tried to help save our children that couldn't. [ Sniffles ]
-One intrigued viewer was body language expert Robert Phipps. -Mick Philpott is very controlled
throughout the whole interview, making a point of thanking everybody else but not really mentioning the children that have just died.
The signals that he gives off are not in the normal range of somebody expressing grief, anxiety, sadness,
which he should do, having just lost his children. Somebody normally expressing grief,
you would see contorting of the face, not just one consistent look, and this is what you have with Mick,
is one consistent look throughout the whole thing. His face is not going through the turmoil
as compared to Mairead, who you see her eyebrows are moving. Her forehead has got different wrinkles in it.
Her face is just contorted with pain. We don't see any of that from Mick. -If ever evidence were needed of Philpott's capacity
for being disingenuous, for convincing the world, and I suspect himself, into the bargain,
that he alone was right, it was in the classic case of his crocodile tears during the televised press conference.
Those tears were yet further evidence of his capacity for self-delusion, which is one of the hallmarks of his life
along with the capacity to believe that he alone could dictate what happens to the world.
-Right from the beginning, Mick Philpott's body language is inconsistent with somebody showing grief.
His blinking rate is far, far too high. The normal range is around about 20, 25 blinks per minute.
We counted in this as much as 80 to 90 blinks a minute. This is showing his nervousness.
Mick is dabbing away with his tissue here to imaginary tears. They're not there, therefore the tissue itself doesn't get wet.
It doesn't crumple. If you look at that in comparison to Mairead's tissue, it's all crumpled because she is actually expressing tears,
real, genuine tears. If you look at the lines on their forehead, these are just straight lines.
There's no expression. These are his normal, everyday lines. If you look at Mairead's face, she's raised her eyebrows.
They've come in, so she's got a furrowed brow, and she's pulling these eyebrows in,
which shows the pain that she's going through. You can also see the way her mouth is contorted and changing
with each expression of different emotions. Mick is consistent all the way through.
One thing that they don't do throughout the entire press conference is appeal for help.
Who set this fire? Who killed these children? Why? Because he knows he did it. -It wasn't just the police who were suspicious.
Philpott's performance had baffled the onlooking press, too. -At the end of it, I got in the car
to drive back to the office, and I thought, "That's not right. Something is not right about that."
He's not once mentioned the children. He's not mentioned them by name. He's not looked into any cameras
and said, "Please, will someone out there help me find out who's done this?" It's a suspicious fire in his own home,
and not once has he made an appeal to the public, "To anyone who's watching," you know,
"Please, anyone with information, come forward," not once. So then I got back to the office, and as I walked in,
I could see everyone was still stood around the TV, and we all looked at each other,
and that was the moment that we all knew, you know, something is wrong here. This is a game changer.
-Disingenuous would be a polite way of describing it. It is typical of a man who believes he alone rules the world.
He is an emperor of everything he surveys. He is a man whose vanity knows no bounds,
a man for whom he is the center of the universe, which, in the end, convinced the police
that he wasn't telling the truth, that he seemed so capable of this kind of sleight of hand.
He may have convinced himself, but he didn't convince many other people. -I think he's such a narcissist.
He's so arrogant, and he thinks he's gotten away with it, that he thinks he's invincible.
He thinks that his act, as he's fooled many women over the years, is going to fool the rest of us, and it certainly didn't.
-The residents of Victory Road who'd rallied round the family also started to wonder what was going on.
-It appeared it was strange. He did ask me if -- that he thought the police -- He said he thought the police was blaming him.
He did say that to me. They think he did it and stuff like that. -88 officers working on the case
had taken over 5,000 statements from local residents, some of which suggested that the police themselves
had made more of an effort to save the six children than the Philpotts. On May the 29th, 2012, 18 days after the fatal blaze,
Mick Philpott and his wife, Mairead, were arrested on suspicion of murder. -And again, that was another strange scenario
because I was sat at my desk, and a press release pings into my in-box that says,
"A 56-year-old man and a 31-year-old woman have been arrested on suspicion of murder in connection
with the Victory Road fire," and immediately I stood up, and I shouted over to news desk.
I said, "The Philpotts have been arrested on suspicion of murder," and that was the second time in two weeks
that we ran a special edition of the newspaper, and that had never happened before.
Although the police wouldn't confirm on the record that this is who it was, we got confirmation via other sources
that it -- You know, if we said, "It's the Philpotts that's been arrested," would we be wrong?
No. -On the 22nd of June, funeral services for 13-year-old Duwayne, 10-year-old Jade,
9-year-old John, 8-year-old Jack, 6-year-old Jesse, and 5-year-old Jayden were held at Saint Mary's Catholic Church in Derby.
In the days after the deadly fire, the local community had raised more than £15,000 to pay for the funerals.
Mick and Mairead Philpott were not allowed to attend. -It's very close-knit, Allenton.
Derby, as a city, is a small city, but it's a very proud city, and Allenton and some of the neighboring areas to it
and some of the, I hasten to use the word "poorer" areas, but the less affluent areas,
it's very close-knit, really close-knit. I mean, the outpouring of emotion from the community was huge.
-On the 5th of November, a further arrest was made. Forensic evidence had found petrol on the clothing
of not just Mick and Mairead Philpott but also their friend Paul Mosley. All three were originally charged with murder,
but in December, these charges were downgraded to manslaughter. The police accepted that, although they'd started
the blaze, they had not intended to kill the children. -It beggars belief to me that this charge is downgraded to manslaughter
because, according to the statements at the time, Philpott, his wife, and Mosley
didn't mean to kill the children. It's a tiny semi-detached house, and you've got six small children,
and you've set fire to it. How can you not expect at least one of those children to die?
It defies belief to me. -At a hearing on December the 17th, all three pleaded not guilty to manslaughter,
meaning a trial would have to take place. On the 12th of February, 2013, at Nottingham Crown Court,
prosecutors set out to prove that Mick Philpott had made a plan that went horribly wrong.
Local reporter Martin Naylor was in the courtroom. -I remember Mick, when he gave evidence,
talking about hearing a whooshing noise. When you light petrol, you're not lighting the fluid.
You're lighting the fumes that's come off it, and in the time it had taken for someone
to put petrol through the letter box and then for someone, probably him, to light it,
you know, this vapor was all up in the air. There was a huge whoosh. What he was describing was the whoosh of the fire
going flying up the stairs. Now, those stairs had also been recently painted with, I think,
a yacht varnish or yacht paint, which is highly flammable. So the children, although there were working smoke alarms
in there, they had no chance. They literally had no chance, and obviously the cause of death
was the effects of smoke inhalation. -Forensic expert Daniel Matthews was called to give evidence.
-I did some DNA work on the petrol cans that were found, and I did some DNA work on some items of clothing
that were found in the house to determine whether or not they could have been worn by occupants of the house,
and I did some microscopic burn damage examination, which would have potentially indicated
whether a wearer of some items of clothing could have been close to any amount of the liquid
when it was ignited. -But because of the ferocity of the fire, no evidence remained inside the house.
However, traces of petrol had been found on all three of the defendants' clothes.
In one of the trial's key moments, Mick Philpott was asked to give his version of the events
from the night that led to the tragic death of six of his own children. -When Mick took the stand,
he was the showman that he always was. Again, he was crying, or supposedly crying, in the dock,
but the prosecution saw through all that. I don't think there was one single thing that nailed him.
I think it was just the case just built up and built and built and was so strong.
It was almost like piling bricks on top of him, just waiting for him to collapse,
and I think his collapse came in his cross-examination because his denials was just absolutely ripped apart.
-During the trial, what we've got to remember is that this is essentially another stage
on which Mick Philpott performs. He is playing to an audience. There are several outbursts of anger,
and when his relatives shout at him in court, he shouts back at them, and he sticks his middle finger up to them.
So he really is incredibly defiant. He's incredibly showman-like in his personality.
He wants to be the center of attention. He knows that the media circus is still going on,
and he wants to be the ringleader. -On April the 2nd, 2013, after an emotionally exhausting eight-week trial,
the jury found the trio guilty of manslaughter. -I recall one of Mairead's sisters standing up
in the public gallery and shouting to her, "I knew on day one you'd done this. I knew you'd done this," before storming out.
It was the first time that we'd effectively live blogged from court. We'd been given permission by the judge,
and my fingers were trembling as I was, you know, typing things out to send back to the office for them
to just put on the website straight away, "Guilty verdict, guilty verdict." -On April the 4th, 2013, during sentencing,
Judge Mrs. Justice Thirlwall told the trio, "All three of you are responsible for the deliberate setting of that fire.
All three of you are responsible for those deaths." Mairead Philpott and Paul Mosley were each sentenced to 17 years.
56-year-old Mick Philpott was sentenced to life. He was immediately sent to Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire.
Mrs. Justice Thirlwall described him as a disturbingly dangerous man and as the driving force behind the wicked plan.
-In my opinion, Philpott should be given a whole life term, and I do not approve of whole life terms,
but I cannot think of anyone who more richly deserves to spend the rest of his life behind bars
than Mick Philpott, who killed six of his own children. He's a man who deserves nothing but the greatest contempt,
and I cannot understand, I will never understand why he was not charged and convicted of murder.
-One small mercy it is that they would probably have died very quickly, but that didn't really help the poor firefighters
who had to give evidence and tell about bringing the bodies out of the house and putting them on the lawn
and trying to keep them alive outside. -For the neighbors who tried to rescue the children,
it was an emotional moment. -I was relieved that it was over. I was a bit shocked that it was him
because if you did see him with his kids, his family, very heartbreaking because he did love his kids.
He showed that very much. I think it was some sort of ploy to get something out of it.
I don't think it was meant to spread that fast, the fire. I don't think it was meant to kill anyone.
I think it was a very stupid thing to do, and unfortunately, he paid for it. -The case has had a lasting effect on the nation,
nowhere more so than in Derby itself. -I think the initial impact was massive. I think it was huge.
Certainly, at the time of the fire and in the next almost year until the guilty verdict came in,
it was the biggest story that Derby has ever seen. I once thought to myself, and I once said
that I didn't think Derby would get over this. I thought it was too big and too tragic a story
for a city the size of Derby could forget, but it has, and it's got stronger. The city has definitely got stronger.
It's united people, and he is the common enemy of the city where he was born and raised.
-Philpott was the evil ringleader in a despicable plan that led to the death of six innocent children.
-To me, it sounds like Philpott was more upset that the plan didn't work than the loss of the kids.
I think it will hit him. I think it hits any father, you know, unless you are about 100% psychopath,
which is, like, you have zero emotions toward other human beings, and you pretend everything,
and I don't think he was that detached. -I think that Mick Philpott did an incredibly evil
and incredibly selfish thing. He was essentially looking to get revenge for a perceived wrong against him
by a woman who he thought was under his control. The most tragic part of this case is the fact
that six children's lives were lost in Mick Philpott's attempts to basically rescue his own ego.
My view of him, as a criminologist, he was an incredibly narcissistic and a very dangerous man.
He was always going to result in somebody else being harmed. His actions would always lead to someone else coming to harm
because it was all about him. He never had any empathy, any concern for anybody else.
-There is not one single word you can find to explain or apologize for his actions.
Seldom have I ever thought of someone as grotesque and as thoughtless and as vain as Philpott is.
There is something about him that genuinely does send a chill down your spine. -Mick Philpott is a greedy and selfish man.
His lust for revenge on a woman who left him led to the death of six of his own children.
He may not have meant to have killed them, but his devious plan in which he involved his wife
and a friend meant that Duwayne, Jade, John, Jack, Jesse, and Jayden died in the most horrific way.
The city of Derby now chooses to remember them and not the name of Mick Philpott,
one of the world's most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪

In 2012, fame-hungry Mick Philpott killed six of his own children by setting fire to the family home as they slept upstairs.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

Brief Summary

Mick Philpott's deliberate house fire killed six children, revealing his manipulative and violent nature.

Key points

Tragic Fire Claims Six Children. A devastating fire in Derby claims the lives of six young children, shocking the nation.
A Sinister Secret Revealed. Mick Philpott, the father, weeps publicly while hiding the truth behind the fire.
Deliberate Act of Arson. Investigations reveal the fire was intentionally set by Mick Philpott to manipulate custody outcomes.
Mick Philpott's Deception Unraveled. Philpott orchestrated a plan to frame his ex-mistress for a fire that killed his children.
Arrest of the Philpotts. Mick and Mairead Philpott were arrested on suspicion of murder after the fire.
Community's Response. The local community raised funds for the funerals of the six children.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He was hiding a sinister secret.

Referring to Mick Philpott's actions during the fire.

1:05WatchJul 20, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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