00:00:07
-On Friday,
the 11th of May, 2012, a fire ripped through
a family home in Derby in the East Midlands.
00:00:15
Trapped inside and fast asleep
were six young children. -The fire brigade were
in the house
00:00:22
flashing lights everywhere. I pushed to the front
of the house, and I could see the firefighters
bringing the children out,
00:00:30
some in blankets, and the ambulance were trying
to resuscitate some of them. -Firefighters and paramedics
battled in vain
00:00:40
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
00:00:51
that those poor six children
could possibly have escaped. Smoke inhalation alone
would have been deadly.
00:00:59
-But this was no accident. As Mick Philpott,
the children's father, wept in front
of the British public,
00:01:05
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
00:01:15
that six children's lives
were lost in Mick Philpott's attempts to basically
rescue his own ego.
00:01:23
-Mick Philpott had set out
to look like a hero, but he'd ended up as one of
the world's most evil killers.
00:01:30
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ As news broke across Britain
in May 2012 that six young children had died
inside a burning family home
00:02:03
on Victory Road
in Allenton, Derby, the entire nation were in shock. The parents, 56-year-old
Mick Philpott
00:02:12
and his wife, 31-year-old
Mairead, were unharmed but completely heartbroken. Their five sons
and one daughter,
00:02:20
aged between 5 and 13 years old,
were dead. Former neighbor to
the Philpotts, Daniel Stevenson,
00:02:28
witnessed the horrific event. -My brother woke me up, and that's when I looked
out of the window,
00:02:34
seeing a thick black smoke
coming from the house. I got out of bed, got dressed,
put pajamas on,
00:02:41
trainers, run out the door,
went straight to the property. Just wanted to help, so...
00:02:46
There was no way of getting in
through the front, so I went around the back,
climbed over the caravan,
00:02:50
dropped down the other side. I got into the back garden,
and I seen Mick and Mairead
00:02:54
there, and he was crying,
screaming, shouting. -Despite brave attempts
from the emergency services,
00:03:02
nobody could get inside. The fire was just too ferocious. -Fire coming out of that box,
00:03:09
fire coming from around
the sides of the doors. -By the time it was safe
to enter the house,
00:03:14
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.
00:03:26
13-year-old Duwayne
died later at hospital. However, it wasn't
a tragic accident.
00:03:33
Unbelievably, the house fire
was part of a deliberate plan. Mick Philpott had masterminded
everything for his own benefit.
00:03:43
-I think that Mick Philpott
did an incredibly evil and incredibly selfish thing.
00:03:47
He was essentially looking
to get revenge for a perceived wrong
against him by a woman who he thought
was under his control.
00:03:56
-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.
00:04:11
-It would have been
an environment in which his parents' attention was
diluted across many children,
00:04:17
so he wouldn't have been
the center of attention by any means, and we know that
his mother worked very hard.
00:04:23
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
00:04:31
by any means. -In 1975, aged 19,
Philpott joined the army. He began to show signs
of a violent temper,
00:04:41
especially
towards his girlfriends. It would repeatedly land him
in trouble. Local journalist Martin Naylor
recalls the events
00:04:50
that led to Philpott
being arrested in 1978. -When Mick was a youngster,
I think 19 or 20, maybe 21,
00:04:59
he ended up with a conviction
for attempted murder for which he was sentenced
to seven years in prison.
00:05:04
The story with that is that he
had a girlfriend back in Derby. He was stationed
wherever his regiment were.
00:05:10
She'd had the temerity to
send him a Dear John letter ending their relationship,
00:05:15
so he decided to go AWOL
from the army, rock up at her house in Derby,
and attack her with a knife.
00:05:22
And then when her mother tried
to intervene, he attacked the mother, too. -Despite his seven-year sentence
for attempted murder
00:05:29
and grievous bodily harm, Philpott served
just over three years. He was released in 1981.
00:05:37
-From that point onwards,
Philpott set about controlling every woman
he had any contact with
00:05:44
and to do so
in the most outrageous way. -Those who knew Philpott
were surprised to hear
00:05:51
just how violent
his past had been. -I know Mick
can handle himself, so, like, if anyone
was intimidating towards him,
00:06:01
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
00:06:10
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.
00:06:19
-After his release from prison, Philpott had a series
of volatile relationships.
00:06:24
In 1986, at the age of 30, he got married
for the first time and fathered two sons
and a daughter.
00:06:32
He later had a two more children
with a teenage girlfriend and began to have several
relationships simultaneously.
00:06:40
By the time he was 50, Philpott had fathered
a total of 17 children. -I think he would have gone
for any woman
00:06:47
that would go for him,
but in his case, he went for younger girls,
usually girls
00:06:52
who were very upset and down
and depressed either because they came out
of a bad relationship
00:06:58
or they were mistreated
by their parents, girls that had no self-esteem. You can pick them
out of a crowd.
00:07:04
You know,
they think they're ugly. They think that
they're inadequate. They think that they cannot
have a boyfriend,
00:07:09
that everybody hates them,
that the world hates them. All they need is a little bit
of love, is somebody to be there
00:07:17
and show them
that they are beautiful, that they matter,
that they are somebody,
00:07:21
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.
00:07:29
-In 2000, he met Mairead Duffy,
a 19-year-old single mother. But within a year,
he'd met a 16-year-old
00:07:36
who became another
of his conquests. She, too,
was a single mother at 16. In 2003, Philpott marries
Mairead Duffy
00:07:48
but keeps his full-time
live-in mistress. In fact, she is the bridesmaid at the marriage
to Mairead Duffy.
00:07:59
It becomes a ménage à trois,
both bearing his children, living in a council house
in Allenton near Derby.
00:08:06
They are -- well, one could only
describe it as extraordinary. -Mick Philpott was a man
who was incredibly manipulative,
00:08:13
incredibly controlling, and had managed to basically
convince these two women over a course of several years
that this was,
00:08:21
you know, a really good thing, that actually they were lucky
to have some of his attention.
00:08:26
-In 2006, 50-year-old
Mick Philpott was unemployed and living on benefits in
a council house with his wife,
00:08:34
Mairead, his mistress, Lisa, and their ever-growing,
far-from-traditional family.
00:08:40
-He had approached
the Telegraph to say that he was living in the house
with his wife
00:08:45
and his then-girlfriend. They had children together.
There were lots of them there,
00:08:50
and he wanted
a bigger council house, so he thought that by coming
to his local newspaper,
00:08:55
he would get
a bigger council house. So we ran the story. The following day, it was picked
up on by all the nationals,
00:09:02
especially some of the more
right-leaning ones, as you can imagine. One of them, I think one
the tabloids dubbed him
00:09:07
"Shameless Mick"
and the kind of, the media-frenzy roller coaster
went on from there.
00:09:13
-In 2007, Philpott appeared
on "The Jeremy Kyle Show" to talk about his large family
and his lifestyle.
00:09:21
He began to draw attention
from the general public. -He becomes quite famous
as a benefits scrounger
00:09:30
because he significantly
never has a job and is claiming at one point
£60,000 a year
00:09:35
in benefits as well as
being given a house. He parks a caravan effectively
at the side
00:09:42
of the semi-detached
council house he's living in, in which he alternates. He sleeps there one night
with the wife, Mairead Duffy,
00:09:50
and the next night
with his mistress, as though he's
some kind of emperor. -I think that Mick Philpott
00:09:56
breathes the oxygen
of publicity. -I think he absolutely regales in being the center
of attention.
00:10:02
He loves being talked about,
and I don't think the nature of attention matters
very much to him.
00:10:07
It doesn't matter if it's
positive attention or negative attention as long
as people are talking about him.
00:10:13
-Philpott enjoyed
his newfound fame and went on to appear
in other television programs.
00:10:20
-He then participated
in a program about benefits culture
with the MP Ann Widdecombe,
00:10:25
and he would have been
absolutely loving the attention. He was basically having
his malevolent ego fed
00:10:31
from every angle here, but what he really didn't care
about was the impact that this had on his family.
00:10:37
His kids were bullied at school
because of the attention that they got through him
being in the press.
00:10:43
His partner and his wife
were basically labeled as stupid and ignorant,
but that didn't matter.
00:10:50
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.
00:10:56
There is nothing about it
that I find admirable. Philpott saw himself
as some kind of grand figure,
00:11:02
effectively bragging
about his success with women, his success in scrounging
on the benefits.
00:11:10
-Mick Philpott is somebody
who has to be in control. He has always got to be the one
making the decisions,
00:11:15
and other people basically have
to pander to his every whim. -Philpott's wife and mistress
both worked
00:11:22
as part-time cleaners. -But far from being
a source of their own income and a source
of independence for them,
00:11:28
he would basically take
all of their wages. He would be the one who
drove them to work,
00:11:33
dropped them off,
and picked them up. He wanted to be fully in control
of these women's lives.
00:11:38
They didn't have
their own house keys. -In 2012, 56-year-old
Mick Philpott was living with his wife,
his mistress
00:11:48
and their 11 children in
a council house in Derbyshire. By now, Philpott
was known nationally
00:11:54
as a benefits scrounger, but little was known about
his controlling behavior, his volatile temper,
and his obsession with sex
00:12:03
that included regular threesomes
with his wife, Mairead; and a friend, Paul Mosley.
00:12:10
-There were, like,
11 kids in the house. It's a small house,
two sexual partners,
00:12:16
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,
00:12:23
and you're doing all this. So it doesn't take an expert
to realize, "Okay, this is not
a good situation."
00:12:29
-And these sexual exploits
of Mick and Mairead didn't stop at home. -There was an incident
where they went out
00:12:35
dogging in Allestree Park, and there are people who live
in Derby and know Derby
00:12:39
and know that Allestree
is a relatively affluent area, and to hear that, you know,
people have been going there
00:12:46
to watch other people having sex
in cars sort of comes across as quite a shock, and so...
00:12:52
It was seedy. -In February 2012,
Philpott's mistress, Lisa, decided she'd had enough of life
in the dysfunctional household.
00:13:02
She moved out with her five
children and demanded custody. -A lot of people
won't have that courage,
00:13:09
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,"
00:13:15
because I think if she tried
doing that, he would overpower her because
he was a violent person and say,
00:13:19
"No, you're not leaving,"
or maybe lock her in. He would have done something,
but she did the right thing.
00:13:25
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.
00:13:31
-This was a point at which Lisa
had decided to take control, to take her children,
and to go to a women's refuge,
00:13:38
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.
00:13:45
He was the one that decided
what happened on a daily basis. So the fact that Lisa
had betrayed him
00:13:51
by taking that power
away from him, it was only going to result in something
really alarming in return.
00:13:58
-Lisa moving out left financial
implications for Philpott. Not only did he lose her income
as a cleaner
00:14:05
but also the benefits
he received for their children. The custody hearing was set
for May the 11th.
00:14:11
Philpott concocted a plan
to ensure the children would be returned
to Victory Road.
00:14:18
-Out of the vanity
and arrogance of the man; together with his wife,
Mairead; and Paul Mosley,
00:14:25
the kind of live-in
sometime lover; they hatch a scheme to set fire
to the house in Victory Road
00:14:33
in an effort to provoke the
council to give a bigger house but also to blame his mistress.
00:14:41
She will not get the custody
of the children. It is an extraordinary,
bizarre plan.
00:14:48
-I think Mairead was very much under Mick Philpott's control
at this point in time.
00:14:53
I think he would have quite
easily have talked her around into actually being
a part of this.
00:14:59
-It was a badly devised plan. For me, what convinced him
is his own stupidity. He was self-absorbed.
00:15:05
He thought that he was the king. You know, he got
all the girls he wanted, and he could control them
and everything,
00:15:11
and maybe Philpott thought
that he was that intelligent, that it was that easy
to devise a plan
00:15:17
that he could get back
on the girl. So he probably sat down, wrote down
the plan very quickly,
00:15:23
"This is what we're
going to do," right? Very easy. -In the early hours of Friday,
May the 11th, 2012,
00:15:31
the same day as
the scheduled custody hearing, Philpott, aided by his wife,
Mairead, and their friend
00:15:37
Paul Mosley, poured petrol
through the letter box and set the family home alight.
00:15:43
Six of Philpott's children
were sleeping upstairs. -The fire that he set,
that they have set between them,
00:15:50
takes hold at a pace far greater than they could possibly
have conceived, and the house is literally
filled with smoke
00:15:59
in a matter of instants. In his typically
vainglorious way, Philpott makes a particularly
appalling 999 call saying,
00:16:10
"My children are inside." -They was on the phone
to the emergency services, I believe, and they were saying,
00:16:20
"Me house is on fire
and, me baby, me baby," and the officer,
they told the emergency service,
00:16:26
"My neighbor is here." It was very, like, misty because everything was
just happening so fast.
00:16:31
I attempted to go
into the house. I got as far as the kitchen
and couldn't go any further.
00:16:36
The smoke was just too thick. It was choking, black. I couldn't see anything,
so I had to come back out.
00:16:41
There was ladders on the side
going up to a window. I tried climbing up to there,
00:16:45
and there was a ratchet
in the window where Mick's been trying
to smash in, I think,
00:16:51
and now smoke
coming from that window. I then came back
down the ladders, and I climbed up
on to a wooden frame,
00:16:57
what he's been building on
to his conservatory. -The damage to the house
is drastic,
00:17:03
and there is no way that
those poor six children could possibly have escaped. Smoke inhalation alone
would have been deadly.
00:17:12
-I climbed up
to the window to see if any of the windows
were open. None of them were open.
00:17:16
Then I put one of the windows through with a wrench
from the other window. I chucked it at the window.
00:17:21
It smashed straight through. I then continued putting
the window through with the pickaxe on the roof,
smashing all the window up.
00:17:28
I was about to climb
into the property and, again,
couldn't see nothing, couldn't hear nothing,
couldn't hear no screams.
00:17:35
-When the fire service arrived, the desperate attempts to
save the children continued.
00:17:41
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,
00:17:49
and I could hear that the news
desk phone was ringing, so I made a bit
of a dash for it.
00:17:55
I grabbed the phone,
and it was the on-duty police press officer,
and she said to me,
00:18:00
"We're just letting
the local media know early that there's been a really
big house fire in Allenton,
00:18:05
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,
00:18:14
who I know because I'd done
previous stories with him. He answered the phone,
and I said,
00:18:19
"Joker, it's Martin
from the Telegraph," and he said,
"It's Mick Philpott. It's Mick Philpott's house,"
00:18:24
and I didn't even have to
ask him what it was about. He knew, and he'd blurted
that out straight away.
00:18:30
-Shocked neighbors began
to spill out on to the street as the full horror
of the tragedy became apparent.
00:18:37
-I think nearly the whole
street was out in the front. The fire brigade
were in the house,
00:18:42
flashing lights everywhere. I pushed to the front
of the house, and I could see the firefighters
00:18:49
bringing the children out,
some in blankets. I think they used the blankets
to try and protect them
00:18:59
a bit more, and the ambulance were trying
to resuscitate some of them. ♪♪ I was just hoping the kids
would survive and recover.
00:19:17
I just didn't really know
what to think at the time, didn't know what had happened,
00:19:23
didn't know what had
caused the fire. I just didn't know anything. -Tragically, five of Philpott's
children died at the scene --
00:19:31
10-year-old Jade, 9-year-old
John, 8-year-old Jack, 6-year-old Jesse, and Jayden,
who was just 5 years old.
00:19:40
Their older brother,
13-year-old Duwayne, was rushed to hospital
in a critical condition
00:19:46
but would later succumb
to his injuries. -It almost defies
self-deception. It is disgraceful,
but at the outset,
00:19:59
the police believe that this is
something that is genuinely a tragedy -- six children,
no adults in the house.
00:20:07
You might ask, "Why weren't
there any adults in the house?" -Forensic experts arrived
at the scene
00:20:12
and began to look for clues to determine
the source of the fire. Daniel Matthews was
part of the team.
00:20:19
-Mostly, the house was
pretty much undamaged. The roof was intact.
The walls are intact.
00:20:25
The front door was noticeably
more damaged than anywhere else and also
the window on the landing.
00:20:31
There's a small window
on the landing upstairs that had been damaged
by the fire
00:20:35
and had dropped out,
but apart from that, the only way that you could
really tell there was a fire
00:20:39
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.
00:20:45
The fire had started
in the entrance hallway behind the front door,
and from there it had spread
00:20:50
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
00:20:56
a little bit, and that had been
breached by the fire. Now, obviously, fire tends
to go up and out,
00:21:01
so effectively, the stairwell
from the fire in there would act almost like a chimney
in that the fire
00:21:06
and the hot gases and the fumes
would all mostly go upstairs. -In cooperation with the fire
investigators, the forensic team
00:21:13
needed to find out
if the blaze was accidental or if someone had started it
on purpose.
00:21:19
-We had an arson dog handler
with us that day, and that dog is trained
to indicate
00:21:23
on various different
ignitable liquids such as petrol,
diesel, white spirits, and the things
that we commonly see in arsons,
00:21:31
and the dog clearly indicated that he thought
something was present. So we would take a sample
from that area,
00:21:38
and then it would be sent
for analysis, and the analysis determined
that petrol was there.
00:21:43
When I completed
my scene examination, I was able to say that the fire
had been started deliberately.
00:21:49
-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
00:21:58
became apparent. Investigations had revealed
that the blaze which had killed six children
had been started deliberately.
00:22:07
Bereaved father Mick Philpott
had seemingly made desperate attempts to save them,
00:22:13
but in reality, he had
orchestrated the whole thing to try and win custody of five of his other children
from his former mistress.
00:22:24
-I think Philpott thought that
nobody would ever leave him because he was so amazing.
00:22:28
So I think it was a combination
of everything. When somebody leaves you, there's another thing happens
with the human brain.
00:22:35
It's like jealousy
automatically happens, right? For one reason. We are all, and in Philpott's
case even more
00:22:44
because he was
so self-absorbed -- you think you are
the best thing on Earth. -Mick Philpott's plan
00:22:50
was essentially
to exact revenge on Lisa. He'd moved from trying
to control her by keeping her
in a relationship with him
00:22:58
to trying to destroy her
for leaving it. He was vile towards her. He made threats towards her
through other people.
00:23:06
She was incredibly frightened,
and what he was trying to do was, essentially,
create a story,
00:23:11
create a set of events
that he could blame her for. -I think what convinced him
that this thing would work
00:23:17
was himself, you know, his stupidity and his
self-absorption that he thought, "I'm too good.
This plan is infallible."
00:23:25
-On Saturday, the 12th of May,
the day after the fire, Philpott's ex-mistress, Lisa,
and her brother-in-law
00:23:33
were arrested on suspicion
of starting the blaze. It seemed that Philpott's plan
to frame her was working out,
00:23:41
but they were soon released
without charge. Police were treating
the deliberate fire
00:23:47
as a murder investigation
after it was confirmed that petrol had been found
inside the letter box.
00:23:55
-The police start to talk
to the neighbors, who point out that Philpott is
this conceited pig of a man,
00:24:01
and they begin to put together
what actually happened. They find evidence
of a petrol can.
00:24:09
They find a glove. -Detectives began to grow
suspicious of the Philpotts and their possible motives.
00:24:17
On Wednesday,
the 16th of May, 2012, Mick Philpott held
an emotional press conference,
00:24:24
unaware that he was
the police's number one suspect. -Didn't Philpott know that
the police is experts
00:24:32
on reading people, you know? They have people who are
trained for years on reading body language,
facial expressions,
00:24:40
eye movements, voice intonation,
you know, everything. -Philpott appeared
to be distraught
00:24:46
when he faced the cameras with a visibly grief-stricken
Mairead. He started to thank people
who tried to help
00:24:53
on the night of the fire. -And, of course,
the four firemen, the police, the ambulances,
the doctors, the nurses,
00:25:00
literally everybody
who tried to help save our children that couldn't. [ Sniffles ]
00:25:08
-One intrigued viewer was body
language expert Robert Phipps. -Mick Philpott is
very controlled
00:25:15
throughout the whole interview, making a point of thanking
everybody else but not really mentioning the
children that have just died.
00:25:22
The signals that he gives off
are not in the normal range of somebody expressing grief,
anxiety, sadness,
00:25:30
which he should do,
having just lost his children. Somebody normally
expressing grief,
00:25:34
you would see contorting
of the face, not just one consistent look, and this is what
you have with Mick,
00:25:41
is one consistent look
throughout the whole thing. His face is not going
through the turmoil
00:25:46
as compared to Mairead, who you see her eyebrows
are moving. Her forehead has got
different wrinkles in it.
00:25:51
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
00:26:02
for being disingenuous,
for convincing the world, and I suspect himself,
into the bargain,
00:26:08
that he alone was right, it was in the classic case
of his crocodile tears during the televised
press conference.
00:26:18
Those tears were yet
further evidence of his capacity
for self-delusion, which is one of the hallmarks
of his life
00:26:28
along with the capacity
to believe that he alone could dictate
what happens to the world.
00:26:33
-Right from the beginning,
Mick Philpott's body language is inconsistent
with somebody showing grief.
00:26:37
His blinking rate
is far, far too high. The normal range is around about
20, 25 blinks per minute.
00:26:44
We counted in this as much
as 80 to 90 blinks a minute. This is showing his nervousness.
00:26:51
Mick is dabbing away with his
tissue here to imaginary tears. They're not there, therefore the
tissue itself doesn't get wet.
00:26:58
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,
00:27:06
real, genuine tears. If you look at the lines
on their forehead, these are just straight lines.
00:27:12
There's no expression. These are his normal,
everyday lines. If you look at Mairead's face,
she's raised her eyebrows.
00:27:18
They've come in, so she's
got a furrowed brow, and she's pulling
these eyebrows in,
00:27:22
which shows the pain
that she's going through. You can also see the way her
mouth is contorted and changing
00:27:31
with each expression
of different emotions. Mick is consistent
all the way through.
00:27:36
One thing that
they don't do throughout the entire press conference
is appeal for help.
00:27:41
Who set this fire? Who killed these children? Why?
Because he knows he did it. -It wasn't just the police
who were suspicious.
00:27:52
Philpott's performance
had baffled the onlooking press, too. -At the end of it,
I got in the car
00:27:58
to drive back to the office,
and I thought, "That's not right. Something
is not right about that."
00:28:03
He's not once mentioned
the children. He's not mentioned them by name. He's not looked into
any cameras
00:28:09
and said, "Please, will
someone out there help me find out who's done this?" It's a suspicious fire
in his own home,
00:28:17
and not once has he made
an appeal to the public, "To anyone who's watching,"
you know,
00:28:21
"Please, anyone with
information, come forward," not once. So then I got back to the
office, and as I walked in,
00:28:28
I could see everyone was still
stood around the TV, and we all looked
at each other,
00:28:33
and that was the moment
that we all knew, you know,
something is wrong here. This is a game changer.
00:28:41
-Disingenuous would be
a polite way of describing it. It is typical of a man who believes
he alone rules the world.
00:28:52
He is an emperor
of everything he surveys. He is a man whose vanity
knows no bounds,
00:28:57
a man for whom he is
the center of the universe, which, in the end,
convinced the police
00:29:05
that he wasn't
telling the truth, that he seemed so capable
of this kind of sleight of hand.
00:29:12
He may have convinced himself, but he didn't convince
many other people. -I think he's such
a narcissist.
00:29:17
He's so arrogant, and he thinks
he's gotten away with it, that he thinks he's invincible.
00:29:22
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.
00:29:30
-The residents of Victory Road
who'd rallied round the family also started to wonder
what was going on.
00:29:37
-It appeared it was strange. He did ask me if --
that he thought the police -- He said he thought
the police was blaming him.
00:29:47
He did say that to me. They think he did it
and stuff like that. -88 officers working on the case
00:29:56
had taken over 5,000 statements
from local residents, some of which suggested
that the police themselves
00:30:03
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,
00:30:13
Mick Philpott and his wife,
Mairead, were arrested on suspicion of murder. -And again, that was another
strange scenario
00:30:23
because I was sat at my desk, and a press release pings
into my in-box that says,
00:30:30
"A 56-year-old man
and a 31-year-old woman have been arrested on suspicion
of murder in connection
00:30:35
with the Victory Road fire," and immediately I stood up,
and I shouted over to news desk.
00:30:43
I said, "The Philpotts
have been arrested on suspicion of murder," and that was the second time
in two weeks
00:30:49
that we ran a special edition
of the newspaper, and that had never
happened before.
00:30:53
Although the police
wouldn't confirm on the record that this is who it was, we got
confirmation via other sources
00:30:58
that it --
You know, if we said, "It's the Philpotts that's been
arrested," would we be wrong?
00:31:02
No. -On the 22nd of June,
funeral services for 13-year-old Duwayne,
10-year-old Jade,
00:31:10
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.
00:31:23
In the days
after the deadly fire, the local community had raised more than £15,000
to pay for the funerals.
00:31:32
Mick and Mairead Philpott
were not allowed to attend. -It's very close-knit, Allenton.
00:31:38
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
00:31:47
and some of the, I hasten to use
the word "poorer" areas, but the less affluent areas,
00:31:54
it's very close-knit,
really close-knit. I mean, the outpouring
of emotion from the community was huge.
00:32:01
-On the 5th of November,
a further arrest was made. Forensic evidence
had found petrol on the clothing
00:32:08
of not just Mick
and Mairead Philpott but also their friend
Paul Mosley. All three were originally
charged with murder,
00:32:16
but in December, these charges
were downgraded to manslaughter. The police accepted that,
although they'd started
00:32:24
the blaze, they had not intended
to kill the children. -It beggars belief to me that this charge
is downgraded to manslaughter
00:32:34
because, according to
the statements at the time, Philpott, his wife, and Mosley
00:32:42
didn't mean to
kill the children. It's a tiny semi-detached house, and you've got six
small children,
00:32:49
and you've set fire to it. How can you not expect at least
one of those children to die?
00:32:55
It defies belief to me. -At a hearing on
December the 17th, all three pleaded
not guilty to manslaughter,
00:33:05
meaning a trial
would have to take place. On the 12th of February, 2013,
at Nottingham Crown Court,
00:33:13
prosecutors set out to prove
that Mick Philpott had made a plan
that went horribly wrong.
00:33:19
Local reporter Martin Naylor
was in the courtroom. -I remember Mick,
when he gave evidence,
00:33:25
talking about hearing
a whooshing noise. When you light petrol,
you're not lighting the fluid.
00:33:30
You're lighting the fumes
that's come off it, and in the time it had taken
for someone
00:33:33
to put petrol
through the letter box and then for someone,
probably him, to light it,
00:33:40
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
00:33:46
going flying up the stairs. Now, those stairs had also been
recently painted with, I think,
00:33:52
a yacht varnish or yacht paint,
which is highly flammable. So the children, although there
were working smoke alarms
00:33:58
in there, they had no chance. They literally had no chance,
and obviously the cause of death
00:34:05
was the effects
of smoke inhalation. -Forensic expert Daniel Matthews
was called to give evidence.
00:34:12
-I did some DNA work on the
petrol cans that were found, and I did some DNA work
on some items of clothing
00:34:18
that were found in the house
to determine whether or not they could have been worn
by occupants of the house,
00:34:23
and I did some microscopic
burn damage examination, which would have
potentially indicated
00:34:27
whether a wearer
of some items of clothing could have been close
to any amount of the liquid
00:34:32
when it was ignited. -But because of the ferocity
of the fire, no evidence remained
inside the house.
00:34:40
However, traces of petrol
had been found on all three of
the defendants' clothes.
00:34:46
In one of the trial's
key moments, Mick Philpott was asked to give
his version of the events
00:34:52
from the night
that led to the tragic death of six of his own children. -When Mick took the stand,
00:34:58
he was the showman
that he always was. Again, he was crying, or supposedly crying,
in the dock,
00:35:05
but the prosecution
saw through all that. I don't think there was one
single thing that nailed him.
00:35:12
I think it was just the case
just built up and built and built
and was so strong.
00:35:16
It was almost like piling bricks
on top of him, just waiting
for him to collapse,
00:35:21
and I think his collapse
came in his cross-examination because his denials was just
absolutely ripped apart.
00:35:27
-During the trial,
what we've got to remember is that this
is essentially another stage
00:35:32
on which Mick Philpott performs. He is playing to an audience. There are several outbursts
of anger,
00:35:39
and when his relatives
shout at him in court, he shouts back at them, and he sticks
his middle finger up to them.
00:35:47
So he really is
incredibly defiant. He's incredibly showman-like
in his personality.
00:35:53
He wants to be the center
of attention. He knows that the media circus
is still going on,
00:35:58
and he wants
to be the ringleader. -On April the 2nd, 2013, after an emotionally exhausting
eight-week trial,
00:36:07
the jury found the trio guilty
of manslaughter. -I recall one of Mairead's
sisters standing up
00:36:14
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.
00:36:21
It was the first time
that we'd effectively live blogged from court. We'd been given permission
by the judge,
00:36:27
and my fingers were trembling
as I was, you know, typing things out to send back
to the office for them
00:36:32
to just put on the website
straight away, "Guilty verdict,
guilty verdict." -On April the 4th, 2013,
during sentencing,
00:36:42
Judge Mrs. Justice Thirlwall
told the trio, "All three of you
are responsible for the deliberate
setting of that fire.
00:36:50
All three of you are responsible
for those deaths." Mairead Philpott and Paul Mosley
were each sentenced to 17 years.
00:37:00
56-year-old Mick Philpott
was sentenced to life. He was immediately sent to Wakefield Prison
in West Yorkshire.
00:37:08
Mrs. Justice Thirlwall
described him as a disturbingly dangerous man and as the driving force
behind the wicked plan.
00:37:18
-In my opinion, Philpott should
be given a whole life term, and I do not approve
of whole life terms,
00:37:23
but I cannot think of anyone
who more richly deserves to spend the rest
of his life behind bars
00:37:30
than Mick Philpott, who killed
six of his own children. He's a man who deserves nothing
but the greatest contempt,
00:37:39
and I cannot understand,
I will never understand why he was not charged
and convicted of murder.
00:37:46
-One small mercy it is that they would probably
have died very quickly, but that didn't really help
the poor firefighters
00:37:52
who had to give evidence
and tell about bringing the bodies out of the house
and putting them on the lawn
00:37:57
and trying to keep them
alive outside. -For the neighbors who tried
to rescue the children,
00:38:02
it was an emotional moment. -I was relieved
that it was over. I was a bit shocked
that it was him
00:38:11
because if you did see him
with his kids, his family, very heartbreaking
because he did love his kids.
00:38:22
He showed that very much. I think it was some sort of ploy
to get something out of it.
00:38:31
I don't think it was meant
to spread that fast, the fire. I don't think it was meant
to kill anyone.
00:38:37
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,
00:38:47
nowhere more so
than in Derby itself. -I think the initial impact
was massive. I think it was huge.
00:38:55
Certainly, at the time
of the fire and in the next almost year until the guilty verdict
came in,
00:39:02
it was the biggest story
that Derby has ever seen. I once thought to myself,
and I once said
00:39:09
that I didn't think
Derby would get over this. I thought it was too big
and too tragic a story
00:39:15
for a city the size
of Derby could forget, but it has,
and it's got stronger. The city has definitely
got stronger.
00:39:23
It's united people, and he is
the common enemy of the city where he was born and raised.
00:39:32
-Philpott was the evil
ringleader in a despicable plan that led to the death
of six innocent children.
00:39:39
-To me, it sounds like Philpott
was more upset that the plan didn't work
than the loss of the kids.
00:39:45
I think it will hit him. I think it hits any father,
you know, unless you are about
100% psychopath,
00:39:54
which is, like,
you have zero emotions toward other human beings,
and you pretend everything,
00:40:00
and I don't think
he was that detached. -I think that Mick Philpott
did an incredibly evil
00:40:05
and incredibly selfish thing. He was essentially looking
to get revenge for a perceived wrong
against him
00:40:12
by a woman who he thought
was under his control. The most tragic part
of this case is the fact
00:40:19
that six children's lives
were lost in Mick Philpott's attempts to basically
rescue his own ego.
00:40:26
My view of him,
as a criminologist, he was an incredibly
narcissistic and a very dangerous man.
00:40:33
He was always going to result
in somebody else being harmed. His actions would always lead
to someone else coming to harm
00:40:40
because it was all about him. He never had any empathy,
any concern for anybody else.
00:40:45
-There is not one single word
you can find to explain or apologize
for his actions.
00:40:51
Seldom have I ever thought
of someone as grotesque and as thoughtless
and as vain as Philpott is.
00:41:02
There is something about him
that genuinely does send a chill down your spine. -Mick Philpott is a greedy
and selfish man.
00:41:11
His lust for revenge on a woman who left him led to the death
of six of his own children.
00:41:18
He may not have meant
to have killed them, but his devious plan in which
he involved his wife
00:41:23
and a friend meant that
Duwayne, Jade, John, Jack, Jesse, and Jayden died
in the most horrific way.
00:41:34
The city of Derby now chooses
to remember them and not the name
of Mick Philpott,
00:41:40
one of the world's
most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪