“How many kids are in the Philpott? Where are they?”
“Six of them, sorry, six of them.”
“Have you ever seen a fire? Have you heard a fire speak to you, huh? I have and it wouldn’t let me know, nowhere near him. I’ve actually been down to our home, and what we saw, we just… we just get on a little bit.”
“There were people in our newsroom who were saying, ‘There’s something not right about this,’ but it wasn’t until I stood back and realized that it was just one big fix.”
“The bones look scared.”
“In a cemetery a few miles from the center of Derby lies six graves. Each of the headstones marks the final resting place of a family of children.”
“Flowers and toys to remember children killed as they slept. The fire started, police believe, when petrol was poured through the letterbox. The police are saying this is a potential murder investigation with the cause of the fire yet to be confirmed.”
“The events that led to the children’s deaths began back in May 2003 when a 19-year-old single mother called Mairead Duffy married her fiancée.”
“I went myself to give her away and that there went to a wedding, and then, uh, there was a reception having a club on that road. When we came back and that there, and there was quite a few people there and that you know, they’re kind of one crowd sitting here of a family and another family sitting somewhere else kind of thing.”
“Jimmy’s daughter had just married Mick Philpott, a man with a sinister past. Kim Hill was his partner when he was 21 and in the army in the late 70s. She was 17. She had the temerity to send him a ‘Dear John’ letter ending their relationship. He responded by, um, stabbing her 15 times, and when her mother tried to intervene, attacked her, seriously injuring her as well. And he went to prison for that. He received a prison sentence of 7 years for attempted murder.”
“Philpott’s conviction did little to change his attitude to women.”
“He is so egocentric. Everything, uh, he does is is important in the sense that it’s got to relate to him and how he feels, and he has absolutely no compunction in doing anything to hurt somebody else. We know this because he’s, you know, hurt multiple partners in the past, and he has absolutely no remorse. And because of this combination, this makes him dangerous, because he has no ability to really see somebody else’s perspective. And because he has no ability to see somebody else’s perspective and no remorse, this is not going to stop him when he starts hurting somebody else.”
“Whether his new bride was aware of Philpott’s history is unknown, but even on their wedding day, Mairead’s father was concerned.”
“He seemed to be mingling around everywhere and among the women, stuff like that there. And, uh, half the time she was sitting there on her own and he was nowhere near her. I said to him, I said, ‘You’re supposed to be with your wife today.’ I say, ‘You’re going around all these women.’ And he did quite annoy me, but you know, was in two minds of saying, ‘I’m going to whack him,’ one minute, but I decided not to ruin the day, kind of thing. So I just kind of bit me tongue and left it at that.”
“Everything that Mick does, really, is centered on Mick. Once you understand that, you can see why he behaves the way that he does. So bearing that in mind, then everything that he does, he has no understanding of how it impacts on other people, and even if he does understand it, then he wouldn’t care.”
“Already a father of five by the time he was 40, Mick Philpott had become adept at choosing the type of women who he could manipulate.”
“He always seemed to go for young girls that was vulnerable. There was always 16, 17-year-olds, or like Mairead, she’d just come out of a relationship which was abusive, so he pretended to be there for her. And then he ended up abusing her in, in some way, anyway. So he just went for the ones really that he could control. He’d flatter them. They would be attracted to him because he gave them the attention, maybe attention they didn’t have before in their life. And very quickly, he would get them on side. He’d move them in and very soon he would start to control them.”
“Mick Philpott’s obsessive and abusive behavior left a trail of broken relationships in his wake.”
“He’s also a very, very controlling man, and he will control every aspect of a, of a partner’s life. Their finances, where they work, where they live, who they see, where they go, everything about them. And he’s done this on multiple occasions with, with different partners. He used to do all the shopping. He’d do the food shopping. He, he had control of all the money. The girls didn’t get no money. If they wanted something, they’d have to ask, and it was up to him whether he said yes or no to wherever they got it. He sat there but he gave the orders out, you know, to whoever: ‘Cook the tea,’ ‘You wash the pots,’ ‘You do this,’ and ‘You do that,’ sort of thing.”
“I think his extreme narcissism is also coming from a potential position of fear. He doesn’t ever want to be left. He can’t tolerate any rejection, and he’s got a very sensitive, potentially injured sense of self. And in the course of his life, unfortunately, multiple people get hurt in order for him to operate the way he does.”
“Philpott met Mairead Duffy in the year 2000, and she quickly fell under his spell. The pair moved into 18 Victory Road, and whilst at first glance the relationship was a happy one, behind closed doors it was a different story.”
“To a certain extent, yes. I think she was scared. She was controlled by Mick and she didn’t have a life of her own. They were all trying to get her out and that there, even across the road was trying to get her out. She said she could get her a safe house, that she could go there with the children and she’d be safe and not there. But she wouldn’t budge. She said, ‘No, I’m stopping where I am.'”
“She had a job working as a cleaner at one of the local hospitals, which by all accounts she absolutely loved. She was a happy-go-lucky person when she was at work, um, and then her demeanor would completely change and she’d go quiet and silent when she used to have to finish work and go and get picked up by Mick.”
“I can remember going around once, Mairead, um, she had bruises all up her face and made out she got attacked going to the garage one night, um, but she never did admit it was Mick. But you know, I, I assumed and so did my husband, we thought it was a bit strange going to her garage at half-two in the morning, um, so I think she was just covering up for Mick.”
“In 2002, the domestic arrangements at 18 Victory Road became even stranger when Mick moved his 16-year-old mistress, Lisa Willis, into the house. She would even act as a bridesmaid to Mick and Mairead when the couple married a year later.”
“Both of them started families with, uh, with Mick, and it got to a stage where there were 11 children living in the house.”
“Everybody just kind of said, ‘Well, they all seem to be getting on very well together, you know,’ and we, well, we all took a back foot and said, you know, ‘As long as they, we can see the kids are all right, then the two women are all right, you know. Let them get on with it.’ But we were all, you know, weird, you know. I I couldn’t do anything like that. The kids would say we couldn’t, kind of thing, you know. But it was something we got used to over a period.”
“John Sweeney had been convinced throughout that he would never be convicted of this heinous crime. However, he did not contemplate the determination and the resolve of the joint investigation team.”
“John Sweeney received a whole life tariff, and not that many people do. He was so brutal and so ungiving and consistently so throughout his life.”
“It’s never right to say that, um, you’re happy when a person is convicted. I think the word is ‘satisfied,’ that the culmination of all our hard work and the hard work of our Dutch colleagues had all been supported by the jury in, in reaching that verdict. But I think most of all I was satisfied for the friends and the family of both Melissa Halstead and Paula Fields.”
“We know she is never coming back and we never said goodbye. We hope to God that John Sweeney will never be released. It must be very upsetting and distressing for both families to know that certain body parts are missing and will probably never be found. But I think this really shows the control and the contempt that Sweeney has shown over his victims.”
“Whilst John Sweeney is now behind bars, some detectives believe he is responsible for more as yet unsolved crimes and that he may have killed others. And as John Sweeney contemplates a life behind bars, I would like to assure him that this investigation will continue as we seek to identify and trace other possible victims within the UK, Holland, and across Europe.”
“It could be wider the mark. I take the view that he’s probably done others, but, um, I think he’ll take that to his grave. He’s shown no remorse or sympathy for his victims, and I think without doubt he’s probably one of the most cruel individuals I’ve ever had the misfortune to come across in the last 25 years.”
“I struggle to think of a more dangerous man that has ever come before a court in this country.”
“There’s no such thing as justice. I’m the one in pain. I’m the one with the scars. There’s no such thing as closure.”
