The world was shocked when a woman was convicted and sentenced for the horrific deaths of her six children. However, she is now “delighted” to be a free woman who has returned to living at the taxpayers’ expense.
For years, Mick and Mairead Philpott maintained a bizarre and toxic relationship. The UK couple maintained a comfortable lifestyle solely on welfare benefits, which included a 3-bedroom flat in Derby at the taxpayers’ expense. However, the pair decided their rent-free home simply wasn’t enough.
Mick and Mairead shared their townhouse with his mistress and mother to some of his 17 children, Lisa Willis, the Daily Mail reports. However, when Lisa left the home and took her kids and her share of the welfare benefits with her, the couple was determined to procure an even better living on the taxpayer dime. Apparently, the more than $80,000 per year they raked in from their six children just wasn’t enough.
Perturbed that his former lover had stripped him of some of the benefits, Mick and Mairead hatched a plot to burn down the house and frame Lisa. Allegedly, Mick was supposed to let the home burn for some time before rescuing their sleeping children, forcing the city to buy him a new house and making himself look like a hero in the process. Disturbingly, nothing went according to plan.
Horrifically, Mick and Miread’s children died from smoke inhalation as the flat burned. Jade, 10, John, 9, Jack, 7, Jesse, 6, and Jayden, 5, all perished in the fire. However, 13-year-old Duwayne passed away in the hospital after Mick had to be convinced by support officers to visit his dying son. Although the couple blamed a mysterious killer for setting fire to their home, their crocodile tears and odd behavior aroused suspicion.
“He chatted up the mortuary technicians,” retired Detective Superintendent Paul Callum said. “He made inappropriate comments about their breasts, about things he wanted to do with them sexually. At the mortuary, we know that he called his children ‘little s***s,’ which in any context that children have died, I don’t know how that can be deemed as appropriate.”
Although Mick and Mairead were crying to the press during the day, they were enjoying themselves at a local pub at night. Mick was even cracking jokes as his son clung to life from the fatal injuries he caused. Understandably, police turned the focus on them, uncovering their deadly plot to endanger their kids and defraud the welfare system.
“They were drinking double Jack Daniel’s, they appeared to be very tipsy, they were kissing and touching each other and he’s running his hand through her hair,” the pub owner recounted. “It wasn’t very appropriate. He was singing ‘Suspicious Minds [by Elvis Presley] which was a very strange song to pick. And everybody was saying ‘Why would he be doing this after his children have died?’ They weren’t grieving parents.”
Mick was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 50 years, and Mairead received 17 years for her part in her children’s horrific deaths. However, she wouldn’t stay locked up for long. Just 8 years into her sentence, Mairead explained that she was “delighted” to be released at the earliest possible parole date.
Mairead checked in at a halfway house, where she would reside for 3 months with a 7-p.m. to 7-a.m. curfew. The taxpayers covered thousands of dollars worth of bills for her to stay at the hostel. She was also given a new identity and a police escort.
David Spencer at the Centre for Crime Prevention said, “It makes an absolute mockery of the UK’s criminal justice system. She has served barely more than a year for each of the six innocent lives she callously took away.”
The couple had been in the public eye before the tragic death of their children. In 2007, Mick agreed to an interview in which he angrily defended his life on welfare with Mairead and his 18 children, telling all who had a problem with their lifestyle choice to “get f—–.” The couple also appeared in an episode of the sensational tabloid talk show “The Jeremy Kyle Show,” which captured the pair’s explosive relationship. Mick had also been previously convicted for stabbing a former girlfriend 27 times.
We can only hope that Mick spends the rest of his life in prison. However, it’s too late for Mairead, who is already enjoying the protection of the government and the public’s financial support.
Mairead served less than half of her sentence before being freed. In fact, it adds up to little more than a year behind bars for each of her children’s lives. Her release is not only an injustice to her dead children but also to the taxpayers who are still funding her worthless life.
