Mairead Philpott: ‘possible’ husband started fatal fire

Mairead and Mick Philpott are accused, alongside their friend Paul Mosley, of the manslaughter of the children at their home in Derby. They all deny this.

Mairead Philpott was asked at Nottingham crown court if she was suggesting Mick had got out of bed shortly before the fire.

She said: “It’s possible, I don’t know because I was asleep.”

Richard Latham QC asked her: “”Are you saying that there is a possibility that your husband set this fire behind your back literally?”

She replied: “I honestly don’t know. I can’t rule out anybody. I just don’t know who set the fire.”

Mairead Philpott told the court she and Mick had been asleep in the conservatory at their home on the night of the fire last year.

She insisted that covert recordings made of conversations after the fire in which she discussed “sticking with the story” were references to her having sex with Mosley.

‘Disgraced’

“It was about the sex,” she told the court. “I didn’t want to be disgraced in the papers. My children had just died. I was more bothered about my children.”

She said she had taken an overdose afterwards because she wanted her husband, his former mistress Lisa Willis, and their 11 children to be together again.

They lived together for 10 years before Miss Willis moved out in February 2012.

Prosecutors allege that Mick and Mairead Philpott and Mosley started the fire to frame Miss Willis, with whom Mick was having a child custody battle.

Jade Philpott, 10; John, nine; Jack, eight; Jesse, six; and Jayden, five, died on 11 May 2012. Mairead Philpott’s son from another relationship, 13-year-old Duwayne, died later in hospital.