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Mick Philpott and wife Mairead House fire in Allenton
Mick Philpott and wife Mairead speak to the media after the fire at their home which killed six children. Photograph: Rui Vieira/PA
Mick Philpott and wife Mairead speak to the media after the fire at their home which killed six children. Photograph: Rui Vieira/PA

Derby house fire that killed six children was rehearsed, court hears

This article is more than 11 years old
Melissa John alleges her boyfriend's uncle Paul Mosley told her he acted out plan with Mick and Mairead Philpott weeks earlier

The parents and a man accused of killing six children in a house fire took part in a "rehearsal" of the fatal blaze weeks before, a court has heard.

Husband and wife Mick and Mairead Philpott and friend Paul Mosley are alleged to have acted out how they would save the youngsters from the property once the fire took hold.

All three are accused of the manslaughter of the six children in the fire that engulfed the Philpott family home in Victory Road, Allenton in Derby, in the early hours of 11 May last year.

Giving evidence to their trial at Nottingham crown court, Melissa John, the girlfriend of Mosley's nephew, said Mosley told her after he had been arrested and bailed by police in connection with the fire that the three of them had practised what to do.

She told the court: "He said: 'What if I was to tell you that we actually rehearsed this six weeks ago?"'

Prosecutor Richard Latham QC asked her what the plan had been once the fire had started, and John said: "Mick and Mairead were to be inside the house and Paul was to kick in the back door."

Latham asked her: "What were Mick and Mairead to do?"

"Run out on to the front and scream for help."

"What was Paul to do?" Latham asked.

"To save the children from the back bedroom," John replied.

She told the jury that Mosley said Philpott had been "going on about wanting a bigger house".

The court also heard Mairead Philpott, 31, had written in a suicide note that "next time she will take the children with her", and part of the plan had been for her to take the blame for the fire.

John also told jurors that while talking to Mosley round the kitchen table at her home she asked about the children's parents.

"I was asking him if he thought Mick and Mairead were actually capable of doing it and he said: 'I don't know but if they did it's something that's gone wrong'."

Mosley, 46, was arrested in June last year and released on police bail. He was rearrested and charged in connection with the children's death in November.

Jade, 10, and her brothers John, nine, Jack, eight, Jesse, six, Jayden, five, and Duwayne, 13, all died after the fire engulfed their home as they slept in their beds.

All three defendants have denied the charges.

John told jurors that Mosley was "bragging" to a number of people about being on bail for murder.

The court heard that he told women on internet dating sites as well as an employee at the job centre and a taxi driver.

John agreed with Ben Nolan QC, representing Mosley, when he asked her if Mosley was an "attention seeker" and a "fantasist" who used to exaggerate in order to "big himself up".

Jurors heard that, before he was charged over the deaths, he had told John he was going to sell his story to the newspapers and had been offered "millions" by a Chinese publication.

Mosley liked others to think he knew things they did not and would pull a "mysterious" face at such times, Nolan said.

John agreed she often did not believe what Mosley told her but when he told her about the "rehearsal" of the fire, his demeanour changed and she believed him.

"Paul's body language had changed from a smug sort of body language to nervous, which is different to how I had seen him before."

The jury was later played covert recordings of conversations caught in a bugged hotel room between the Philpotts and Mosley.

Mick and Mairead Philpott were heard talking in the room that was being monitored 24 hours a day by Serious and Organised Crime detectives, and officers also caught on tape sexual activity between them and Mosley. The prosecution alleged that Mrs Philpott performed a sex act on Mosley to keep him on side.

On 16 May, five days following the fire and after 31-year-old Mrs Philpott's witness evidence to police, Philpott, 56, asks his wife: "What did you say about me trying to get in?"

Mrs Philpott is heard to answer: "You tried everything you could to get in, like I said to them, I wanted to run through the flames up the stairs."

Philpott asked: "Was you crying when you said it? How bad?"

She replies: "Not really, really bad, but I was crying."

In another recording on the evening of 19 May, Mr Philpott and Mosley, were heard talking.

Philpott said to Mosley: "We all think it's - and the police do too - we think it's an accident."

"Gone wrong?" Mosley asked.

"Yeah," Philpott replied.

Mosley asked: "Something to scare you?"

Philpott answered: "Yeah and that's unfortunate, it's gone terribly, terribly wrong.

"Terribly wrong for us two."

Philpott is heard on recordings telling people he suspected the room was being bugged by police and tells visitors he and his wife were starting to feel like suspects.

The trial continues.

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