When First We Practise To Deceive

Weaving a tangled web of deceit, planning to execute a crime that would implicate someone else as being criminally responsible, and taking the chance that all would work out to their advantage did not work in reality as it did in theory for a British couple, parents of six children. Whom they presumably loved. The children ranged in age from five to thirteen.







The parents conspired with a family friend to set a house fire in Derby, England. The plan was to spread gasoline to fuel the fire, so they could somehow place the blame on a former mistress of the father of the children. In some manner to manage to gain sympathy for the man in proceedings in family court.

The simple-minded plan was for all the children to be placed in one bedroom for that night. The father planned, once the fire had successfully taken, to smash the window of that particular bedroom, and retrieve the children, removing them to safety.

From that one bedroom, they felt it would be simple to extract the children. The fire did not proceed as planned; how they might have believed they would be able to control the fire just long enough to enable them to take the children out of harm's way is ample testament to their level of intelligence.

That they were then punished by the deaths of all their children because they were in fact unable to rescue them from a fire they had themselves set may seem like due punishment for criminal minds, but it represents an absolute horror in the annals of parental neglect, stupidity and endangerment of minors.

On Tuesday, the parents, Mick and Mairead Philpott were found guilty of the deaths of the six children in May 2012. Paul Mosley, the family friend was convicted as well, of manslaughter.