Mick Philpott probably has pictures of the fire at his home, emblazoned on his jail cell wall. That's the kind of guy he is. He got away light, he got away with murder. He murdered his kids, and his slave wife, Mairead into the bargain. She might be living and breathing, but she's bound to be a zombie by now.
The vile Mick Philpott shocked the nation with his crime.. It is mentally painful to contemplate his actions. Stupidity is too crude, yet too fine a word. That misplaced word has been bandied about. Philpott was a vile morbid joke, if he wasn't so dangerous..
The intellectual analysis of Professor Wilson, criminal expert at Birmingham University, is off target.:
Bolstered by his TV appearances, he thought he had the power to control not just his media image but everyone around him, too. Idiotically, he even extended that to a belief in his ability to control fire -- with all the catastrophic consequences that followed.
Philpott, it seems, has gotten off lightly. He has fooled the experts, the intellectuals, the judge and the jury. I believe Philpott is not merely a narcissist, with a 'malevolent ego' whose self adulation spiralled out of control, resulting in a reckless act with tragic consequences.
Philpott, as his own twisted path demonstrates, is a cruel and sadistic murderer whose acting skills let him down.
This act, of revenge, was intentional. He set out to murder his six children, as a form of empowerment, of self-glorification, inspired by loathing of his ex-slave, Lisa Willis, and by extension, of his wife Mairead. Lisa Willis escaped Philpott's clutches, but Mairead was still available to torment.
How powerful he must have felt then, watching the mother howl in agony as her offspring burned to death under his roof, witnessing the brute numbness (numb from fear and habitual bullying) the incapacity, the dull victimhood of Mairead; further twisting the knife by "coercing" her into casual sex with his mate, a few days after the death of her six small children. A satanic celebration of shameless murder and the ultimate act of sadism. Philpott was saying to his victim, 'I've burned your children, and you still have to obey me.'
This was no manslaughter, this was murder, an act of blatant malice. Philpott planned this ritual as carefully as he managed his finances. This was not a fire 'out of control' but an act of controlled hatred.
The nation is in shock, not only because of the crime - how many times have we read in our newspaper about a father (or mother) killing offspring - but the deceiving nature of the crime. As though instinctively we know that this twisted branch of humanity severed its own roots, quite deliberately, as a means of destroying another soul. Mairead was available, handily enough..
