Philpott fire: live updates from day 25 of the Derby trial

Tuesday was the 25th day of the ongoing manslaughter trial of husband and wife Mick and Mairead Philpott and their friend Paul Mosley.

Philpott, 56, Mairead, 31, and Mosley, 46, all deny the manslaughter of six Philpott children in a house fire in Allenton, Derby, last May.

Day 25 of the trial

The trial is adjourned until Wednesday morning.

3.50pm Mr Latham said: "The plan was to blacken Lisa's name and get the kids, wasn't it?"

Mairead replied: "There was no plan."

Mr Latham said: "The three of you (the three defendants) thought this up, it was planned?"

Mairead replied: "No, it was not."

3.35pm Talking about a status update on social networking website Facebook - which Philpott put up on May 1, claiming Ms Willis' brother-in-law Ian Cousins was the father of her eldest child - Mr Latham said: "It was deliberate, it was a big prop, wasn't it? What was the point of that?

Mairead replied: "I don't know."

3.25pm Mr Latham tells the court Mairead's version of events for the first part of the 999 call was "a lie from start to finish."

He said: "The tape doesn't lie, it is free standing as a piece of evidence."

Mairead replied: "I am telling the truth."

3.05pm Talking about the night of the fire, Mr Latham asks Mairead: "Where do we hear you call out to your children in the first two minutes of your 999 call?"

Mairead replied: "You don't because I was on the phone."

Mr Latham said: "I would suggest to you that, for the first minute and 40 seconds of the 999 call, you were incredibly calm. That was all part of the plan."

Mairead replied: "There was no plan."

2.50pm Mairead is asked by Mr Latham: "What was petrol doing in the u-bend of the sink that night?"

She replied: "I don't know."

2.45pm Mr Latham asks Mairead: "There's petrol in your leggings and petrol on your thong. Where has that come from?"

Mairead replied: "I don't know."

2.30pm The jury hears from Mairead how she was "a slave" to Philpott. Mr Latham said: "You said yesterday he was your guardian angel?"

Mairead replied: "He was when we first met."

Mairead said she initiated the dogging because "it was the only time he would give me attention."

2.25pm Mairead tells the court that "sticking to the story" - which she and Philpott said was having sex with Mosley - was concocted between her and her husband at Birmingham Children's Hospital.

She said that discussion did not involve Mosley. Mr Latham said: "Surely the one person you needed to tell, needed to agree this with, was Paul Mosley?"

Mairead replied: "We didn't talk to Shakey (Mosley) about it."

2.15pm The afternoon session will continue with Mr Latham cross-examining Mairead.

The trial is adjourned for lunch.

12.45pm Talking about Lisa Willis's children, Mairead said: "I was more of a mother to those children than what their own mother was."

Mr Latham put it to Mairead that they knew there was a real chance they were being recorded. She replied: "No I didn't. I think Mick probably did but I didn't."

Mairead said she had told work colleagues about the abortion but lied to Mick and said she had not told them. Mr Latham said: "You lied to his face. You will tell a lie if it is required, won't you?"

Mairead said: "No, not all the time."

12.30pm Richard Latham said to Mairead: "You had an agreement not to talk about sex, dogging and Shakey."

Mairead agreed.

But Mr Latham said omitting something wasn't a story.

He said: "But that wasn't a story, you weren't going to mention it. A story is an account about something positive.

Mairead replied: "Possibly, yes."

She said: "`Sticking to the story' was not telling police about having sex with Shakey on the night of the fire."

Referring to covertly recorded conversations in the hotel, Mairead was asked what she thought Mick meant when he said: "I was expected that you were going to stray."

She said: "Walking away."

11.50am Asked by Mr Latham if she was responsible for the deaths of her children, Mairead replied: "I am not responsible for the deaths of my children."

11.25am Richard Latham, QC, for the prosecution, asked Mairead, in cross-examination: "Are you saying it is possible that your husband could have got out of bed without your knowledge and set this fire?"

Mairead: "I don't know, I was asleep. I can't rule out anybody."

Talking about the covert police recordings in the back of the van, Mr Latham told Mairead that Mick whispered to her `Are you sticking to the story? I didn't do it on my life.'

Mr Latham said: "What is your version of events with those words?"

Mairead replied: "I don't know, he could have done it, I didn't hear it. My mind was elsewhere, I was thinking about my children."

11.05am Mr Orchard asked Mairead: "The line we have heard about `not sticking to the story' was about sex wasn't it? You didn't want the Press getting hold of it? Being on Jeremy Kyle taught you the dangers of being in the media spotlight?"

Mairead replied:"That's correct."

Mr Orchard said: "You were not covering up setting a fire were you?"

Mairead replied: "No it was not".

Mr Orchard finished his cross-examination by saying "The truth is that neither you nor Mick set the fire on that night did you?"

Mairead replied: "No".

10.55am Mairead said Philpott was frightened of Lisa Willis. She said: "He is scared of her, she has a temper."

Mairead told the court that neither she not Philpott had any desire to harm Ms Willis.

Mr Orchard asked: "Even after the fire you and he were both reluctant she had anything to do with the fire?"

Mairead replied: "Yes."

10.40am The case is about to restart with continued cross-examination of Mairead Philpott by Anthony Orchard QC, for Mick Philpott.

The court hears that after the birth of their youngest child Jayden, in February 2007, Philpott had a vasectomy. That is why Philpott knew Mairead had become pregnant by another man who she had sex with when the couple went dogging.

Mairead agreed that after her suicide attempt on February 21 last year, Philpott realised how selfish he had been thinking about his own situation with Ms Willis walking out.

10.20am Mick Philpott is in the dock wearing a grey suit, white shirt, pink tie. Mairead is in a black jumper. Mosley is wearing a black coat.

On Monday, Nottingham Crown Court heard that Mairead Philpott was given tiny footprints printed on paper and locks of hair as heartbreaking mementos of her dead children.

She wiped away tears in the witness box as she told how losing them felt like she'd "had her insides ripped out" and that she was "empty and crying inside".

She also told her trial at Nottingham Crown Court that she could barely remember anything about what happened in the weeks after the blaze at 18 Victory Road, Allenton, which claimed the children's lives.

But she felt "ashamed and disgraced" about having sex with her co-accused, Paul Mosley, in a hotel where she and her husband were staying immediately after the fire.

Mairead also denied she had "broken ranks" with her husband, Mick, as had been suggested earlier in the trial, and also told the court "there was no plan" between the three co-accused.

Yesterday saw the first of two days she is expected to face questioning.

Her barrister, Shaun Smith, said to her: "In the mortuary must have been the last time you saw your children?"

Both she and Mick were in custody when the youngsters were buried.

Mr Smith said: "You did not go to their funeral, did anyone give you anything to remember them by?"

Mairead replied: "The hospital gave me some footprints and locks of their hair. The only thing I remember about that time in Derby (before her arrest) was that all of my children had passed away."

Mr Smith said: "Can you help us and tell the court what that feels like?"

Mairead replied: "Like my insides had been ripped out."

Mr Smith asked; "How did you feel on the inside?"

Mairead said: "I was crying, empty."

Under questioning from her barrister, Mairead told the jury that she had little or no recollection of what happened in the immediate aftermath of the fire and her subsequent arrest more than two weeks later.

It was put to her that her husband, giving evidence last week, said they spent most of those two weeks "smashed out their heads on cannabis", an allegation she denied.

"I did smoke cannabis two or three times to help me sleep but I was not smashed out of my head," she said.

Mr Smith also asked her about a sexual encounter she had with co-accused Paul Mosley in the Premier Inn, in Uttoxeter New Road, opposite the Royal Derby Hospital, where the children's bodies were in the mortuary at the time.

He said: "I have to ask you this because, quite frankly, anybody would. Your children had died, you were in a hotel and you did this. What was that all about?"

Mairead replied: "It was something Mick wanted me to do, I was elsewhere, my mind was on my kids. I feel ashamed, I am a disgrace."

Mr Smith went on to question covert police recordings taken from the hotel and the police van after their arrest. On them Philpott is heard asking "are you sticking to the plan?"

Mr Smith said: "What plan was that?"

Mairead replied: "About not telling people about the sex with Shakey (Mosley)."

Mr Smith said: "We heard (prosecution barrister) Mr Latham last week say to Mr Philpott that you had broken ranks, against him. Were there any ranks to break?"

Mairead replied: "No."

Mairead also relived the night of the fire under questioning in court.

She said as far as she was aware Mosley had only come to the house to play snooker and that she was unaware if her husband had previously asked him to come and babysit while he took her out.

She said the pair did ask Mosley if he would babysit for them later that night while they went out "dogging" (having sex in public) , but nothing happened. Instead the three of them had sex on the snooker table at the back of the house.

She said she let Mosley out of the front door and then locked the door but a downstairs lounge window, which firefighters who put out the blaze have previously told the jury was open when they arrived, was shut when she checked it.

Mr Smith asked her: "Are you able to tell us how, or at what stage, that window became open?"

Mairead replied: "No, I can't."

Mairead said she then went upstairs to go to the toilet and checked on the children who, as far as she was aware, were asleep in the three upstairs bedrooms.

Mr Smith said: "It has been suggested there was a plan all along to get on the conservatory roof and rescue the children through a window in Jade's bedroom that would be open?"

Mairead said: "There was no plan."

Mr Smith also asked her about her suicide attempt on February 21, 10 days after her husband's live-in lover, Lisa Willis, walked out of the house with her five children, to four of whom Philpott is the father.

She replied: "I just wanted to die.

"I thought if I was gone everyone would be happy."

Mr Smith asked about a call she made to her husband on April 6 when he was taking family and friends of Derby darts player Colin Osborne to a darts event.

The court had previously heard witnesses say Philpott told them the call was from his wife and that she had called him scared because she had received a silent call.

Mr Smith said: "Why did you phone Mr Philpott that night?" She replied: "Because the kids were playing up."

Mr Smith said: "So there was no silent call?"

Mairead replied: "No."

Mr Smith said to Mairead: "You have been in the witness box for something like three hours. Have you told the jury the truth?"

Mairead replied: "Yes, I have."

Mr Smith asked her: "Did you have anything to do with the deaths of those children?"

Mairead replied: "No."

*THE PHILPOTT TRIAL: Visit our Philpott trial channel here for all related stories in the fire death case.