So she committed a horrible crime - conspiring to set the house on fire with her own six children inside - in order to... avoid being framed for a horrible crime? It doesn't make sense.
@ZoeCM
She also allowed Mick to invite Lisa Willis to move into their house and have four children by him while living there. At one point both Mairead and Lisa were pregnant and due at the same time. He dragged the whole family onto TV and publicly stated that he wanted to marry Lisa and divorce Mairead, and called both women 'bitches' in conversation with Anne Widdicombe. They both put up with all of that, and were prepared to countenance the damage done by the media publicity to all of the children, in order to keep him. Mick had an idea that he could divorce Mairead but she would stay living in the house along with her six children and he would continue to receive her wages and benefits and keep control of the money.
Here is the trial judge's take on the dynamic at play:
...it is necessary to look at the history of your relationships with other women.
The first with which I am concerned was a relationship with a girl in her teens. You were in your 20s. The relationship was characterised by violence; there were repeated beatings. On one occasion you broke her arm, on another you dislocated her knee with a sledgehammer. You were sure that she was having affairs and would come back from your posting in the army to check on her, repeatedly. Eventually she summoned the courage to bring your relationship to an end. You did not accept her decision.
You broke into her house, armed yourself with a knife and went to her bedroom where you stabbed her repeatedly in a ferocious attack which left her with life threatening injuries from which she has never fully recovered. You intended, as a jury were later to find, to kill her. When her mother intervened you turned on her. You stabbed her repeatedly in a further vicious attack and you caused her serious injuries. You were convicted of attempted murder and wounding with intent contrary to section 18 of the Offences Against the Person Act. You have, I am rightly reminded, served your sentence for that but it is clear from the evidence that I excluded from the trial that you have repeatedly used that conviction as a means of controlling other women, terrifying them as to what you might do to them if they did not follow your will ...
When you came out of prison you married your first wife. Three children were born. You subjected your wife to physical violence throughout your relationship. She never reported anything to the police. She was too afraid to do so. She knew of your past. She believed she could not leave you. She simply hoped that the time would come when you would leave her. And that time came when you took up with a very young Heather Kehoe. She was 16 when she ran away with you, you were in your 40s. She spoke tellingly of life with you: sometimes you were charming, always domineering, always in control. Your initial plan in the early days of your relationship was to find a house big enough to accommodate the children of your first marriage who were to be removed from their mother. In the event they remained living with their mother. Heather Kehoe had two children. You controlled her through physical and sexual violence, threats and emotional abuse. Eventually she ran away from you. You prevented her from taking the children and they remained with you for some six months. She achieved custody of them only after a protracted court battle. Ever since you have subjected her to repeated allegations, seeking to undermine her relationships with the children. She, like the two women before her, speaks of the life-long damage she has suffered as a result of her relationship with you.
Does it make sense now?
You made sure that Mairead "stuck to the story", checking with her at every opportunity that she wasn't going to stray, as you put it. You knew that Mairead Philpott would do almost anything for your approval, to please you, to get your attention, as she put it. Without you she would never have become involved in this plan. Because she failed to put her children before you she has lost all of them. Nothing I have seen in your conduct before and during this trial gives me any reason to believe that you had the slightest concern for Mairead Philpott. She, too, was expendable.
The maximum sentence for manslaughter is life imprisonment. You are a disturbingly dangerous man. Your guiding principle is what Mick Philpott wants he gets. You have no moral compass.
www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/apr/04/mick-philpott-jailed-judge-remarks
People do all sorts of things which are on the surface inexplicable when trying to keep on the right side of a 'disturbingly dangerous man'. Mairead put up with Mick's relationship with Lisa, never had a front door key of her own (neither did Lisa), bore five children in just about that number of years, participated in dogging and had an abortion at Mick's behest. Both Lisa and Mairead handed over all of their wages and benefits to Mick.
There was nothing, absolutely nothing, in the workings of the criminal justice system or the family courts with regard to Mick Philpott to give Mairead any hope that she would ever get any justice, or ever get her kids away from him, if she were to cross him.
Heather Kehoe was forced to fight a protracted battle to get her children away from a man who had committed a heinously violent crime against his first girlfriend and her mother. She continued to be victimised by Mick Philpott for years after she finally regained custody of her children, with apparently no way of stopping Mick's false allegations, no way to appeal to the law to stop the harassment.
Mick's allegations in the wake of the fire resulted in the arrest of Lisa Willis and neighbour Adam Taylor.
The man was seemingly untouchable and completely above the law.