WHEN the charred remains of six innocent children were salvaged from a burning Derbyshire home, sympathy naturally fell with the mother and father left weeping in front of a nation.
But before long, the true horror story behind this nightmare emerged.
Mick Philpott and his wife, Mairead, were not the grieving parents they sought to portray themselves as, but rather the cold, calculated criminals behind the tragic blaze in May 2012.
Now, just over a decade later, Mairead's devastated father has blasted the "soft" sentences that have allowed his daughter and accomplice Paul Mosley to be released from jail in recent years.
Speaking to The Sun ahead of a new Channel 5 documentary, Jimmy Duffy also reveals the infamous press conference which first convinced him the warped couple were not as innocent as they pretended to be.
He says: "The charges should have never been dropped to manslaughter.
"It should have been murder, and all three should have gotten a life sentence."
He adds of his daughter, Mairead: "After the trial, we asked for no contact whatsoever with her.
"To this day, we don't have any contact.
"She's out of jail but I don't know where she is. We don't really care where she is.
"She needs to be careful because sooner or later someone will realise who she is.
"You can change your name, but you can't change your appearance."
Known in his community as a welfare scrounger and unapologetic manipulator, Philpott, 68, lived a life of chaotic excess, controlling two women - his wife and his former mistress, Lisa Willis - under one roof.
Fathering at least 17 kids, the monster saw his children as a means to infiltrate the UK benefits system and grab as much free cash as he could.
But when Lisa tried to escape his grip, taking her children with her, he devised a sickening plan with the help of pal Mosley and his wife.
In a sickening attempt to frame Lisa, the ghouls set fire to the house - situated on a sleepy street of Allenton, Derby - on May 11, 2012.
Duwayne Philpott, 13, his sister Jade, 10, and brothers Jack, nine, John, eight, Jesse, six and Jayden, five, all died in the gut-wrenching arson attack.
Philpott, who hoped to emerge as a hero, was instead unmasked as a father whose depravity knew no limits.
The trio denied their involvement but each was convicted of six counts of manslaughter after a trial at Nottingham Crown Court in 2013.
While Mairead and Mosley have been freed from prison, Philpott could be out in just three years after serving a minimum sentence of 15 years.
Philpott's former close friend, Mick Russell, echoes the sentiment of the children's devastated grandfather.
He says: "The overall sense of the community was that they should all rot in there.
"Philpott should never come out. He should die in prison for what he has done. Nobody is over it yet. We still play it in our minds.
"If you would have met the kids, you would have loved them. They were so nice, playful and cheerful. It's unbelievable."
Mick recalls first meeting Philpott after he was released from prison following an assault on his ex-girlfriend.
He says: "When he came out of prison, that's when his sister introduced me to him. I thought he was alright. He was one of the arrogant ones. He always wanted to argue with people.
"We never had a disagreement or anything like that. We used to go to the pub. He used to love doing karaoke, and we used to have a laugh."
Even before the tragedy, cowardly Philpott had a history of violence. In the 1970s, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for attempted murder, but he only ended up serving just over three years.
When he was 21, he viciously attacked his former girlfriend with a knife while she lay asleep in bed. He was furious that she had ended their relationship.
When her mother tried to intervene, Philpott attacked her too.
Mairead's father, Jimmy, instinctively felt that Philpott was bad news when his daughter first introduced him to her new partner.
“There was something about him that I just didn't like,” he says. “He seemed to be a control freak, and everything had to go his way. He was very arrogant. He thought he was God's gift."
When Mairead informed him about their wedding, Jimmy felt there was very little he could do to prevent it.
He explains: “I didn't talk to her about [any reservations].
"She was simply in love with the man, and that was it. She wanted to be with him. So there was nothing I could do to stop her."
When Philpott met Mairead in 2000, she was only 19. They married in May 2003.
The following year, he met 16-year-old Lisa Willis, who became his mistress and bizarrely moved into his council house alongside his wife.
Before meeting both of them, Philpott had already been married and divorced, and had fathered five children by two different women.
Mairead and Lisa lived together with Philpot in the same house - an arrangement that confused Jimmy.
He says: “I didn't know what to make of it. It's not like he was good-looking. But he had so many kids."
Mick says he was taken aback when he went to the family house and saw Lisa for the first time.
He says: "First he had Mairead and one day I went down there and met Lisa. I asked him who she was and he said she was his missus.
“I asked if he really had two women living with him and he started laughing.
"They seemed to get on fine together. They would do things together like go shopping and clean the house. Then, the kids started coming along."
Mairead eventually had four children with Philpot, while Lisa had four. It soon became apparent that he was using his kids to obtain more benefits.
In 2006, he sparked outrage by asking for a bigger house for himself and his family
He even appeared on an episode of Jeremy Kyle with Mairead. His moniker as 'Britain's worst scrounger' had made him a local celebrity in Allenton.
During that time, Jimmy admits that he only saw Mairead and his grandchildren "every now and then", but was a doting grandad whenever he visited them at their home.
While he wasn't aware of the ins and outs of the home, Mick, who always saw Philpott as a loving father, began to notice the way he would treat the two women in his life.
He recalls: "I did not see anything at the beginning. About halfway through one day, I went down there, and something happened.
"He went on one. He didn't hit the women, but he gave them a right mouthful. A couple of months after that I went over there and Mairead had a black eye.
"Once, Lisa was going to leave, but she never did. When I found out she had finally left, I thought good on her. "
Philpott was infuriated when Lisa left as he knew the benefits he was collecting would now be cut. That was when he came up with the vile plan to exact revenge on his ex-lover.
Jimmy was devastated when he received the horrific news of his grandchildren's death.
He recalls: "I got a phone call at 5 in the morning and told to get up to the Derby Royal as quick as I could.
"They said there had been a fire at Victory Road. I didn't know what had happened. When I got up to the hospital, everyone was there, and that's when I was told what had happened.
"They said the kids had died, and one was still alive. I was dumbfounded. I didn't know what to say or what to do. I just crumbled against the wall and sat on the ground."
He was drinking, laughing, joking, and showing off his clothes that all the shops had given him for nothing
But he soon began to notice Philpott's bizarre behaviour, especially when Mairead went over to hug her father.
"He was talking to somebody, and she came over to give me a hug", he says. "He shouted, 'Oi, get back here and back off.' She went to him. She never said anything to me."
But Jimmy was not the only one who noticed something was terribly off.
The morning after the fire, Mick rushed to be by his pal's side at the hospital, but was left confused by his behaviour.
He says: "I thought his behaviour was a bit weird. If it was me who had lost that many kids, and I got another kid dying on the bed, I wouldn't want to talk to anybody or anything like that.
"But he was joking, trying to chat up the nurses and just going on like a f***ing idiot.
"They put him in a hotel facing the hospital, and my wife and I used to go see him every day. And all of a sudden, he would come out with all of this shopping. He had all these clothes.
"And he somehow seemed to have a pocket full of money. I don't know where he got the money from, but he had loads of new clothes and lots of money.
"He didn't seem like a grieving father. If that were me, I wouldn't want to do anything."
A few days after kids' deaths, Philpott called a bizarre conference, which convinced Jimmy and many others that there was more to the story.
He had a long list of people to thank and even announced that he would like to donate his children's organs as that would make him "happy".
"At the back of my mind, I thought he had something to do with it", Jimmy says. "There was not a single tear. He was just tapping his eyes, and there was nothing there.
"I had a feeling my daughter was part of it, too, because whatever he said goes. If it really was him, then she would have been involved. She did what he told her to do."
In the days following the death, Philpott lived his life like nothing had ever happened. Mick explains: "He was weird. He didn't seem to be someone who had lost so many kids.
"He was laughing and showing off all his new clothes and he was still going to the pub. It was weird, but I thought everybody deals with their emotions differently. Maybe that's how he deals with it.
"I couldn't have gone on the way he did. He was drinking, laughing, joking, and showing off his clothes that all the shops had given him for nothing and flashing all his money."
But unbeknownst to Philpott, detectives working the case had begun to point the finger of suspicion at him.
Shortly after the deaths, Lisa and her brother-in-law, Ian Cousins, were arrested for the children's murder - just as Philpott had wanted. They were both released without charge.
His plan was to appear a hero who tried to save the kids, while framing Lisa for the fire.
Aware of how strangely fame-hungry Philpott was behaving, especially as a grieving father, cops bugged the hotel room he and Mairead stayed in.
They gathered evidence that confirmed the couple were involved in the deaths of their children. It was also established that their friend Mosley was an accomplice.
In the police tapes, Mairead was heard performing a sex act on Mosley.
The couple were arrested on suspicion of murder on May 28, 2012 - 16 days after the fire. After cops asked for more time to question them, they were charged with murder two days later.
The following November, Mosley was also arrested and charged with murder. The trio's charges were later downgraded to manslaughter.
When Jimmy heard the news of their arrest, it confirmed what he had assumed all along.
He says: "Once they were arrested, I thought my instincts were right. They had either done this or hired someone to do it.";
One moment during the trial was enough to solidify his belief that his daughter and son-in-law were guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
"On the second day, the prosecution read out everything and I turned to one of my daughters and said they've done this. They're guilty."
Although Mick was initially in shock, the vile facts of the case dawned on him as details of the crime emerged in court.
"It made me feel sick", he says. "How can you do that to your own children?
"Once I found out the truth, if I could have got my hands on him, I would have killed him myself.
"I never knew he was capable of something like this."
On April 2, 2013, following an eight-week trial, Philpott, Mairead, and Mosley were found guilty of manslaughter for the deaths of the six children.
Philpott was handed a life sentence with a minimum term of 15 years, while Mairead and Mosely both got 17 years.
Many campaigners believed the sentence was lenient. Philpot remains in prison and is eligible for parole in 2028.
The Philpott Fire: A Very British Horror Story airs on Channel 5 tonight at 9pm
