Father guilty of murdering 8-year-old Mylee Billingham

William Billingham has been found guilty of murdering his eight-year-old daughter Mylee and making a threat to kill his ex-partner.

The unemployed factory worker stabbed his daughter through the chest with a kitchen knife in an act of revenge against his ex-partner, a trial at Birmingham Crown Court heard.

Moments before killing his daughter, Billingham, 55, had held the knife to the neck of Mylee’s mother Tracey Taundry, 34.

Billingham claimed he could not remember stabbing Mylee and he did not give evidence during the trial.

He had said he was guilty of the lesser offence of manslaughter, due to depression.

Prosecutors disagreed, saying that he had “turned his anger” on Mylee in an effort to punish Miss Taundry for beginning a relationship with another woman.

Prosecutor Karim Khalil QC described the killing as “swift, deliberate, clinical, brutal…not some manic unfocused assault”.

He added: “This was no accident and it was not a slight injury – it was a deep, violent thrust of a lethal weapon into the most vulnerable part of his young daughter’s body.”

Jurors were told that Miss Taundry had been outside Billingham’s house in Brownhills, near Walsall, as her daughter was murdered.

She had called 999, telling operators to hurry, as she could hear Mylee screaming: “Stop it, daddy”.

The jury deliberated for around 80 minutes before convicting Billingham. He will be sentenced tomorrow.

Detective Inspector Jim Colclough, of the West Midlands Police homicide unit, said officers sent to the house had been “confronted by extremely upsetting scenes”.

Mylee had been lying injured under her father and “everybody worked together tirelessly to try and save her”, he said.

“Right from when officers first attended and were desperately trying to administer crucial first aid on his daughter he refused to cooperate or even tell them her name.

“In fact all he could manage to utter was the words ‘COPD’ which relate to a lung condition he suffers from- it demonstrates how selfish he is; his daughter was fighting for her life and all he was concerned with was himself.”

Commenting on the murder, Mr Colclough said: “A young girl, who had her whole life ahead of her, has been cruelly taken by someone who she loved and trusted, this is a despicable act on a defenceless child.”

Billingham, a father of six, suffered “some sort of breakdown” during the trial, according to his lawyer David Mason QC.

In comments made in the jury’s absence – which were not able to be reported until the conclusion of the trial – Mr Mason said: “From speaking to him, he found the events at court – particularly watching evidence by way of CCTV footage of his daughter – highly distressing.”

The apparent suicide attempt meant Billingham missed three days of the trial while in hospital.

A psychiatrist assessed him as being aggressive, controlling and prone to violence towards women, especially at the end of relationships. Two of his previous partners gave statements to police, one saying she had been headbutted by him during their relationship and bothered by him for two years after they broke up.

He was convicted in 1990 of causing actual bodily harm in an attack on his girlfriend at the time and he was cautioned twice in 2007 and 2012 after allegations of violence towards Ms Taundry.

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