So this guy has two wives, and I know you might think, "Oh, that sounds kind of fun," but this is about to be a disaster for him. Now, the guy's name is Mick, and Mick has an interesting lifestyle. He's living in Derby, England, with his wife, this woman, Mered, but then at some point, he also moves his mistress into his home, this woman, Lisa.
So they all live together there like one big happy family. So, you know, good for them. But as the years go by, Mick keeps getting Lisa pregnant, so they keep having mixed babies, and eventually, they have a bunch of kids.
Here's the thing about Mick, though: Mick doesn't work; he doesn't have a job. He lives off the government. In fact, all of his income comes from welfare benefits, and with every new kid he has, he gets a little bit more money from the government.
Not to mention, the house he lives in is also public housing, so that's paid for by the government too. So, bro is just mooching. Now, eventually, over time, Mick, Mered, and Lisa end up having a total of 15 kids—15 kids—which means there are 18 people living in this house: Mick, Mered, Lisa, and 15 children.
And they're all living in this three-bedroom home. But then, to make it even worse, Mered and Lisa both get pregnant again. So what does Mick do?
Well, he officially puts in a request for the government to move his family to a bigger house to accommodate his comically large family. Now, this is such a wild request that it actually makes the local news, and people hear about it. They're really pissed off at Mick; they think he's taking advantage of public services, which, yeah, he is.
So Mick starts getting a lot of hate publicly and a lot of local media coverage, but he ends up kind of liking the attention; it feels good to him. He ends up going on this Jerry Springer-type talk show called The Jeremy Kyle Show. Wife number one comes to spend the night in the caravan, and then the next night, wife number two comes.
Oh, great, great! And then he ends up being in this documentary, and that gets pretty contentious. "You're a coward!
" "I—" "Soon as a coward bit, let's move it! " So, bro is just a mess, but whatever, he's getting a little bit of pseudo-fame, and he seems to really be enjoying it. So he just keeps living his life—not working, taking care of his kids, and smashing with Mered and Lisa in a trailer he keeps parked in their driveway.
I guess there's always a bunch of kids in the house, so they have to go out to the trailer in order to smash. What kind of hillbilly is this? But anyway, to make it even more complicated, I guess Mick and Mered are also swingers?
Because at some point, Mick sets Mered up with his buddy, this guy Paul, because I guess Mick likes to watch. So Paul and Mered smash while he sits in the corner and watches. Yeah, so this family dynamic is all sorts of unorthodox.
But this is where the story gets dark. At some point in time, Lisa becomes very frustrated with this whole situation because for a long time, Mick has been lying to her. He's been promising her that he's going to divorce Mered and be with her, and only her, permanently.
Yeah, good luck with that! Now, obviously, despite the fact that Mick has been saying this for years, he still hasn't done it, and at this point, she is tired of waiting. She's tired of this lifestyle; she's tired of smashing in a trailer parked in the driveway.
She has had enough, and one day, out of nowhere, boom! Lisa straight up leaves, and she takes her five kids that she has with Mick with her. Good for her!
And so, as you can imagine, Mick is pissed. I mean, he doesn't want Lisa to leave him; he can't have that! But more than that, he definitely doesn't want to lose custody of the kids because that will affect those sweet benefits payments he's getting from the government.
And so Mick comes up with this wild plan to be able to keep the kids and all the government benefits. First, he'll start a fire in the house while everyone's home. Then he'll swoop in and heroically rescue his and Mered's kids.
Then he'll frame Lisa for the arson. He'll say she started the fire and tried to burn the house down. That way, she'll get in trouble, she'll go to prison, and he'll get to keep all 15 of the kids, and he'll keep getting those welfare checks.
That's the perfect plan! What could possibly go wrong? Now, Mick knows he can't pull this off alone, so he asks Mered if she wants to help him set their own house on fire and frame Lisa, and Mered's like, "I.
" Then he asks Paul, and Paul agrees to help too. So a few months later, after Lisa has moved out, he sets his plan into motion. Now, on this particular day, there are only six kids in the house—Mered's kids.
The rest either moved out with Lisa or they're staying elsewhere. And so it's really early in the morning, and Mick, Mered, and Mered's kids are all inside, and the kids are all still asleep in their beds. Paul comes over to Mick's house, and he has a can of gasoline.
He goes inside, pours it at the foot of the stairs, and kaboom! He lights the place on fire. And as soon as everything's ignited, Mick and Mered run outside and they watch as the flames.
. . Engulf the house so everything is going as planned.
Mick calls 999, which is the UK's 911, and while the fire service is on their way, now it's time to swoop in and rescue the kids and look like a total hero. Mick and Paul try to run into the house, and immediately—pow! —they're hit with a thick wall of smoke and heat.
The fire has already gotten too big, too fast, and they try again and again, but there's just no way they can safely get inside. As much as the fire and smoke are keeping Mick out, they're also keeping the kids in. They're trapped.
They're trapped, and there's no way for them to escape. Now, remember, Paul poured the gasoline at the foot of the stairs, which is their only path to the front door, so the flames are just too big for them to get around. One by one, they all succumb to smoke inhalation, and one by one, they all end up un-alived.
Five of them die in the house that day, and one of them dies two days later in the hospital. Now, this was not the way the plan was supposed to go, and Mick and Merid don't know what to do, so they keep the lie going. They tell everyone that they're devastated, and they hold a press conference, putting on this whole show for the cameras.
"I've actually been down to our home, and what we saw, we just cannot believe. " Because their home is now burnt down, Mick and Merid are put up in a hotel. Remember, the fire initially started near the bottom of the stairs inside the house, and police, during their investigation, learn the fire started inside the house and become suspicious of this whole incident.
Detectives end up bugging the hotel room that Mick and Merid are staying in, and during their surveillance, they overhear Mick, Merid, and Paul all in the hotel room; they actually overhear them smashing— I mean, they literally hear them smashing. But more importantly, they hear them talking, trying to get their story straight. So, boom!
They arrest all three of them. I don't have mug shots, but here's Mick in real life. They end up going to trial, and they're all found guilty.
Merid is sentenced to 17 years in prison, Paul is also sentenced to 17 years in prison, while Mick gets life. Good.
