Father guilty of murdering eight-year-old daughter Mylee Billingham

A father who stabbed his eight-year-old daughter Mylee Billingham in the chest has been found guilty of her murder.

William Billingham attacked his child in an apparent act of revenge against his former partner.

The 55-year-old used a kitchen knife to kill Mylee after dragging her by the coat into his bungalow, moments after holding the blade to the neck of her mother, Tracey Taundry.

Ms Taundry called 999 from outside the house as Mylee screamed ‘stop it Daddy’, Birmingham Crown Court heard.

Billingham failed to give evidence at his trial, and claimed that he had no memory of killing his daughter.

He pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of manslaughter due to suffering from depression.

Jurors deliberated for around 80 minutes before unanimously convicting Billingham of murder and a separate charge of making a threat to kill 34-year-old Miss Taundry. He will be sentenced tomorrow (2 October).

Prosecutors argued that he ‘turned his anger’ on Mylee after her mother began a same-sex relationship.

Prosecutor Karim Khalil QC said of the killing: “It was swift, deliberate, clinical, brutal. It was not some manic unfocused assault.

“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.”

Speaking after the jury reached its decision, Detective Inspector Jim Colclough, of the West Midlands Police homicide unit called Billingham’s crime ‘the most selfish act you can think of’.

DI Colclough told reporters: “Mylee was an eight-year-old girl. She had every reason to believe that Billingham was the most trusted person in the world. To carry out an act and actually take Mylee’s life … it’s terrible.”

Additional reporting by Press Association