Mylee Billingham: CCTV shows schoolgirl smiling with her father before he allegedly killed her
Mylee Billingham was captured on CCTV buying a treat from a shop with her father just hours before he allegedly plunged a knife into her chest, a court has been told.
Jurors at Birmingham Crown Court were shown the footage from the Costcutter shop, which shows a jubilant eight-year-old Mylee running and picking up a treat after her father William gave her the ok to buy something.
As the video was shown to the jury, the defendant opted not to look, slumping forward in the dock and shielding his eyes
The pair entered the shop, near Billingham’s Brownhills home, at 6.53pm.
WATCH the CCTV footage:
Just over two hours later police arrived at his Valley View house to find a lifeless Mylee lying face up, grey in pallor, and covered in blood.
On body camera footage shown to the court, Pc Stacey Banbury is heard to gasp as she comes across the bodies after finding the front door key inside the letterbox and letting her self in.
The officer wept in the witness box as she recalled dragging Billingham’s body away to reveal a bloodied Mylee.
While a colleague tried to resuscitate the youngster, she dragged Billingham into the living room and could feel him resisting her.
“His eyes were flickering. Every so often he opened his eyes and looked at me but when he saw I was looking, he would close them again. He wasn’t trying to assist in any way,” she said.
“He kicked out at me at one point as I was cutting off his clothes,” she told Birmingham Crown Court adding that Billingham remained mute, apart from a whimpering sound, throughout. “I never heard his voice,” she said.
'I never wanted to hurt her'
Earlier the court heard how Billingham said in an interview three weeks after the alleged murder: “I still find it hard to believe. I never wanted to hurt her. I never wanted to lose her.”
Asked what he meant, the murder trial heard he said he had lost her two older siblings to the internet, explaining they were always online.
The jury were also told how Mylee ‘absolutely loved’ her father.
Melissa Billingham, 27, one of Billingham’s six children, said: “He was a doting father. He loved the bones of all his children.”
Miss Billingham, who had spent time with the pair on the day of the tragedy, said Mylee’s ‘outdoorsy, tomboy’ ways appealed to their father, and the feelings were mutual. “She absolutely loved him,” she told the court.
Miss Billingham said she left the youngster at The Shoulder of Mutton pub in her father’s care at about 3.30pm on January 20, telling defence barrister Mr David Mason QC: “If I’d had any concerns I wouldn’t have left them.”
She added that despite some personal blows – losing his parents within a month of each other, being made redundant and developing a lung problem – her father had no mental issues she was aware of.
