Man guilty of murdering eight-year-old daughter

A factory worker who stabbed his eight-year-old daughter through the chest in an apparent act of revenge against his ex-partner has been found guilty of murder.

William Billingham, 55, used a kitchen knife to kill Mylee Billingham after dragging her by the coat into his bungalow – moments after holding the blade to the neck of her mother, Tracey Taundry.

A trial at Birmingham Crown Court heard how Miss Taundry dialled 999 from outside Billingham’s house in Brownhills, near Walsall, telling operators to hurry as Mylee was screaming “stop it daddy”.

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.

The unemployed factory worker opted not to give evidence, claiming he had no memory of stabbing Mylee through the chest, and was guilty of the lesser offence of manslaughter due to depression.

But prosecutors argued that Billingham “turned his anger” on Mylee to spite Miss Taundry after she began a same-sex relationship.

Opening the case at the start of the trial, 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.”