Father guilty of Openshaw house fire deaths

Kevin Hargreaves and his wife did not live together

A father has been jailed for 12 years for killing his son and two teenage stepchildren in a house fire he started after an angry row with his wife.

Kevin Hargreaves, 38, poured petrol over himself and lit it - setting the house in Openshaw, Manchester, ablaze.

His eight-year-old son John, stepson Jordan, 14, and stepdaughter Carly, 19, died in the fire last July.

A jury at Manchester Crown Court cleared him of murder, but convicted him of manslaughter.

Mr Justice Holroyde at Manchester Crown Court told Hargreaves: "It was selfishness and self-indulgence which caused you to set the fire and light it. I do not accept that it was an impulsive act."

Hargreaves, of no fixed abode, married Susan Owen in 2003 but they never lived together because of their volatile, alcohol-driven relationship, the court heard.

Anyone who heard the evidence will find it hard to erase the mental images of Jordan at the window piteously calling for help to his mother Mr Justice Holroyde Manchester Crown Court Inquiry after family deaths

The couple spent the day drinking on 15 July and returned to Ms Owen's home in Herne Street.

They had rowed in a taxi because Hargreaves thought Ms Owen was flirting with the driver and he was angry that she bought the cabbie a kebab.

After an argument in the house, he punched her in the face before running upstairs and pouring the petrol from a lawnmower over himself in the bedroom.

"I had had enough of life," Hargreaves told the jury, who later said he still loved his wife "to bits".

The court heard Mr Hargreaves walked down the stairs of the property after the fire started and was later spotted leaning on the garden gate as the fire raged.

Hargreaves had denied three counts of murder. Seven other children survived the fire.

'Untold pain'

He was cleared of murder on the basis that he only wanted to kill himself and not seriously harm or cause death to anyone else in the house.

The judge said from Ms Owen's impact statement it was extremely clear that in her own words she had suffered "untold pain".

John and his half-brother Jordan died when they became trapped in a third-floor bedroom, while Jordan's 19-year-old sister, Carly, died after she dashed back into the house in the hope of saving the boys.

Kevin Hargreaves had a history of violence towards his wife

Ms Owen had told the court that she saw Jordan at the window shouting "Mummy help me" as the fire took hold of their home.

Ladders brought by neighbours did not reach the window.

Mr Justice Holroyde said: "The terror which those boys must have suffered when they realised they were trapped, prevented by physical impossibility or by fear from descending the blazing stairs or jumping out of the window, is too awful to imagine.

"Anyone who heard the evidence will find it hard to erase the mental images of Jordan at the window piteously calling for help to his mother."

The court heard Hargreaves was convicted of assaulting his wife in 2007 when he hit her at a bus stop late at night after she refused to have sex with him on a canal path in the rain.

He has an IQ of 74, which puts him in the bottom 4% of the population, and a history of depression and self-harming, the court heard.