Banker’s deadly love triangle with twin sisters
A banker was strangled to death by his wife after he fell hopelessly in love with her twin sister.
Gillian Philpott, 28 allowed her sister Janet to move into the home she shared with her partner Graham Philpott, 53, and she went with them on their honeymoon in Bali.
When she found about the affair, Gillian strangled Graham with a dressing gown cord as he lay on their bed a week after Christmas 1989.
She then tried to make it look like suicide and kill herself with an overdose.
Gillian Philpott left school to work at Nat West’s Lombard Street branch and was 17 when she met senior bank manager Mr Philpott.
When she was 20, she started to live with Mr Philpott, who had been married twice before and had two children, now grown up.
Then, shortly before their marriage in September, 1988, Janet broke up with her boyfriend and Gillian invited her to move in with them ‘which she accepted with enthusiasm.’
‘But between September, 1988 and December, 1989 Gillian realised her husband was becoming very fond of Janet,’ said prosecutor John Nutting.
Gillian wanted her sister to leave but she stayed at the house.
When she found a love letter from her husband to her sister Gillian she confronted them but was told she was ‘neurotic.’
She went to her doctor for depression ‘and apart from her doctor the outside world knew nothing of these events.’
‘To the last their friends and neighbours thought they were a loving, happy couple,’ said counsel.
‘But all the time the cauldron of this eternal triangle was simmering.
‘On December 27, while her husband and sister were out shopping, Gillian searched her sister’s bag and found a Christmas card from her husband to Janet, which read: ‘I’m so fortunate to spend my life with you always.’
She confronted them again and this time Janet moved out of the house.
Her husband responded by telling his wife that ‘from that moment on she must sleep in a separate room.’
Later police recovered a tape recorded message which was ‘really one long love letter’ to Janet.
When the couple returned home in the early hours of New Year’s Day 1990 Gillian Philpott strangled him.
She then dragged his body to the staircase where a different ligature was tied round his neck and attached to a banister to make it look like suicide.
Philpott wrote a suicide note and then took 30 tablets washed down with alcohol.
When that failed to work she drove to Beachy Head intending to drive off the cliffs but her car veered to the side and crashed in bushes near a 50ft drop.
Police took her to hospital and they broke into the couple’s home at Mungo Park Way, Orpington, they found the body and the note.
It stated: ‘We could not live separately. We wanted to die together. Please keep us together, I beg you. We loved one another so much.’
She told police: ‘He didn’t want to know me from the time Janet left. He ignored me. He was so nice in front of the neighbours. I thought perhaps everything was all right.
‘But when we got home he said he didn’t care for me anymore and wanted a divorce.
‘I asked him if I could come to bed and he said no. I said he could bring Janet back if that was who he loved.
‘He said I should never have done to Janet what I did and that I was a bitch.’
She then described to detectives the moments that led up to the killing.
‘He said he didn’t want me. I just do not know what I did. All I can see is Graham standing there shouting at me. I just thought my world had ended.
Jailing her for two years, Judge Neil Denison, QC, told her: ‘You have pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of provocation.
‘In other words, the nature of the provocation was such that any reasonable woman of your age and background would have lost her self-control.
‘But you took the life of your husband and deprived two children of a father.
‘Perhaps the greatest punishment is that you will have to live for the rest of your life in the knowledge of what you did.
Her plea of not guilty to murder was accepted by the court.
