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Tieng Anh Vui
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A man has been convicted of murdering three generations of a family in a fire, including his six-month old baby on her first night home from hospital.
Kim Buckley, 46, her daughter Kayleigh, 17, and granddaughter Kimberley died in the blaze in Cwmbran last September.
Carl Mills, 28, who was "incredibly controlling and jealous", started the fire because he wrongly believed another man was in the house.
Neighbours had tried to rescue the family but were beaten back by flames.
The prosecution argued Mills had set fire to a recycling bin in the porch of the family's house at 15 Tillsland on the Coed Eva estate in the early hours of 18 September.
Kimberley, who had been born 15 weeks prematurely and was blind and deaf, had only been released from hospital the previous afternoon after spending her first six months in a neo-natal unit.
The trial heard Mills, originally from Manchester, resented the attention Kayleigh gave to their daughter and wrongly suspected Kayleigh of seeing another man whom he thought was in the house with her the night of the fire.
During the trial, the jury heard evidence of a barrage of abusive text messages sent by Mills to Kayleigh in the hours and days leading to the fire in which he repeatedly threatened to harm her and set the house on fire.
They included: "Your house is going to go up in flames and I will be home when it does" while another promised: "I will murder you lot."
Just hours before the fire he sent texts saying: "I ... hope you get burnt" and: "If your house gets set on fire I'll find him."
No concern
Expert witnesses said the fire had spread rapidly up the stairs and into the bedrooms. Neighbours heard screams for help coming from the house and tried to reach the women with a ladder but the fire was too fierce.
Mills was arrested in the back garden of the house after behaving strangely and not showing any concern for the people inside.
He denied the murders, claiming he was drinking at a nearby spot in a field when the fire began and that he loved Kayleigh and was planning a future with her and Kimberley.
Det Supt Peter Jones from Gwent Police, who led the murder investigation, said: "Carl Mills was an incredibly controlling individual and an incredibly jealous one. We can see that from the texts he sent to Kayleigh on the night of the murders.
"The text messages that were sent that night were peppered with abusive comments towards Kayleigh and members of the family. Not just threats but how he was going to carry them out.
"This is an incredibly rare case to murder three people in the same house on the same night and all of them in the same family. It all outlines Carl Mills as an individual."
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