On Father’s Day in June she texted Robert again and he came round after work and spent the evening with his child. He continued to visit Alexander, but before long Danielle’s jealousy resurfaced and she kept asking him if he was seeing other girls. She told him that the baby was ‘a devil’ when he wasn’t there and it was obvious that she hadn’t bonded with the child. In August she phoned him when the infant wouldn’t stop crying and a neighbour overheard her screaming ‘Do you want me to throw this bairn down the stairs? Do you want me to stot its head?’
On Saturday 27 August 2005, she sat alone, brooding. She needed to be with someone, preferably Robert, but the baby had become an obstacle and her life was an endless round of nappies, bathing and feeds. She could hear Alexander in the next room, screaming, and sent his father yet another text. It said ‘You hurt me so bad. I can’t think of anything else to do. I’m sorry. I hope you remember that me and the bairn love you. It’s best I leave this way. I love you, always have and always will.’
She’d hoped that her veiled threats would bring him around, but he didn’t respond, so she called and sent texts to him all of the following day, but he’d had enough of her manipulation and stayed away.
ARSON
That evening, she laid her four-month-old-son on the settee and set fire to an armchair in the room with her cigarette lighter. As the flames took hold, she phoned 999 from her mobile and screamed at the operator to save her baby, saying that he was at the other side of the lounge from her and that they were separated by a wall of flames. The horrified operator could hear little Alexander shrieking as the fire spread. Tearing the cord from the landline, Danielle Wails used it to tie her wrists then ran into the hall and began screaming for help through the letterbox.
Firefighters kicked in the door and put out the flames whilst an ambulance took her, and her badly burnt baby, to hospital. There she was questioned by police and told them that two masked men had burst into the house, kicked the baby and punched her in the face. She’d regained consciousness to find herself tied up and the house on fire, and had only managed to phone 999 by using her tongue to press the buttons on her mobile phone.
Within hours, Robert was informed by Danielle’s mother about the fire. Police confirmed that the baby had died of his injuries and he went to Danielle to comfort her. The couple reconciled and went to stay at her parents’ house.
For the next three days, Danielle was almost constantly in tears and Robert and her family were hugely sympathetic. Police spent these three days searching for the intruders and investigating the supposed crime scene. Danielle had said that the intruders had locked her in – but they found her key in the laundry basket. The fire alarm had been checked by the charity the previous week, yet now the batteries were found in a kitchen drawer. She said that she hadn’t heard the intruders enter the premises because the radio was playing, but no radio was found at the property. She’d described how the men had viciously knocked her unconscious, yet she had only light bruising to her face.
It was clearly a fabrication, so police arrested her on suspicion of deliberately starting the fire and murdering her son. She vehemently denied this throughout hours of questioning, was charged and remanded in custody. Several of the other female prisoners hissed ‘child killer’ at her in prison and she was put into isolation for her own safety: ironically, women who have abused and neglected their own children are the prisoners who are most likely to attack a mother who has killed, as it’s easier for them to scapegoat someone else than to examine their own shortcomings.
CONFESSION
The following month, handcuffed to a police officer, she attended Alexander’s funeral and read out a poem which said that they would be reunited in an afterlife. Robert visited her, hoping for answers, but eventually caused a scene and was barred from the prison.
As her trial date neared, her legal team told her that her story didn’t add up, that there was no sign of the supposed masked men. Belatedly, she admitted that she’d started the fatal fire by herself.
At Newcastle Crown Court in August 2006, her family and friends there to support her, she pleaded guilty to infanticide. Two psychiatrists testified that she had been suffering from post-natal depression at the time that she murdered Alexander, that her mind was disturbed after the birth. Her QC echoed this, saying that she was comparatively isolated and had struggled to care for her son.
The judge noted that she had already spent over a year in jail and sentenced her to a three-year community order, which included three years’ probation and supervision at a bail hostel. After the trial, Det Supt Barbara Franklin, who led the enquiry, said ‘Danielle can only be described as an attention seeker.’
En route to the hostel by train, Danielle Wails went on a drinking binge and gave an interview to a woman’s magazine. (The previous month, the baby’s father had told his side of the story to a different woman’s weekly.) The magazine stated that she wasn’t paid for her story, but the authorities were enraged as she’d given the interviewer information which she hadn’t given to the police or the courts. A local MP demanded an enquiry as to why Danielle hadn’t been escorted all the way to the bail hostel, and she was briefly returned to jail for breaking her bail conditions by abusing alcohol.
SHERYL LYNN MASSIP
Twenty-four-year-old Sheryl and her husband were elated when she gave birth to their first son in March 1987. The couple returned to their home in Anaheim, California with their new baby, Michael, only to find that colic made him cry for up to 18 hours a day. Sheryl took him to the doctor several times but was told that he was healthy, that he would grow out of the almost-intolerable wailing. (Most babies only suffer from colic for the first three months of life.) Meanwhile, she was so exhausted that she couldn’t eat or sleep.
After a month of this mayhem, the former beautician became so confused that, according to her later testimony, she began to hear voices telling her that Michael was in pain and that she should put him out of his misery. Afraid for what she would do, she tried to return him to the hospital where she’d given birth, but they turned her away.
On 29 April, whilst in the grip of a full-blown psychosis, she decided to kill the child for his own good. She threw the six-week-old infant in front of a moving car, but the driver managed to swerve and miss him. After picking the baby up, the 24-year-old took him into her garage where she grabbed a blunt object and hit him over the head. He was still alive as she put him behind one of the rear tires of her vehicle and backed over him. The petite blonde then disposed of his body in a nearby trash can.
When her husband got home from work, she appeared dazed and told him that Michael had been kidnapped. At the police station, she elaborated on her story telling them that her son had been taken by a black object with orange hair and white gloves who wasn’t really a person. Shortly afterwards, the psychosis passed and she became deeply distraught and made a full confession. At her trial in November 1988, she pleaded insanity.
There’s little doubt that she’d suffered a full-blown psychotic episode and had been deranged at the time of the murder, yet the jury rejected her plea and found her guilty of second degree murder. A sympathetic Superior Court Judge, Robert Fitzgerald, rejected the jury’s verdict and found the unfortunate young woman not guilty by reason of insanity.
CARE IN THE COMMUNITY
Californian law at that time stipulated that a criminal defendant given such a sentence must spend at least six months in a psychiatric hospital, but the judge rejected the requested period of commitment and ordered Sheryl to spend a year as an outpatient attending a counselling centre. Afterwards, she was required to attend various treatment programmes, all of which she completed successfully. She divorced and later remarried, having a daughter with whom she forged a loving relationship.
In May 2008, Sheryl, now 45 and living in San Bernardino County, asked for a court order which would recognise that she is now sane and release her from further treatment. A leading mental health authority sup
ported her application, stating that she no longer requires therapy. At the time of writing, the Deputy District Attorney had yet to decide whether or not to oppose her request.
BEVERLY BARTEK
Beverly and her husband badly wanted children but he was sterile so they opted for artificial insemination by a donor and, on 3 May 1986, she gave birth to a daughter, Laura, in a Nebraskan hospital. A few days later, the nuclear family returned to their Lincoln home.
Thirty-three-year-old Beverly went on maternity leave from her job as deputy superintendent of a wildlife centre but found it almost impossible to sleep and on the rare occasions when she did drop off, she had terrible nightmares. She lost weight and became obsessed with the idea that artificial insemination was immoral and that her husband would leave her because Laura wasn’t his biological child. As the days progressed, her mental health worsened and she apparently heard a voice telling her that her infant daughter was evil, that she had to die. On 24 May she visited her physician and told him of her paranoid thoughts but he said that she shouldn’t worry, that it was just the baby blues.
On 26 May, Beverly drowned her 23-day-old daughter in the sink: medics estimate that it takes as little as 60 to 90 seconds for a small baby to die by drowning. Forty minutes later, she made a confused call to the local emergency services who arrived to find the infant dead, wrapped in a nightdress, nappy and a towel.
The distressed mother was charged with first degree murder and spent a month in a psychiatric hospital, after which she was allowed home on the proviso that she was supervised by her husband and her mother. She remained under psychiatric care.
When the case went to trial, five psychiatrists testified that she had been psychotic when she murdered her daughter, and the judge found her not guilty by reason of insanity and said that confining her to a psychiatric hospital would serve no useful purpose. She was free to go.
CHANGING TIMES
Though the aforementioned modern cases were treated leniently, mothers who killed their newborns in the early part of the 20th century often spent the rest of their lives in institutions. This could have happened in the British case which follows had the woman’s husband not petitioned repeatedly for her release.
BETH WOOD
Beth’s first baby, a son, was born in March 1902 in Romford, England, nine months into her marriage to Bert. The couple initially lived with Bert’s parents, but Beth and her mother-in-law often clashed, being similarly strong-willed. Later, they rented a home of their own and, in 1907, had their second child, another boy. In February 1913 the couple had a daughter and in July 1916 she gave birth to yet another son.
By now, Beth was back in the shadow of her hated in-laws as her husband had gone into business with his brother. But life was comfortable for the couple and their four children, who enjoyed the luxury of a five-bedroomed terraced cottage with a large backyard where the little ones could play.
Unfortunately, the Woods’ daughter Maisie developed the highly-infectious disease diphtheria in March 1918, a month after her fifth birthday. She was rushed to hospital and the house was fumigated, council workers burning the child’s toys, clothes and furniture lest the contagious disease spread. Maisie was placed in the isolation unit of the local infirmary, where, later that month, she died.
Beth was too distraught to attend the funeral and stayed at home with her baby son, telling him repeatedly that Maisie had gone to Heaven. Her grief was compounded the following month when her 16-year-old son left home to join the Territorial Army and she expressed fears that she’d never see him again.
In retrospect, Beth was suffering from clinical depression, finding the simplest task too much of an effort, but well-meaning relatives suggested to Bert that he should impregnate her, that another child would take her mind off Maisie’s death.
INTERNAL INJURIES
In late 1918, Beth became pregnant for the fifth time. She was now 40-years-old and in poor physical and mental health, convinced that she was going to die and that Bert would have to cope with the children without her. She cried every day and worried about whether her second-born son, due to leave school the following year, would be able to find employment in these difficult post-war times. She suffered from insomnia so would rise early and scrub the floors and the front step until she was exhausted. Her diet was meagre and, when she did eat, it was a less-than-nutritious slice of bread with margarine.
On 16 August 1919, she went into labour three weeks early. She was in pain throughout the night, though attended by a caring and experienced midwife. Everyone was expecting Beth to have one baby during the home birth, but, when her daughter was born, the midwife could see another baby girl in the birthing canal and that it was breech. She manually moved the baby into a head-down position, causing Beth further agony.
The second baby was born and, unaware that a third child was still in the womb, the midwife gave Beth a dose of the medicine ergot to help expel the placenta. This made the third baby’s heart stop beating. The uterus contracted violently and, 15 minutes later, the dead or dying baby was born, whereupon Beth haemorrhaged massively. The midwife tried desperately to revive the infant which, like its siblings, weighed only 3lbs, but to no avail.
Beth almost lost consciousness during the grisly birth, and had to be taken to hospital in a taxi for a blood transfusion. The doctor told her that once her health had recovered she would need a major operation to restore her lacerated perineum, the area between her rectum and vagina, which was badly torn. On her return home, she was told to rest in bed for a month but found it impossible to relax and began to fret about the impending operation, telling Bert that she feared the surgery, especially as it might leave her incontinent. In the space of 18 months she had lost two children and now had premature twins to nurture, yet she had nothing left to give.
For several days she remained in the marital bedroom, following doctor’s orders, but still directed the entire household from her sickbed. In retrospect, she was either going into a manic phase or reacting to the ergot that she was being given regularly to prevent post-partum bleeding. Ergot can produce dramatic mood swings and even hallucinations or full-blown psychosis in some patients and, desperately thin and undernourished, Beth Wood must have been particularly susceptible to this.
DROWNED
When the babies were 10 days old, she awoke sometime between midnight and 4am with a terrible feeling of foreboding. Whilst the rest of the household slept, she took both of her infant daughters from their crib, dragged the tin bath into the back yard and filled it with cold water from the water butt: she would later remember that the cold had made her feel more energised than she had for months. Then she put the babies, still clothed, into the full bath and went back to bed.
At 4.30am she woke her sleeping husband and said agitatedly that she’d left the babies downstairs. He explored the downstairs rooms then went out into the yard and found them, drowned, in the tin bath. He confronted Beth with this but she denied it, saying that she’d merely bathed them and left them downstairs. Increasingly confused, she began to weep.
The police were summoned and Beth was taken to the local hospital, by which time her mental health had deteriorated further. She talked to babies that only she could see, complained of pains in her head and retreated into a world of her own.
MURDER CHARGE
A fortnight after the murders, the coroner held an inquest. But when he saw how weak Beth was, he said that she did not have to give evidence. She could only walk by leaning heavily on a nurse and was still too sick to have the operation on her perineum.
Unfortunately, it would be 1922 before the law was changed to allow for a manslaughter charge in such post-natal depression cases, so Beth was charged with double murder. On 17 October 1919 she appeared, still desperately frail, before the local magistrate. She was remanded in Holloway Prison until her trial and was allocated a cell in the hospital wing where she spent most of her time weeping and expressing both grief and remorse.
; Whilst she was in prison, the babies – named Queena and Freda – were buried next to their sister Maisie. (In those impoverished days, insurance companies refused to insure a child under three-months-old for fear that the parents would be motivated to murder it, so the Wood family had to pay the cost of the double funeral from their savings and didn’t have enough left over for a headstone, though one was bought at a later date.)
On 31 October 1919, Beth went on trial at Essex Autumn Assizes, knowing that the jury could find her guilty and that she’d face the death penalty. She pleaded not guilty. The prosecutor was sympathetic, outlining the death of five-year-old Maisie, the dead newborn triplet and injurious birth. The defence echoed these statements, noting that Beth had borne no malice towards her babies, had drowned them whilst in an enfeebled state of mind.
The judge told the all-male jury that, if they believed Beth had intended to drown the girls, they must find her guilty of murder – only then could they deal with whether she was responsible for her actions. The jury found her guilty but said that she was not responsible.
INCARCERATED
In a compassionate society, the courts would surely have decided that Beth had suffered enough and allowed her to return to her loving husband and sons. Instead, she was sent to Broadmoor, the psychiatric hospital, where she joined a hundred other women who had murdered their children whilst in the grip of post-natal psychosis, in those days known as puerperal insanity. Some of these women would remain there for the rest of their lives…
Though she recovered physically and mentally, Beth had no memory of drowning the two girls. She told other inmates that she must have done it because everyone said that she had, and she sometimes expressed the wish that she’d been given the death sentence. Meanwhile, her husband sank into a deep depression which lasted a year and the children had to be raised by his mother and an unmarried sister. After this, he got a new house for his family and began to petition various legal bodies for his wife’s release.
Parents Who Kill--Shocking True Stories of the World's Most Evil Parents Page 3
