Saturday, April 12, 2025 - A mother, Kara Alexander, who murdered her two young sons in the bath while in a psychotic state, has been jailed for life.
Alexander was found guilty of drowning Elijah Thomas, 2, and
Marley Thomas, 5, at the home they lived in Dagenham, east London, in December
2022.
The 47-year-old, who had denied two counts of murder, was
convicted at Kingston Crown Court in February this year.
Post-mortems on the boys found they had either been drowned
or suffocated.
Alexander accepted at trial that she had placed the boys in
the bath before they “accidentally” drowned.
Returning to Kingston Crown Court on Friday, the judge,
Justice Joel Bennathan, sentenced Alexander to life imprisonment with a minimum
term of 21 years and 252 days.
The judge referred to the children’s father finding his
deceased sons next to one another as “the stuff of nightmares.”
Bennathan said: “On the evening of 15 December 2022, you’d
been smoking skunk.
“You’d been doing so every night for weeks, probably much
longer. At some stage, both the boys were in their pyjamas ready for bed, with
Elijah also wearing his nappy.
“You drowned them both by your deliberate acts.”
He added, “From all that I have read and seen of you, I have
no doubt that every day when you awake you will remember and grieve for the
little boys whose lives you snatched away.”
In his sentencing remarks, Bennathan also warned of the
dangers of drugs.
He said: “The heavy use of skunk or other hyper-strong
strains of cannabis can plunge people into a mental health crisis in which they
may harm themselves or others.
“If any drug user does not know that, it’s about time they
did.”
0 Comments