Читать книгу Parents Who Kill - Shocking True Stories of The World's Most Evil Parents - Carol Anne Davis - Страница 12

Meanwhile, talks were going on behind the scenes between the defence and the prosecution. The latter said that the baby had been born alive because air had been found in her lungs. They said that the infant had taken a few breaths before being suffocated and speculated that the motive was so that Paul wouldn’t find out about the pregnancy as she might have been impregnated by another man. (Paul had chosen not to give a blood sample, as was his right, so they couldn’t determine who the father was.)

The defence noted that, if Caroline had dumped the body in New York, it would never have been traced to her. Instead, she’d carried it around all day then attempted to board a plane back to England still carrying the corpse, the actions of a woman who was mentally ill. And a professor of pathology found that the baby suffered none of the marks consistent with the haemorrhages which are sometimes seen after suffocation.

Several experts believed that the baby girl had died at birth, possibly being strangled by the umbilical cord, and that air had been artificially introduced into her lungs when Caroline picked her up.

An empathic American journalist described her as a ‘non-malevolent, unsophisticated, tragic figure,’ a viewpoint which was increasingly shared in Britain and throughout the states as her story made headline news.

By now Caroline had been in America for 18 months and was desperately missing her family and terrified of being sent back to jail. She reluctantly agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter – a crime that she did not believe that she had committed – in exchange for her return to Britain and psychiatric help. If she’d gone to trial and been found guilty, she could have been jailed for up to 25 years.

After the plea bargain, her father said what many people were thinking: ‘I personally think that this has been a cruel and medieval prosecution that does no credit to a civilised society.’ In turn, the judge retorted ‘any law that grants a blanket exemption from prosecution or punishment for those people who kill their children when their children are under one year of age is a law which is primitive and uncivilised.’

Back home at last, Caroline returned to work, writing supportive letters to several of the women who supported her in Rikers. Her baby, whom she named Olivia, was cremated in the states and her ashes were returned to England.

Caroline’s experiences in the states were harrowing – but, two years after her imprisonment, another mentally ill tell-no-one mother in Britain would be treated very differently…