Читать книгу Parents Who Kill - Shocking True Stories of The World's Most Evil Parents - Carol Anne Davis - Страница 50
ОглавлениеThe mothers in the previous chapter wanted to return to the single life, and deliberately killed their children in order to do so. Those in the following cases also desired their independence and partied as if their babies didn’t exist, leaving them to die of gross neglect.
SABRINA ROSS
A former teenage prostitute, Sabrina Ross had a drug problem for most of her adult life. In her late twenties she gave birth to a son, Rio, who was born with a methadone dependency. She lived with him in a flat in Bristol, England, and promised social services that she’d beat her addiction if it would allow her to retain custody.
But Ross regularly smoked crack cocaine in front of the baby, and would pass out for two hours at a stretch, leaving him uncared for. When he learned to crawl, he would explore the flat and she once found him clutching an empty methadone bottle. She would later admit to police that she sometimes forgot to put the cap back on such bottles after taking some of the liquid heroin substitute.
One evening in July 2007, she went out three times to buy drugs, leaving 14-month-old Rio alone for a total of nine hours. During that fatal evening, she shared 16 rocks of crack cocaine and two heroin wraps with a friend.
The following day, she found Rio in his cot, clutching a Winnie the Pooh toy. He was cold and stiff and had been dead for several hours. When autopsied, his body was found to contain methadone, morphine and cocaine.
On 27 June 2008, Sabrina Ross – her face pitted with the acne of a typical drug addict – pleaded guilty to manslaughter at Bristol Crown Court. Mr Justice Roderick Evans told her: ‘Rio was inhaling class A drugs and there is reason to believe he ingested methadone. It was gross neglect that ended his life. Your child looked to you for protection and you breached that trust. No term of imprisonment can give Rio his life back.’ Ross wept as she was sentenced to five years. She has another baby in care, though its age and gender have been withheld from the public to protect its identity.
In July 2008, a report on behalf of Bristol Safeguarding Children Board said that Rio’s death was ‘clearly avoidable.’ It noted that individual agencies should have shared information about Sabrina Ross.
JENNIE BAIN DUCKER
A learning disabled student with a poor attention span, Jennie dropped out of high school in Tennessee, USA, without any qualifications. By 16 she had married and was pregnant but she miscarried and the marriage broke up. At 18, she married for the second time and occasionally worked in a factory and in a restaurant but she was sacked from the latter for often failing to show up for her shift.
By now she was exhibiting signs of manic depression, staying awake for several days then collapsing with exhaustion. She made several suicide attempts during this time.
By 20, she’d given birth to two sons – Devin and Dustin – and split up from their father. She hated to be alone and would drive around looking for friends or acquaintances to keep her company. At one stage she hired a babysitter for her children then didn’t return home for 25 hours.
ALL NIGHT PARTY
On 6 June 1995, Jennie spent part of the day with one of her boyfriends, his child and her children. She returned home with her sons but went out again in the early hours of the morning, having decided to spend some time with another boyfriend in his room at the Holiday Inn.
She drove to the motel with her two sons and left them strapped in the locked car, clutching bottles of milk for sustenance. Dustin was a year old whilst Devin was 23 months.
For the next couple of hours, Jennie, her boyfriend and two of his friends partied and she drank double the legal driving limit before she fell asleep at around 5am. As the young mother continued to sleep, the morning sun rose and the car got hotter and hotter. By midday, when she awoke, the temperature in the car was 128 degrees and the boys had cooked to death.
In court, she claimed that she had planned to speak to her boyfriend about their relationship and then leave, that she hadn’t wanted to party. But her boyfriend’s mates disputed this, saying that she hadn’t told them that her children were locked in the car outside. She also stated that she had periodically checked on her sons by looking down at the car from the motel room’s second floor balcony – but, as the car had tinted windows, it would have been impossible for her to see any signs of distress.
She was originally charged with first degree murder, but this was later reduced to the charge of aggravated child abuse. The judge described her behaviour at the trial as ‘hostile’ and she was sentenced to 18 years, with the proviso that she’d become eligible for parole after six.
