Father of murdered girls tells of his anguish as ‘evil, calculating’ mum jailed for 32 years
Topless photos… Louise Porton Crown Court found her guilty on Thursday and she was sentenced yesterday.
Porton researched ways to kill her children online. She asked: “Can you actually die if you have a blocked nose and cover your mouth with tape?”
She tried to kill Lexi twice in January last year. While the little girl was ill in hospital with “breathing problems”, her mother slipped into a lavatory to take topless photos for a client.
Lexi was finally suffocated on January 15. Days later, Porton took Scarlett to an undertakers to arrange her sister’s funeral. A funeral arranger heard Porton laughing during a video call to set up a date with a stranger.
Oliver Saxby, QC, prosecuting, told the jury her daughters “got in the way of doing what she wanted, when she wanted and with whom she wanted”.
The day she killed Lexi, Porton contacted 41 men via a dating app. She told one man: “My little girl passed away yesterday.” When offered condolences, the killer replied: “It’s all right.”
Both children had symptoms consistent with deliberate airway obstruction, the court heard. Scarlett also had signs of recent bleeding in her neck tissue, suggestive of neck compression.
Medics could find no “natural reason” for their deaths.
Porton even tried to sell the dead girls’ clothes on Facebook.
Mr Draper did not have contact with his daughters and never met Lexi Draper, three, and 16-monthold Scarlett Vaughan were killed 18 days apart. Left, their block of flats in Rugby
Scarlett. In an impact statement, he told how he felt “broken” with “nothing to live for”.
“Maybe if social services had listened to me, my girls would still be alive today,” he said.
Detective Superintendent Pete Hill of Warwickshire Police said: “I will never be able to understand why Louise Porton murdered her children.”