What are you doing? Girl’s cries as father throttled her with gown cord
A FATHER waited for his wife to leave the house so he could wake up his daughter and throttle her to death, the Old Bailey heard yesterday.
As Robert Peters began strangling his seven-year-old daughter Sophia with a dressing gown cord she woke and plaintively asked: ‘What are you doing?’
He ignored her and continued the attack for half an hour.
Peters, 56, had watched his Thaiborn third wife Krittiya leave the family’s £1.2million home in Raynes Park, South West London, before launching his breakfast time attack on the little girl on November 3, last year.
After the killing the antiques dealer called 999 and told the operator: ‘There’s been a murder.’
When he said a child had been killed he was asked who had committed the crime and calmly replied: ‘I have.’
When police officers arrived at his home minutes later he simply said: ‘She’s upstairs. I’ve strangled her. My daughter, she’s upstairs in her bedroom.’ Sophia was found lying in a foetal position on a single bed wearing a nightie.
She had a weak pulse and was rushed to St George’s Hospital in Tooting, South West London, and treated in intensive care.
She died the following day and a post-mortem examination found she had suffered fatal brain damage. After being charged with murder Peters said: ‘I’m guilty of the offence.’
However, at a later hearing he admitted manslaughter due to diminished responsibility and denies murder. He claims he had suffered a ‘breakdown’ and had tried to commit suicide twice last year.
Peters, who ran an oriental antiques business in Kensington, West London, denied being ‘an aggressive person’ but said he had been thinking of killing his wife and family for several weeks so they could be ‘spared the pain and upset when he became bankrupt’.
However, investigators found that he had money in the bank and was not in debt, nor on the verge of bankruptcy. Jurors yesterday heard
‘She’s upstairs, I strangled her’
how he had had an affair with another woman for two and a half years before ending the relationship.
The court heard in the months before the killing he searched the internet for items including ‘serial killers’, ‘the treatment of child killers in prison’ and ‘premeditated murder.’
Prosecutor Mukul Chawla said there was no dispute that Peters killed Sophia.
He said the father suffered a depressive illness of ‘moderate severity’ but added: ‘Simply suffering from such a condition is not enough to enable a killing to be reduced from murder to manslaughter.’
The trial continues.