Mummy, I don’t want a bath... Last words of girl aged three ‘drowned by mother’ who wrongly thought her husband was unfaithful
A LITTLE girl told her mother ‘I don’t want a bath’, moments before she was drowned, a court heard yesterday.
Former science teacher Claire Colebourn is accused of murdering her three-year- old daughter Bethan after separating from her high-flying husband, who she feared was having an affair, the jury was told.
Winchester Crown Court heard Bethan was found by her grandmother, Janet Fildew, when she visited the family home in October 2017. She had been lain on a bed, but her hair was still wet.
Colebourn, 36, was discovered suffering from a ‘diabetic episode’ having injected herself with a huge dose of insulin. She had also tried to hang herself and stabbed herself in the stomach.
It came after she had scoured the internet for a former girlfriend of her husband, Michael, searched for information on suicide and asked a search engine whether drowning was painless.
Colebourn told police she drowned her daughter because she ‘did not want her to go anywhere near’ her husband, the chief executive of luxury marine interior company Trimline.
The jury was told she said: ‘I am responsible for Bethan’s death because she drowned and I am responsible for it. Bethan drowned because I was there, I held her under the water.
‘She put her hand on my cheeks, told me she loved me and said, “I do not want a bath, I do not want a bath”. I waited for the bath to fill, I have never been so stressed in my life. I drowned my own daughter, I drowned my own daughter. She didn’t fight against my hand. I think, very sadly, she had complete trust in me.’ At the start of Colebourn’s trial yesterday, Kerry Maylin, prosecuting, said: ‘Bethan died because she had been put in the bath at home and held under the water – the act was completed by her mother.’ The prosecutor said that just over a month before Bethan’s death, Colebourn and her husband, who had been together for 16 years and married for six years, separated and Mr Colebourn moved out of the house in Fordingbridge, Hampshire.
Miss Maylin said their relationship had been difficult and the defendant went on to make ‘unfounded accusations’ that her husband was having an affair with the company’s finance director, Kelly Futcher.
On the day before Bethan’s death, Colebourn wrote a letter to her mother saying: ‘I love you, Bethan loves you, thanks for everything. Love always, Claire.’
She added: ‘Please make sure I am buried with Bethan in Fordingbridge.’
The last time Mr Colebourn saw his daughter alive was when he took her to a soft-play centre four days earlier.
Miss Maylin said: ‘ He and Bethan had a nice afternoon and when he left she hugged and kissed her father goodbye.’
Mr Colebourn fought back tears as he told the court he had gone to the home he previously shared with his wife, to take Bethan out.
Unbeknown to him, Bethan was already lying dead inside. When he got no answer, he assumed he had misunderstood arrangements so left and returned to work.
Mr Colebourn said: ‘Claire was not happy I was seeing Bethan on October 15, but eventually she allowed me to have her for the day. It was the first time I was to have Bethan on my own [after splitting up].
‘I dropped Bethan home about 5pm. Bethan kissed and hugged me, then went into the house. She was happy. She was fine.
‘I was due to see Bethan on October 19. I could see the dog in the kitchen when I went to the house, but he was shut in the kitchen. I thought maybe I had made a mistake and I went back to work.’
Colebourn denies murder. The trial continues.