Mother’s horror at husband’s murder of Sophia, 7

A MOTHER has told how she has struggled to come to terms with the murder of her “beautiful” daughter at the hands of her husband, who has been imprisoned for life for the seven-year-old girl’s murder. Wealthy antiques dealer Robert Peters, 56, was yesterday jailed with a minimum term of 24 years for strangling the couple’s daughter Sophia at their home. Afterwards, Krittiya Peters, who had been in court, said: “I am absolutely devastated by Sophia’s death. I am finding it hard to come to terms with her death and the circumstances in which she died. “I feel betrayed and angry at my husband, who was supposed to look after and ensure the safety and wellbeing of our family at all costs.” Peters, a former Israeli soldier, throttled Sophia with a dressing gown cord while alone with her at his £1m family home in Wimbledon, south-west London. When she woke up and asked what he was doing, Peters apologised but carried on anyway. Afterwards, he called 999 to report what he had done and the little girl was rushed to hospital, but died the following day. Jailing him for life with a minimum term of 24 years, Mr Justice Edis said: “It is impossible to imagine the last few conscious minutes of that child’s life. She was a lovely little girl who loved her parents and thought that they loved her. Asleep in bed, she no doubt felt safe and believed that, should she need it, she had the protection of her father. “Her shock and bewilderment to find that he was set on her death amounted, in my judgment, to an intentional act of cruelty over and above the killing itself. I do not think the defendant intended to wake her up but, when she did, he carried on anyway, now knowing that the death would not be a painless and oblivious event.” Peters, who had been cheating on his wife, was “deceitful and manipulative, calculating and disingenuous” in the way he hid his plans to kill, the judge said. In the months before the killing, he searched the internet for “serial killers”, “treatment of child killers in prison” and “premeditated murder”. The defendant, who admitted murder on the third day of his trial, gave away no emotion as he was sentenced. After the hearing, Detective Inspector Helen Rance, of Scotland Yard, said Sophia’s death had devastated her family, friends and school teachers. She said: “The death of a child is something no family should have to go through, but the fact that Sophia Peters died at the hands of her own father makes it truly dreadful.”