I drowned my little girl so she would be away from her father
A MOTHER sobbed as she told a court she deliberately drowned her three-year-old daughter believing she was ‘safer in heaven’ than with her estranged husband.
Former science teacher Claire Colebourn claimed her chief executive husband Michael ‘hammered’ her emotionally and would not let her and daughter Bethan ‘be at peace’.
The 36-year- old said she confessed to police after realising she was not going to be able to take her own life in custody.
She told the jury: ‘The interview with the police [in which she described drowning Bethan] was true. When your emotions are being hammered by somebody so much and you see your beautiful little girl suffering as well because she feels for her mummy.’
She added: ‘She’s going to be a lot safer in heaven than she is anywhere near her father. The spirit can be at peace then and Michael would not let us be in peace. As a mummy who loved her daughter, and still loves her daughter, so much, to have your little girl telling you she doesn’t want to see her own dad. I don’t think any mum could deal with that. ‘I would walk to the end of the earth for her.’ However, Kerry Maylin, prosecuting, put it to Colebourn that Bethan had not been upset about seeing her father the next day and asked her what changed after she went to sleep.
Colebourn replied: ‘What had changed in my head? I wish I could explain that one myself. I think my head just went bam.’
When asked by Miss Maylin what she had intended to do to Bethan in the bath, she said: ‘I can’t use the words you want me to. She was going to be safe, because she would be in heaven.
‘Bethan was going to pass into heaven. I was in an emotional state. I didn’t think I was going to be here today saying this, I thought I was going to be with Bethan in heaven.
‘I have no idea how I am still alive. It’s been very hard because I have been forced to stay alive.’ Bethan was found by her grandmother Janet Fildew when she arrived for a visit at her daughter’s £400,000 converted bungalow in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, on October 19, 2017, Winchester Crown Court previously heard.
The little girl’s body had been laid on a bed downstairs but her hair was still soaking wet.
Colebourn was found suffering from a ‘diabetic episode’ having injected a huge dose of insulin. She had tried to hang herself and stabbed herself in the abdomen.
It came after she scoured the internet for details about a former girlfriend of her husband and for information on suicide and whether drowning was painless.
Colebourn denies murder. The trial continues.