Mother who smothered daughter, three, with soft toy is jailed for life

Helen Caudwell, 42, suffocated Bethany after leading a double life convincing two men they were both her daughter's father.

She had entered into a custody battle over Bethany with second husband Miles Kennerley just months after marrying him, Manchester Crown Court heard.

Caudwell had fallen pregnant with her fourth child, Bethany, during the course of her relationship with three men in 2005.

She denied murder and first told police she might have rolled over on to her daughter and suffocated the child.

Later Caudwell, who has three teenage children, offered a defence of diminished responsibility, claiming she suffered an "abnormality of the mind" at the time of the killing.

But she flinched and blinked hard as the jury foreman returned a guilty verdict by a majority of 10 to two following a nine-day trial.

Her relatives wept in the public gallery but Caudwell showed no emotion as the court heard she faced a mandatory life sentence.

Caudwell's first husband, Ian, tried to get his vasectomy reversed to give his wife, of Redwood Close, Cheadle Heath, Stockport, Greater Manchester, a fourth baby, but it had been unsuccessful and she had fallen pregnant by lover Mark Davies.

She told Mr Davies and her third boyfriend, Mr Kennerley, of Sandbach, that they were both the father of Bethany and they both treated the girl as their own – unbeknown to the other – until the time of her death.

Caudwell went on to divorce first husband and father of her three other children to marry Mr Kennerley in May 2009.

But within months their relationship hit rocky ground and Caudwell filed for divorce.

In the days leading up to Bethany's murder on October 2 last year, the Morrisons supermarket worker became depressed at the state of her marriage and the possibility of losing custody of her young daughter and made comments about not wanting her husband to see Bethany and "doing away with herself".

Passing sentence, Judge Clement Goldstone QC said: "Depressed you may have been but you were, as the jury found, responsible for your actions."

She had brought "indescribable pain and grief" to everyone who loved Bethany including both Mr Kennerley and Mr Davies, the judge added, "one of whom was the object of your deceit, the other the subject of your deceit."

Caudwell was jailed for the mandatory life sentence and ordered by the judge to serve a minimum of eight years before parole.

On the day of Bethany's death, Caudwell called police to ask for advice in the custody battle.

The next day when she did not turn up for work a colleague rang her. Caudwell told her: "I won't have a job anymore. I have done something stupid. I have suffocated Bethany."

The girl was found dead, smothered with a piglet soft toy, and Caudwell was taken to hospital with cuts to her wrists. She was heard to say: "I couldn't let him take her."