THE LONDON — A lawyer in a London court said that the American woman who is accused of killing her two youngest children in Colorado last December told her 11-year-old daughter who lived through the attack that God made her do it.
Prosecutor Joel Smith said that after Kimberlee Singler stabbed the girl, she cut her again, even though the child begged for her life.
The scary facts came out as Singler fought extradition to the US in Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
Edward Fitzgerald, Singler’s defense lawyer, said that Singler denied hitting her kids and is worried that her daughter’s statement to the police was forced.
Fitzgerald said on Friday that Singler shouldn’t be sent back to the U.S. from the UK because if she is found guilty of first-degree murder in Colorado, where the killings happened, she would get life in prison without the chance of release, which is against European human rights law.
Singler, 36, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder for killing her 9-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son by shooting and cutting them. She is also charged with one count of attempted murder for hurting her older daughter.
She is facing more charges because the kids were younger than 12 years old, and she is also being charged with attack.
Fitzgerald, who fought for Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, to be extradited to the U.S. to face espionage charges, claimed that life without parole would be cruel because it would mean she could never be freed, even if she changed.
One possible outcome is for the governor of Colorado to commute the term. However, Fitzgerald said that would be “political suicide” because it had never been done before.
Fitzgerald said, “In Colorado, there is no realistic prospect of release, no matter how much progress is made because of history and politics.” “No matter how bad the crime was, there should be a way to get out of jail.”
As Fitzgerald was finishing up his case, Smith spoke up to say that he had found proof that former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper had reduced the sentences of six men who were found guilty of first-degree murder in 2018.
Then, Judge John Zani put off the three-day hearing until December 2 “in light of potentially important information.” This gave the lawyers time to confirm a news story about the commutes and make more arguments.
Singler, who is being held, was in the dock and only spoke to say that she knew why the hearing had to be continued.
The hearing was mostly about the legal problems that come up with extradition.
In his opening speech on Wednesday, Smith gave more information.
He said that Singler was fighting with her ex-husband Kevin Wentz over custody of their children at the time of the deaths. She was told to give him the kids from December 16th to December 31st, but she didn’t. He was given more time with them.
In the early hours of December 19, just after midnight, Singler called Colorado Springs police to report an emergency.
When police arrived at the family flat, they found Aden Wentz, 7, and Elianna “Ellie” Wentz, 9, dead in bed together. Smith said that they had been stabbed and shot.
Singler’s older daughter, whose name was only given in court papers as “M.W.”, was badly hurt.
At first, Singler, who had minor knife cuts, was thought to be a victim of what police called a burglary.
She later told cops that she felt “weird” and “woozy” when she woke up on December 18 and that the kids also seemed sleepy, Smith said. “She said she thought her ex-partner, the kids’ father, was killing them or setting up a way for them to be killed.” She said a “dark figure” had come into her room and made her pass out.
Smith said that Singler’s ex-husband had a good excuse for what happened. He was driving a truck that could be tracked by GPS.
The daughter who was attacked and survived first told the cops that a man came in from the patio and attacked them. But after getting better from her injuries and being moved to a foster home, she told a nurse that her mother was to blame and had told her to lie to the police.
Smith said the girl said Singler led the kids into one of their bedrooms and gave them milk with a powdery medicine in it to drink. She also told them to close their eyes.
“The defendant told her that God told her to do it and that the father of the children would take them away,” Smith said.
A DNA test on the guns found a mix of blood that matched that of the children and their mother. There was also an empty bottle of sleeping pills in the house.
After her daughter changed her story, Singler was never caught by cops in Colorado on December 26. She had already left the country. After four days, she was caught in the fancy Chelsea area of London.
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