A mother who killed her two young sons while in a psychotic state has been jailed for life.
Kara Alexander, 47, of Dagenham, east London, was found guilty of murdering Elijah Thomas, two, and Marley Thomas, five, in the bath at their home on Cornwallis Road in December 2022.
At Kingston Crown Court on Friday, Mr Justice Bennathan sentenced Alexander to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 21 years and 252 days.
Emergency services were called at around 3pm on 16 December 2022 after the bodies of the two boys were found by their father when he went to collect them for the weekend after Alexander had failed to return his messages.
He found his two sons together, dressed in pyjamas, in the lower bunk of their shared bunk bed. When the boys’ father came downstairs to call for help, Alexander had run away through the gardens into a neighbouring street.
She was found and arrested a short time later. The two boys were pronounced dead at the scene and a post-mortem examination established that both boys’ cause of death was either drowning or suffocation. Alexander denied murdering her children, claiming they had drowned in the bath while she was asleep.
Sentencing Alexander, the judge said: “You drowned them both by your deliberate acts.”
The judge remarked that she had been smoking “skunk” on the evening of the incident, as she had been doing every night for weeks.
He said he could not reach any conclusion but that in her state at that time she intended to kill the boys, pointing out that she had “unspeakably” held the boys under water for “up to a minute or two”.
The judge said that afterwards, Alexander had dried the boys and put them in clean pyjamas and laid them together in bed.
“The bath was probably still run from their normal evening routine and I do not think for a moment that your dreadful acts were pre-meditated,” he said.
While the judge saw every sign that Alexander was a “caring and affectionate mother” to both children before the events, he said she was clearly in a cannabis-induced psychotic state.
Alexander had previously had a psychotic episode in 2016, according to the judge, who said cannabis likely played a part there, but that he could not be sure if she was aware it could trigger another psychotic state.
The judge noted that in the same month of the incident, Alexander had spoken to two members of her social circle about her cannabis use. They knew she was looking after two small children and at least one knew of her previous psychotic episode.
“Yet neither of them warned you of any risk or sounded any note of caution at all,” he said.
He said Alexander would mourn her sons for the rest of her life.
In his closing remarks, the judge warned of the dangers of drugs: “The heavy use of skunk or other hyper-strong strains of cannabis can plunge people into a mental health crisis in which they may harm themselves or others.
“If any drug user does not know that, it’s about time they did”, he added. “At your trial, Kara Alexander, the three psychiatrists who gave evidence disagreed about a number of things, but on that they were unanimous.”
Detective Chief Inspector Paul Waller of the Metropolitan Police, who led the investigation, said: “This is an incredibly tragic case, which has left a father without his two beloved boys and a family without two young brothers.
“Kara Alexander will spend the next two decades behind bars, where the memory of what she has done will haunt her forever.
“To the family and friends of Elijah and Marley, while no amount of time will erase the pain of such a loss, I hope this sentence serves to bring some semblance of justice.
“I hope you can now move on with your life, remembering the boys as you knew them, and treasuring the happy times you spent with them.”
