A mother who murdered her two young sons in the bath has been sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum term of more than 21 years.
Kara Alexander was found guilty of drowning Elijah Thomas, two, and Marley Thomas, five, at the home they shared in Dagenham, east London, in December 2022.
Alexander, 47, who had denied two counts of murder, was convicted at Kingston Crown Court in February.
Post-mortems on the boys found they had either been drowned or suffocated – but Alexander accepted at trial that she had placed them in the bath before they “accidentally” drowned.
The jury heard how the boys’ father was due to have them that weekend and became increasingly concerned when he had not heard back from Alexander.
When he arrived at their home, she told him the children were upstairs sleeping.
He found the boys’ bodies together in the lower bunk of their shared bunk bed dressed in pyjamas, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.
The ambulance service and police attended, but there was nothing that could be done for the boys, as they had been dead for some hours.
When he came downstairs to call for help, Alexander had run away. It took the police around an hour to find her.
Prosecutors said they built their case on showing the boys could not have accidentally drowned and that the only reasonable explanation for their deaths was that Alexander caused them to drown.
Returning to Kingston Crown Court on Friday, Mr Justice Bennathan sentenced Alexander to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 21 years and 252 days.
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