Father drugs and suffocates daughter as revenge for wife's affair

13 April 2012

A father drugged and then suffocated his three-year-old daughter with medical chloroform in revenge for his wife's affair, a court heard.

Hospital radiographer Gavin Hall killed little Amelia in the early hours of the morning as her mother and younger sister slept upstairs.

Hall, 33, fed her anti-depressant pills to make her drowsy, he sat and cuddled his daughter for over an hour before smothering her with a rag soaked with the anaesthetic chemical.

She died just two days before her fourth birthday.

Mother Joanne found Amelia, known as Millie, under a duvet on the living room floor the following morning.

Hall had tried to kill himself with chloroform and had open cuts in his neck, thighs and arms.

Hall, from Grey Street, Irchester, Northants, appeared before Northampton Crown Court this morning to stand trial accused of murder.

The jury was told he admits killing his daughter at the family home in the early hours of November 29 last year but says he is not guilty of murder but of the lesser charge of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

William Coker QC, prosecuting, told the jury that Hall had discovered in the months before the killing that his wife was having an affair with a man she had met through an advert on the internet.

"His anger and bitterness, his desire to punish Joanne are obvious," said Mr Coker.

In text messages sent to his wife and her lover - identified in court only as "James" - Hall tried to explain the death and why he had tried to kill himself.

One text, sent to Joanne Hall at 2.57am said: "I loved you. Millie asked to stay with me. I've dealt with your deceit for two months, now you have the rest of your life to deal with the consequences."

"I would have shared it all, too late now. We love you mum."

Another text, sent at 3.07am to Mrs Hall's lover James read: "I hope you sleep well, you'd better be the man Joanne needs. I no longer care."

Shortly before 4am he texted his wife: "Goodbye, Millie sends her love. She died at 3.32am. She didn't suffer, my pills and the chloroform saw to that. Myself, I expect to suffer, I deserve it. Love till death us do part I said and this is what I meant."

In letters found after Millie's death, the jury heard, Hall explained to his mother, saying: "I loved her (Joanne) so much I couldn't entertain the idea of being without her."

"Sorry about Millie, needed the company."

To his younger daughter he wrote: "Sorry to take your big sister with me. Millie always loved you too and looked out for you."

"I couldn't take you from your mum, she needs you now and you need her in the same way that I have Millie and Millie needs me."

The court heart later that "James" was a divorced solicitor and part-time judge who met Mrs Hall through a sex contact website for married people.

Miss Rainsley, as Mrs Hall is now known, said she felt she had been trapped in a loveless and sexless marriage with Gavin Hall and had twice met "James" in Northampton hotels for sex.

The pair had corresponded over the internet and through email. The part-time judge, who is married with children, had posted a naked picture of himself on the internet.

Hall forced his wife to let him read through their exchanges on the family computer after he found out about one of their meetings at a Travelodge hotel.

Cross examining today, defence counsel Nicholas Atkinson QC asked her: "Did you feel you were in a loveless marriage?"

"Yes," replied Miss Rainsley.

Mr Atkinson added: "Although he was always protesting his love for you?"

Miss Rainsley replied: "Oh yes. I don't want to have sex with someone who regularly calls me names and undermines my self confidence."

She added the couple's marriage began to struggle after the birth of their second daughter, a child she said Hall did not want.

At one point earlier in their marriage, she said, Hall had told her she would have to choose between him and a second child.

His love for Millie was always much greater than for their second daughter said Miss Rainsley, who added that she often felt she had to compensate for his lack of attention to the little girl.

In her evidence Miss Rainsley detailed the horrific scene she faced when she carried her younger child down the stairs of the family's three-bedroomed semi-detached house.

She carried the younger girl downstairs shortly after 8am where she found her husband, bleeding heavily, slumped on the sofa.

It was only while treating her husband that she noticed her daughter.

She said: "I turned around and saw Millie's duvet on the floor so I ran up to that and she was lying underneath it on her side."

Miss Rainsley broke down in tears in the witness box as she said: "Her face was purple."

"I knew as soon as I saw her face that she was dead."

"I grabbed her leg and shook it but it was stiff, I knew there was nothing I could do for her."

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