Rugby woman murdered her two toddlers just weeks apart

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Louise Porton will be sentenced on Friday for two counts of murder



A young mum has been found guilty of murdering her two daughters within 18 days of each other.

Evil Louise Porton had denied killing three-year Lexi Draper and her little sister Scarlett Vaughan, but a jury only needed around six hours of deliberating to find her guilty.

Lexi died on January 15, 2018, after medics were called to where Porton was living at Beechwood Court in Rugby.

Medics said rigor mortis had set in and she had been dead for some time.

Then on February 1, Porton called 111 saying she was in her car with 17-month-old Scarlett and was heading to hospital - and then stated that she couldn't wake the youngster.

An ambulance was sent to a retail park in Rugby where Porton had inexplicably driven, but again there was nothing that could be done to save Scarlett and she was pronounced dead after being taken to hospital.

Child killer Porton, 23, had pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and has been standing trial at Birmingham Crown Court.

A jury this afternoon (Thursday, August 1) convicted her of both counts and she will be sentenced at the same court on Friday, August 2.

During his opening speech in the trial, prosecutor Oliver Saxby QC said that following the girls' deaths, Porton's "attitude to what had happened, and behaviour, was not always as one would expect of an innocent mother coming to terms with so shocking a bereavement”.

He said that a number of specialists had “considered the evidence in this case" and said that Porton’s statements about Lexi fitting before her death were "not credible” and that the youngster's symptoms are "consistent with deliberate airway obstruction. That is to say, asphyxia or suffocation".

As for Scarlett’s death, Mr Saxby said bleeding was found in the soft tissue in her neck “consistent with compression, or squeezing, necessarily of a force likely to affect the airway”.

As with Lexi, the defendant’s account of what happened simply could not have been true, added Mr Saxby.

Detectives ploughed through months of information on Porton's phone, which saw them find chilling internet searches made by the murderer.

Among them were: 'Can you actually die if you have blocked nose and you forcefully closed your mouth with a tape?', 'For how long after drowning can someone be resuscitated?’ and '5 weird things that happen when you die'.

The latter two searches were made just an hour or so before Lexi Draper died in the early hours of January 15, 2018.

The phone searches also revealed that Porton consistently sent sexual images of herself to men in return for money - even taking one of herself inside a hospital toilet while Lexi was in hospital a week or so prior to her death.

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Louise Porton jailed for life for murder of daughters



A mother who killed her two daughters because they "got in the way of her sex life" has been jailed for life.

Louise Porton denied killing three-year-old Lexi Draper and 17-month-old Scarlett Vaughan, who died 18 days apart last year.

But the 23-year-old, of Skiddaw, Rugby, was found guilty of their murder and on Friday she was jailed for a minimum of 32 years.

During her trial, jurors heard Porton did not seem distressed by the deaths.

Passing sentence at Birmingham Crown Court, Mrs Justice Yip described the murders as "evil" and "calculated".

"These were blameless young children who were plainly vulnerable and ought to have been able to rely on their mother to protect and nurture them," she said.

"Instead you took their young lives away."

The judge told the court Porton had "no medical history or mental disorder that goes any way to explaining what happened in this case".

She added: "One way or another you squeezed the life out of each of your daughters, only calling the emergency services when you knew they were dead.

"I am sure at the time of the deaths, you intended to kill each of your daughters.

"Why you did so, only you will know."

Porton, of Beechwood Court, suffocated Lexi in the early hours of 15 January 2018, and was then heard "laughing" at a funeral parlour two days before killing Scarlett on 1 February.

Jurors heard Porton accepted 41 friend requests on a dating app just a day after Lexi died, and was described by prosecutors as being "calm and emotionless" following Scarlett's death.

While Lexi was ill in hospital, just over a week before she died, Porton took topless photos in the toilets and was arranging to perform sex acts for money with a man she had met through a website, the court was told.

Both Lexi and Scarlett's deaths were consistent with deliberate airway obstruction, and prosecutors told her trial that doctors "could not find any natural reason" for their deaths.

Warwickshire Police said it was also "clear from the evidence" that Porton had tried to kill her three-year-old twice before, in early January 2018, before eventually succeeding.