Saturday 14 May 2011

SIDS(simulated): England: Mark Bruton-Smith on murder trial

A DEPRESSED father suffocated his unwanted six-month-old daughter after searching the internet to find out how to kill a baby without being detected, a court heard.
Architect Mark Bruton- Young, 36, is accused of murdering his daughter Harriet in June 2009.
Bristol Crown Court heard Bruton-Young used his work computer at Aztec West-based architects RPS to research ways to kill a baby, including punching in the stomach, cot death, choking and poisoning, before settling on suffocation.
It is claimed he then made further searches relating to ways to pass Harriet's death off as cot death – or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
Paul Dunkels, prosecuting, told jurors yesterday: "The defendant had succeeded in suffocating his daughter and leaving no detectable signs of what he had done. "However, we say that his computer searches reveal what his true ideas were."
The prosecution also allege that Bruton-Young attempted to poison Harriet with anti-freeze in the days leading up to her death.
The court heard that Harriet was an unplanned, unwanted child when she was born to Mark and mum Clare – also an architect – of Gloucester, in December 2008.
Bruton-Young had problems coping with the birth almost immediately. Mr Dunkels said: ''He resented the intrusion of Harriet into his married life."
Colleagues described him as "depressed" and said he spent all his time on his computer.
''Initially, he searched for information on bonding with your baby, depression and coping with fatherhood," said Mr Dunkels. "But in early February 2009 Bruton-Young used a work computer to look at how to get an unwanted baby adopted." The court heard that forensic searches on the hard-drives of three work computers found that Bruton-Young's hundreds of searches on website Google turned to death by anti-freeze poisoning, lead poisoning, the effects of punching a child in the stomach or a baby ingesting faeces, before he made numerous searches relating to suffocation in the weeks before Harriet's death.
Bruton-Young wept as a recording of his 999 call to report finding Harriet "cold" and "white" on the day she died was played to the court.
The court heard that two post mortem examinations had failed to find a cause of death. But expert witness .
http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/courts/Dad-killed-baby-searching-internet/article-3527438-detail/article.html

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