A mum-of-two who murdered her two daughters because they ‘got in the way’ of her sex life has been jailed for life. Louise Porton, 23, will spent a minimum of 32 years in prison for killing 17-month-old Scarlett Vaughan and Lexi Draper, three.
She was convicted of both murders following a five-week trial at Birmingham Crown Court. Today during sentencing, judge Amanda Yip told Porton her actions were ‘evil’ and ‘calculated’.
She said: ‘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. Instead you took their young lives away.’
The court heard Porton formerly of Skiddaw, in Rugby, Warks, had tried to kill Lexi twice before she succeeded in January 2018. When Lexi was ill in hospital in the week before she died, Porton took topless photos in the toilets and arranged to perform sex acts for money with men she had met online, jurors were told.
The mum-of-two, who described herself as a part-time model, then accepted 41 friend requests on a dating app just a day after the murder, they heard. She was later heard ‘laughing’ at a funeral parlour two days before she killed Scarlett on February 1.
Emergency services said she was ‘calm and emotionless’, delaying her call for an ambulance and even filling up with petrol with her daughter lying dead in the car. During the trial, prosecutor Oliver Saxby QC said: ‘The overwhelming inference is that Lexi and Scarlett died because someone deliberately interfered with their breathing.
Mr Saxby said specialist doctors could find no ‘natural reason’ for why either child had died. In a victim impact statement, Chris Draper, father of both girls, said he felt ‘broken’ and had ‘nothing to live for’.
