'You killed her' - prosecution barrister tells Mansfield woman accused of murdering daughter

Katie Crowder, 26, of Wharmby Avenue, Mansfield, is accused of deliberately scalding her daughter Gracie to death in the early hours of March 6 this year.

Prosecutor Sally Howes QC went through Crowder’s version of events with a fine tooth comb, based on the information she had given in police interviews.

When asked by the prosecution why she hadn’t taken any cloths or nappies with her to King’s Mill Hospital, where she was initially taken by police prior to Gracie being pronounced dead, was it because she new the toddler was dead, Crowder responded: “How could I know that she had passed away?”

Ms Howes responded: “Because you killed her.”

“Gracie had died as a result of something you had done and you didn’t know what account to give,” she later added when asking why Crowder had returned to her own house after Gracie being rushed to hospital by paramedics.

In often contradicting accounts through police interviews, Crowder had claimed at different points that there was a pool of water on the bathroom floor next to Gracie, and later that the water covered her own foot.

She was asked to explain why, when police arrived at her home shortly afterwards, the bathroom floor was completely dry, she responded that she had thrown a towel on it.

She also said that she had gone to bed early because she couldn’t find her phone and was bored, but the court heard earlier that Crowder had spent much of the evening texting her girlfriend.

The phone was later found by police on the living room floor at her home, the court heard.

In response to various questions put by the prosecution, Crowder responded separately: “There’s only one person who knows what happened and that’s me.”

In response to another question, she replied: “I didn’t wake up that morning wondering if there was going to be something with my daughter with a bucket. If I could remember every little detail, I wouldn’t be in a murder trial, would I?”

And to another question about why she had taken the mop bucket out of the bath to go and wash a dog urine-stained duvet she had known about since the Wednesday night, she replied: “I can see that you are picking at every single thing I say.”

Describing her own battles with drug addiction and her mental health issues, Crowder said she now only took cocaine once a month and she had started using the drug again in January, and admitted concealing it from support agencies, and said she was having thoughts about stabbing a man, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

Crowder said: “I was watching documentary about serial killers to get the dark thoughts out of my head. I didn’t act on them because I knew the consequences.

The cross-examination will carry on tomorrow.

Crowder denies murder.

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