London court clears way to extradite US mother accused of killing 2 of her children in Colorado

LONDON (AP) — A London judge on Friday rejected a U.S. mother's challenge to her extradition to face murder charges in Colorado in the deaths of two of her young children.

The ruling by Judge John Zani at Westminster Magistrates’ Court clears the way for the British government to order Kimberlee Singler’s return to America.

Singler, 36, is accused of two counts of first-degree murder in the December 2023 shooting and stabbings of her 9-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son, and one count of attempted murder in the slashing of her 11-year-old daughter with a knife. She also faces three counts of child abuse and one count of assault.

Singler’s attorney had argued that sending her back to the U.S. would violate European human rights law, in part, because she faces a sentence of life in prison without parole if convicted in Colorado of first-degree murder.

Such a sentence would be inhumane because it offers no prospect for release even if she is rehabilitated, attorney Edward Fitzgerald said.

Fitzgerald said that despite an option for a Colorado governor to commute her sentence at some point, it would be “political suicide” to do so.

Experts for the defense had originally said that a life sentence had never been commuted in Colorado. But prosecutors later found that Gov. John Hickenlooper in 2018 commuted life sentences of five men convicted of murder.

The defense countered that three of those sentences were not life without parole and two were for men who committed their crime between the ages of 18 and 21, which is sometimes considered a mitigating factor at sentencing because of the offender's relative youth.

“This defendant, Kimberlee Singler, has no real prospect of release no matter what progress she makes” behind bars, Fitzgerald said.

Prosecutor Joel Smith said the judge only had to consider if there is a mechanism that could allow Singler to be freed someday — not the likelihood of it happening.

“Prospect of release — that is not your concern,” Smith told the judge at a hearing in December.

Zani said in his ruling that he felt there was an option in Colorado to release an inmate serving a life sentence.

“I am satisfied that the defendant has failed to vault the hurdle necessary in order to succeed in the challenges raised," the judge said.

Fitzgerald said he planned to appeal to the High Court.

The Dec. 18, 2023 killings took place in an apartment where Singler had been staying with her mother during a custody battle with her ex-husband, who had recently been awarded more parenting time. Her mother was away at the time.

Two days before the crimes, Singler had been due to hand over the children to her husband for the holidays but had refused to let his sister pick them up. The husband’s lawyer got a court order on Dec. 18 for her to exchange the children two days later.

Singler has denied that she harmed her children, Fitzgerald said. She told police that her ex-husband had either carried out the killings or hired a hitman.

She told police her ex-husband “had previously dreamt about killing his family, that the children’s father was always trying to ‘frame her’ and ‘get her arrested’ and to have the kids taken away from her,” Zani said in his ruling.

Police said her husband had a solid alibi, backed up by GPS records that showed he had been driving a truck at the time of the killings about 80 miles (130 kilometers) away.

Singler told police that an intruder had entered the apartment that morning through a patio door she forgot to lock and attacked her and and she lost consciousness. Police said they found no footprints in the snow leading to the patio.

Singler described being too weak to get help and said she couldn't find her phone.

She said, however, that when she did have enough strength, she found her youngest children dead and gave her surviving daughter water throughout the day.

Late that night, she said she heard her phone ringtone playing Christmas music and called police for help when she located it.

Singler had superficial knife wounds and was initially treated as a victim.

But that changed after her surviving daughter, who initially told police a similar intruder story, said her mother tried to kill her.

After her daughter changed her story, police sought to arrest Singler on Dec. 26 but she had fled. She was found four days later in London’s posh Chelsea neighborhood and arrested.

The girl, who has not been named, told police that her mother gave the children milk with a powdery substance to drink and told them to close their eyes as she guided them into a bedroom, prosecutors said.

Singler cut her neck and, as the girl begged her to stop, she slashed her again. The girl said her mother had a gun.

“The defendant told her that God was telling her to do it, and that the children’s father would take them away,” Smith said at a previous hearing.

Police found Aden Wentz, 7, and Elianna “Ellie” Wentz, 9, dead when they entered the Colorado Springs apartment early the morning of Dec. 19. They had been shot and stabbed.