MOTHER WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA DROWNS 7-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER CLAIMING PROTECTIVE DELUSION
A deranged mother became so convinced paedophiles were targeting her seven-year-old daughter that she drowned the schoolgirl to protect her.Civil servant Heather Vinkenbrink, aged 45, developed an illness which led her to think her family was being persecuted.
When her 17-year-old son Christian Murphy observed her becoming increasingly unstable in the weeks before the killing and talking gibberish, he had no idea she planned to harm her own child.
On the day of the incident, she took her daughter Lily Burrows to work with her at a Jobcentre, hiding her under a desk.
When staff realized the girl was there, a supervisor offered to take Vinkenbrink and the girl to a friend’s house.
Instead of taking Lily to safety, Vinkenbrink drove her into the nearby River Otter and drowned her.
After the murder, she returned home and told her son: 'I have done something very stupid, I have drowned Lily.' Vinkenbrink, of Elizabeth Avenue, Exeter, denied murdering Lily at Tipton St John, near Sidmouth, East Devon in November 2004, claiming she was insane at the time.
The jury at Exeter Crown Court was told that psychiatrists agreed she was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and that she should be found not guilty by reason of insanity.
She was to be sent to a secure mental hospital under the Mental Health Act, and would not be released unless doctors deemed her recovered and safe.
The court proceedings revealed she believed she was protecting her daughter from a paedophile ring, hearing voices and thinking Lily was in danger.
Her son Christian described her mental decline, stating she became convinced Lily had been molested and her behavior worsened with paranoia.
Witnesses recounted that Vinkenbrink thought they were being followed and refused to let Lily go out.
On the day of the drowning, she said: 'I have done something very stupid, I have drowned Lily.' She also acted in a strange manner during a car trip, believing she was being followed.
The case emphasized her mental health condition, with doctors and the court concluding her actions during the killing were driven by her illness, leading to a verdict of insanity and her subsequent indefinite detention in a mental health facility.
