After being placed in foster care, the 11-year-old allegedly told a caretaker that her mother had killed her two younger brothers in their Colorado apartment and had directed her to cover for her.
According to an account provided in court by a London prosecutor and reported by the Associated Press, the 11-year-old, identified by her initials M.W., eventually told authorities that her mother, Kimberlee Singler, had instructed her children to drink powder-laced milk and close their eyes as she led them to a bedroom.
“The defendant told her that God was telling her to do it and that the children’s father would take them away,” prosecutor Joel Smith told the Associated Press during a three-day extradition hearing last week.
Singler, 36, is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of her 7-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter, as well as the alleged attempted murder of M.W., according to the Colorado Springs Police Department. She fled to the United Kingdom and was apprehended in a London hotel on December 30.
Singler was also charged with many charges of child abuse and first-degree assault, according to a December press statement.
She is also charged with extra counts of murder and attempted murder under Colorado law, which mandates penalties for such actions against children under the age of 12.
On December 19, just after midnight, a 911 caller reported a burglary in the unit. Singler and her 11-year-old daughter were both taken to the hospital with injuries, while the two smaller children were found dead in the house, according to authorities.
According to officials, the Colorado Springs Officials Department’s Homicide Unit decided that the first claim of a burglary was unsubstantiated during the investigation.
According to the Associated Press, Smith stated at a Westminster Magistrates’ Court hearing last week that officers discovered 7-year-old Aden Wentz and 9-year-old Elianna “Ellie” Wentz together in bed, both fatally shot and stabbed.
According to Smith, the 11-year-old was stabbed numerous times while she pleaded with her mother to spare her, and police initially identified Singler, who had superficial knife wounds, as a victim in the alleged burglary, reported the AP.
Smith told the London court that Singler attempted to shift blame to her ex-husband, Kevin Wentz, with whom she was at the time in a custody struggle, claiming that she suspected him of “killing them, or organizing to have them killed.” She said that a ‘dark figure’ had entered her apartment and caused her to faint. (A judge had given Wentz extra time with his children, and Smith said she had ignored an order to turn them over beginning December 16.)
However, Wentz’s alibi was validated by his truck’s GPS tracking device, and the blood on the weapons allegedly belonged to Singler and her children, according to authorities.
According to the AP, the 11-year-old initially reported to authorities that a man broke into their home through the patio and attacked the family. She then told a babysitter that her mother had instructed her to lie to the police.
Singler’s defense attorney, Edward Fitzgerald, who previously defended Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in his lengthy extradition procedures, said in court, according to the AP, that Singler had not harmed her children and believed authorities coerced the claim from her daughter.
Fitzgerald stated on Friday, September 6, that she should not be extradited to Colorado because she faces life in prison without parole, a violation of European human rights legislation.
Fitzgerald also suggested that Colorado Governor Jared Polis would be unlikely to commute her sentence, calling it “political suicide,” according to the Associated Press.
According to the Associated Press, Smith then stepped up in court and claimed that in 2018, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper commuted the first-degree murder sentences of six individuals.
The hearing was then continued until December 2.