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Our four years of pure hell
By OLIVER HARVEY
AN anguished mum was yesterday cleared of murdering two of her babies.
As Angela Cannings, 40, walked free from a life sentence, husband
Terry, 49, said: “We have been through a living hell — but I never
doubted her once.”
Angela was convicted last year of killing 18-week-old Matthew and
seven-week-old Jason.
But Terry said: “I knew she didn’t do it. She adores children and
her dream has always been to have a family.”
Angela was arrested after Matthew died in 1999 — eight years after
Jason’s death.
Her first child Gemma, died at the age of 13 weeks in 1989.
The loving mum, who also has a seven-year-old daughter, insisted all
three suffered sudden infant death syndrome — the medical term for cot
death.
And yesterday she was backed by the Court of Appeal in London after
serving 20 months in tough Bullwood Prison, Essex.
The ruling was the THIRD of its kind this year. Terry,
of Salisbury, Wilts, told The Sun:
My wife has had scalding water thrown in her face and been called a
baby killer in jail.
Imagine having to put up with all that at the same time as coping with
the death of three of your children.
Ange has never had the chance to grieve for our babies and I have had
my own cell — my front room at home.” Terry, an ex-Tesco manager, went on: “I’ve been so depressed I have
been unable to work and I don’t really go out.
"When she was inside, Angela never showed much emotion. I don’t
think she wanted to upset me.
"But a prison friend of hers told me she would cry herself to
sleep every night — clutching a photo of me and our surviving daughter.
The thought of it cracked me up.”
Terry revealed that every few weeks he had made a heartbreaking
pilgrimage to the grave of the dead babies in Winterbourne Gunner, Wilts.
He took his seven-year-old daughter and added: “If it wasn’t for
her I don’t know if I’d have kept it together.”
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“We have taken Ange’s sentence minute
by minute, hour by hour and day by day. We have cried an ocean of tears.
