Mother avoids jail for killing son with Down Syndrome

A MOTHER who killed her 36-year-old Down syndrome son after devoting her life to his care was spared jail yesterday.

Wendolyn Markcrow, aged 67, suffocated her son Patrick after his violent and loud behaviour escalated, robbing her of sleep and driving her to despair, Oxford Crown Court heard.

Late on Easter Monday, after sleeping drugs had failed to suppress her son’s noisy insomnia, Ms Markcrow smothered him with a plastic bag at the family home in Long Creedon, Buckinghamshire.

“As she suffocated him she was still begging him to be quiet,” said Sasha Wass QC, Ms Markcrow’s barrister.

Ms Markcrow denied murdering her son but pleaded guilty to his manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Deciding to suspend a two-year prison sentence for a period of 18 months, Mr Justice Gross told the mother: “Ordinarily, nothing less than an immediate custodial sentence would be appropriate.

“In these circumstances, the merciful course, and in my opinion the right course, is to suspend the sentence.”

The court heard how, following her arrest, two psychiatrists agreed Mrs Markcrow had been suffering from depression, which had gone untreated, for years.

After killing her son, she made an unsuccessful suicide bid, the court heard. She was found by her husband the following morning after she had spent the night in the garden. She would later tell police: “I just snapped, I went crazy, I did not know what I was doing.”

The judge noted that Mrs Markcrow had made numerous attempts to gain assistance but, for what ever reason, help had not been forthcoming.

Earlier in the hearing, Ms Wass said: “Mrs Markcrow suffered the sadness of having a disabled child. She loved him and cared for him and did everything humanly possible to care for him at the expense of so much in her own life.”

In his 20s Patrick developed autism and began to hit himself violently and persistently.

His behaviour was so extreme that, on at least one occasion, a day care centre decided exclude him.

In May 2004, a member of Buckinghamshire County Council’s disability team sent an internal email about the Markcrows, the court was told.

The court heard how it read: “I am worried about how she is managing, especially considering the lack of help she is receiving. This is urgent.”

To compound her grief, two weeks after Patrick’s death, Ms Markcrow’s husband Paul, an architect in his 70s, died of an aneurysm.

Speaking outside court, Trevor Boyd, of Buckinghamshire County Council, insisted that help had been offered but Ms Markcrow had always been adamant her son should remain at the family home, built 40 years earlier by her late husband.

“We could not have done anything more and have done a thorough review,” he said.

“It is regrettable that Mrs Markcrow did not accept all the care that was there.”

The Markcrows refused to comment.