By Brian Melley | AP
A London judge on Friday rejected a U.S. mother's challenge to be extradited to Colorado to face murder charges in the deaths of two of her young children.
Judge John Zani said in Westminster Magistrates' Court that it would now be up to the British Home Secretary to order Kimberlee Singler returned to the U.S.
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 in Colorado if convicted 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 was “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 their 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.
“Prospect of release — that is not your concern,” Smith told the judge at a hearing in December.
Zani said in his ruling that 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.
Singler has denied that she harmed her children. She told police that her ex-husband had either carried out the killings or hired a hitman.
Singler had superficial knife wounds and was initially treated as a victim.
But that changed when her surviving daughter, who initially said she had been attacked by an intruder, told police 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 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 sibling’s 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 on Dec. 19. They had been shot and stabbed.
Although Singler blamed her husband, authorities said he had a solid alibi backed up by GPS records that showed he had been driving a truck at the time of the killings.
