A mother who gave her seriously ill daughter a morphine overdose to help her die, then trawled the internet about euthanasia, a jury heard today.
Kay Gilderdale spent hours at her computer doing Google searches into the effects of morphine overdoses at the time she was said to have given her daughter, Lynn, nearly three times her daily dose.
Lynn, 31, who had been bed-ridden for 17-years after contracting myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), had persuaded her mother to help her take three times her daily dose of morphine in an attempt to kill herself.
The prosecution claim that when Miss Gilderdale, who described her body as “broken” and had attempted suicide before, failed to die her mother administered a cocktail of drugs before injecting her with air to try to cause a fatal air embolism in an attempt to “end her pain”.
Lewes Crown Court heard that in the hours leading up to her daughter’s death, Mrs Gilderdale, 55, had texted her ex-husband, Richard, 56, to advise him not to visit because she and her daughter were asleep.
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Police analysis of Mrs Gilderdale’s home computer showed that shortly after contacting her husband she began her research on the internet. By then she had already handed morphine to her daughter to administer herself.
At 7.14 on the morning of December 4, 2008, she sent her husband a text which read: ’Please can you come now. Be careful. Don’t rush.’ Mrs Gilderdale, described as a “devoted and caring mother”, has admitted assisting the suicide of her daughter at their home near Wadhurst, East Sussex. She denies attempting to murder her. Because toxicology tests cannot prove whether Mrs Gilderdale’s actions contributed to her daughter’s death the more serious charge of murder has not been pursued.
The trial continues.