MANCHESTER, England – A UK woman has been sentenced to prison for murdering her father and burying him in the garden — but only after she found his stash of child pornography that included images of herself.
After pleading guilty to manslaughter, fraud and false representation, Barbara Coombes received a nine-year sentence this week.
UK authorities only learned about the 2006 murder in January when 63-year-old Barbara walked into a police station and confessed, reports the Guardian. Authorities then uncovered the body of World War II veteran Kenneth Coombes in Barbara’s garden in Greater Manchester.
He would have been 87 when his daughter hit him in the head with a shovel then slit his throat with its blade, reports the BBC.
Though Barbara said she feared her father would hurt or kill her, Judge Timothy King didn’t believe she acted in self-defense. The sentence he handed down, however, took into account what he referred to as “40 years of extreme mental, physical and sexual abuse.”
Barbara said her father allowed men to take explicit photos of her as a girl and went on to rape her hundreds of times, possibly fathering a child who died shortly after birth. She said she finally snapped after discovering explicit photos of naked infants, including herself.
King said PTSD and severe depression clouded her judgment but suggested she only confessed because a housing official had become suspicious of her father’s whereabouts, per the Manchester Evening News. Barbara fraudulently claimed $250,000 in benefits for her father before confessing.
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