Maxine Robinson

Maxine Robinson (born 1968) is an English woman who murdered all three of her children between 1989 and 1993. Convicted of murdering two of the children in 1995, Robinson unsuccessfully appealed against her convictions, claiming their deaths had been natural. In 2004, her case and many other cases of multiple cot death came up for review as potentially unsafe. However, she admitted killing them before her case could be reviewed and further revealed that she had, in 1989, murdered her first-born child, whose death until then had been considered a result of SIDS. Her trial judge observed that Robinson's case was a "timely" reminder that "not all mothers in prison for killing their children are the victims of miscarriages of justice."

Murders In 1989, Robinson's nine-month-old daughter, Victoria, died suddenly at the family home in Pelton, near Chester-le-Street, County Durham. The death was not considered suspicious at the time and was judged to be a cot death. though a Home Office pathologist testified that the deaths were consistent with suffocation. Robinson was convicted of their murders at trial in 1995 by a narrow majority verdict. She appealed against the verdict, but her conviction was upheld.

Before a review could occur, however, Robinson told a prison 'listener' (a prisoner trained by Samaritans to provide support to other prisoners) at HM Prison Durham that she had killed all three of her children, revealing that they had been smothered in their sleep. She was charged with Victoria's murder in April 2004. Although advised by her defence to plead guilty to infanticide with diminished responsibility, Robinson instead pleaded guilty to murder, saying she had smothered the baby with a deflated balloon. She said she had killed Victoria as she had been unable to cope with her, was depressed at the time and was criticised by her mother.

Robinson was already serving a life sentence for the murder of her two younger children when she pleaded guilty to murdering the oldest. The judge increased her minimum term by three years, remarking that the case was a "timely" reminder that "not all mothers in prison for killing their children are the victims of miscarriages of justice."