Former science teacher, 36, is found GUILTY of murdering her three-year-old daughter

A former biology teacher has today been convicted of murdering her three-year-old daughter by drowning her in the bath following the breakdown of her marriage. 

Claire Colebourn killed her daughter Bethan at their home in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, after the 36-year-old split with her husband Michael, the chief executive of luxury marine interior company Trimline.

The 36-year-old had denied murder but was today found guilty by a jury after a week-long trial.  

Colebourn showed no emotion as the verdict was read aloud at Winchester Crown Court today.  

Bethan was discovered dead in a downstairs bedroom in the family home having been drowned around 14 hours earlier

Michael Colebourn outside Winchester Crown Court on March 11

Michael Colebourn outside Winchester Crown Court on March 11

The court heard Colebourn hit ‘rock bottom’ after her high-flying husband Michael ended their 16-year-relationship.

She woke the couple’s daughter Bethan at their home in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, in the early hours of October 19, 2017, led her to the bath and drowned her by holding her body down under the water, before making multiple suicide attempts.

Colebourn was discovered by her mother about 14 hours later, in a diabetic coma.

The former sixth form teacher initially denied all memory of the incident, but later recalled how Bethan agreed to have a bath in the middle of the night at her mother’s instruction, telling police: ‘Sadly, my little girl trusted me completely.’

Colebourn, who met her estranged husband Michael at university, admitted she killed Bethan but said she only wanted to ‘save’ her from the little girl’s father.

But jurors rejected her account, delivered during a fraught and emotional day’s evidence from the witness box on Wednesday.

Kerry Maylin, prosecuting, said: ‘Bethan was three-years old, she was a much loved daughter of Claire and Michael Colebourn, but she was found dead at her home.

‘Claire Colebourn, when Bethan was found, was also in the house and she was at the time suffering a diabetic episode.

‘Bethan died because she had been put in the bath at home and held under the water, the act was completed by her mother.’

The prosecutor said that just over a month before Bethan’s death, Colebourn and her husband separated and Mr Colebourn had moved out.

Miss Maylin said their relationship had been difficult and the defendant went on to make ‘unfounded accusations’ on Facebook and in an email sent to his work, that her husband was having an affair with the company’s finance director.

In the email to Trimline, she wrote: ‘He has been having an affair with his finance director at work, everything has been pre-planned, of course the finances.

‘They are aiming to take over the business and set up a new life together.’

Miss Maylin said Colebourn also told friends she had visited Ms Futcher’s home looking for her husband’s car.

The lawyer said Colebourn also became worried, without foundation, that Mr Colebourn was monitoring her computer and arranged for an IT firm to supply her with a new laptop and wifi at her home.

Police officers at the scene of the murder in Hampshire in October 2017

Police officers at the scene of the murder in Hampshire in October 2017  

She said that within minutes of receiving the new computer in October, she began searching for suicide-related websites.

Miss Maylin said that following her arrest, she told medical staff she had tried to kill herself the previous day.

The prosecutor said a doctor described how she was ‘only emotional when discussing the fact Michael Colebourn had left her and her daughter and her father had done the same to her mother’.

She later wrote in a letter intercepted at a hospital she was staying in: ‘In my eyes I saved her, everything over those days is a blur.’

She later told police: ‘I am responsible for Bethan’s death because she drowned and I am responsible for it. Bethan drowned because I was there, I held her under the water.’

Colebourn will be sentenced on Monday morning. 

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk