Hampshire mother jailed after drowning two-year-old during period of psychosis

A teaching assistant who drowned her two-year-old daughter in a pond on a Hampshire common after suffering from postpartum psychosis has been jailed.

Alice Mackey, 42, wrongly believed she was a bad mother and was under the delusion that the best way of protecting her child, Annabel, was to kill her, Winchester crown court heard.

The court was told that Mackey had a sense of looking down on herself from outside her body as she killed her daughter. “It wasn’t really me,” she told her legal team.

After drowning Annabel, Mackey went back to her house 300 metres away, in the village of Kingsley, dialled 999 and claimed her child had been abducted.

Almost two years later she admitted she had killed Annabel and pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Mr Justice Saini said it was a “tragic case”. He said he was satisfied that Mackey had been mentally unwell from the time Annabel was born until her death.

He told her: “You considered in your delusional state this was some form of act of mercy to Annabel.” He said he accepted she was remorseful and had made progress in prison.

Saini jailed Mackey for four years minus the 216 days she had so far spent in custody. After Mackey left the dock, Saini told the court: “There are no winners in these situations. I just hope Miss Mackey can in the future lead a useful life.”

Mackey’s barrister, Patrick Gibbs KC, said she had been a woman of “exemplary character” with a “natural affinity for young children”. She had suffered five years of miscarriages and “mind-twisting” IVF treatment before giving birth to Annabel.

The barrister said: “Finally the miracle of Annabel. She couldn’t have loved anyone more than she loved Annabel but motherhood did for her.

“Instead of the warm bubble of happiness she expected, she was plunged into darkness.” Her confidence collapsed and her mental health slipped away, Gibbs said.

Mackey was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis and anxiety, becoming so unwell that she was detained under the Mental Health Act. She was then cared for by a community team for a while, until she was deemed to have recovered from the psychosis.

In January 2023 she stopped taking the antidepressant she had been prescribed and appeared to be living a normal life. But in September 2023 she drowned her daughter.

Gibbs said: “It seemed to her in the madness of that day that there was only one way to make Annabel safe, to protect Annabel from Annabel’s bad mother, Alice.”

He told the court Mackey wanted to make it clear she had loved Annabel and the child’s father, Peter Mackey, who worked in IT sales. “She regrets every moment of what happened,” he said.

Gibbs said she would never have another child because she would never be well enough. He said Mackey had killed the person she loved most deeply and had lost her family, her vocation and her life.

In a victim personal statement, Annabel’s father said he was tormented by the idea of his daughter suffering and felt guilt he had not been there to protect her. He described the moment her life support was turned off and how he had touched her face as she lay at the funeral director’s.

He said he still told Annabel to sleep well every night but said her future – her first day at school, falling in love, having children of her own – had been “stolen”.

• In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org. You can contact the mental health charity Mind by calling 0300 123 3393 or visiting mind.org.uk