Margaret Bushell, Suspected Serial Killer Mom – 1973, England

FULL TEXT: Peterborough, England – Files on the violent deaths of three children will remain closed despite the conviction of their mother for murdering her fourth child, a coroner said yesterday.

Mrs Margaret Bushell, 49, [of Downham Market, Norfolk] was jailed for life on Tuesday [May 15] for smothering her seven-year-old son Simon with a pillow. He was the fourth of her children to die tragically in 15 years. One was drowned in a bath, one in a water boiler and another fell to his death from a window.

Yesterday, a local coroner, Mr Arlhur Bantofi, said the verdicts of accidental death on the three children had been in accordance with police evidence, and followed full police investigations.

Two Members of Parliament have called for an inquiry into the other three deaths. The children, the first of whom died in 1958, were a girl of three, and two boys, aged five and three.

Mrs Bushell, a widow, denied murdering Simon. She said his death was an accident and that she had become angry at the way he had kept twitching his nose.

[“Mother gets life for murder,” Canberra Times, Australia, (AAP Reuter), May 18, 1973, p. 4]

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