Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Mom Who Says 'God Made Her' Kill Her Kids Flees to London

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

Kimberlee Singler faces a long list of charges in the murders of two of her two children, Ellie Wentz, 9, and Aden Wentz, 7. Singler and her ex-husband were in the middle of a contentious custody battle over visitation in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Singler was taken into custody in the United Kingdom late last year after being charged with murdering her children and injuring her oldest daughter in what police said was a staged burglary call. She is fighting extradition to the United States. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy breaks down the case in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guests: Randy Kessler https://x.com/GAdivorceDavid Tafuri  https://x.com/davidtafuriCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. A woman accused of murdering her children and fleeing to London is fighting extradition to the United States to face the charges. I'm looking at the case of Kimberly Singler and the deaths of her two children, Ellie and Aiden. Welcome to Crime Fix.

I'm Anjanette Levy. Kimberly Singler is in jail in London, and she does not want to come back to the United States. Singler is accused of murdering two of her three children, Ellie Ann, who went by Ellie, and Aiden last December. Ellie was only nine and Aiden just seven. They were found dead in their apartment in Colorado Springs, Colorado on December 19th. Police said the initial 911 call came in as a burglary and they found Kimberly and her 11-year-old daughter injured. Both were taken to the hospital. Ellie and Aiden were dead inside the home in a bed. As police investigated, they determined that the complaint about the burglary was actually bogus. That's according to Colorado Springs Police. And they also discovered that Kimberly Singler was in the middle of a contentious custody battle with her ex-husband, Kevin Wentz. In fact, an attorney for

Kevin Wentz said that Singler is accused of killing Ellie and Aiden and attacking the third older child and harming herself on December 18th, the same day that Singler found out that a judge had ordered law enforcement to find the children after Singler did not drop them off as she was supposed to do for parenting time. The call to 911 was in the early morning hours of December 19th, and Singler was last seen in Colorado Springs four days later on December 23rd. Three days later, police issuedrd. Three days later, police issued a warrant for her arrest. And then on December 30th, Singler was actually taken into custody in the UK. Singler faces a long list of charges, including murder, attempted murder,

and assault. Also, she faces felony child abuse charges. Singler has been fighting extradition to the United States for months now. And later, I'll tell you some of what prosecutors revealed in a recent extradition hearing in London. I'll have more on that process in a bit. But first, I want to talk about this custody battle between Singler and her ex-husband. Randy Kessler is a family law attorney. Randy, this case is incredibly disturbing. It sounds like they think it all stemmed from this contentious custody battle between Kimberly Singler and Kevin Wentz, her ex-husband. Yeah.

I mean, those cases, they just blow my mind. I've been doing this 35 years, and I still can't understand how people could go beyond just a fight in court. You know, I know it's easy to say, lick your wounds, move on or go back to fight another day in court. But it's just such a leap from I didn't get what I wanted in court to I'm going to do this. It just doesn't make sense. But it's human emotion. Right. People are angry. And they say family law is the most dangerous area of all, because, you know, if it was the lawyer representing a criminal defendant, they go to court. They know they did something wrong. They know they're probably going to jail. They might be upset at how much, but in family law, all of a sudden you go to court and some judge you've never met says, this is how much time you're going to spend with your child. This is how

much money you're going to get or pay for your child. And you lose all control and people just break. And maybe that's what happened. I don't know her, obviously. I don't know the psychology is maintaining that she didn't kill her children, but her older daughter has given a statement to police where she said that her mother did stab her and cut her. It's just, it's a gruesome, horrible, horrible case. In your experience, where does this just come from? Is it just like a place of hurt and just it boils into hatred? I mean, I just don't understand how people who once loved each other can just get so – just hate each other so much. They come to hate each other so much and then you have children involved as well. It would be really disturbing to me if there was not some component of mental illness. I mean, if this was a sane person that had no mental deficiency that could rashly decide to do something like this, that's even worse. Mental illness, it's not an excuse. It's not a great defense, but at least it's some sort of explanation, right? We're all asking why. How could

someone do this to another person? How could someone do this to their own child? How could a mother do this to their own children? How could, you know, there had to be some preexisting illness or deficiency or condition, and this just flipped the switch. You know, I could see wanting to retaliate, wanting to get back. We see parents hide their children or run to other countries with the children and say, "'You're not gonna get to see your father.'

And there's a court system and it takes a while to get back on track." But this is, it's too far. I don't know how we stop it. And I don't know how courts recognize it because if I go to court and say, judge, if you give him custody, or if you do this, mom's going to flip out and murder the child, I get left out of court, right? They can't protect everybody in the world from this potential one in a million circumstance. But when it gets to be two in a million, five in a million, 20 in a million, maybe the courts have to start putting in a little more barriers, a little more protectivism.

We also need more judges, more money for the family law system because judges are putting out fires. You know, they get involved when this has already happened. Now, before it's happened, how could you ever argue legitimately to a judge, judge, you need to worry because this mother might do something crazy like this. I mean, really, if I said that in court, I'd be an alarmist. I'd be Chicken Little saying, judge, the sky is going to fall. And if it doesn't fall, then I'd lose my credibility the next time when I make that argument. So it's a dilemma.

Some things are just hard to predict, impossible to predict. This is probably one of those things that nobody could have predicted. It's heartbreaking for sure. Randy Kessler, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Now, Kimberly Singler has had some legal muscle behind her in her fight against extradition. She's being represented by Edward Fitzgerald. He's a high profile attorney in the UK, and he's one of the attorneys who represented WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. At an extradition hearing late last week, the prosecutor dropped some bombshells, according to the Associated Press, saying Singler's older daughter who survived said that her mom told her that God made her do it and that the girl told police her mom stabbed her and she started

begging her mom to stop and her mom cut her again. Singler had denied killing her children and harming her daughter. Her lawyer claims her older daughter's statement was possibly coerced by law enforcement. Her daughter had initially told police that a man came into their home. The Associated Press reported that the prosecutor provided new details about the crime during the hearing as well. Joel Smith, the prosecutor, said she would later tell police that she had woken on December 18th feeling weird and woozy and that the children had seemed drowsy as well. She said that she suspected her former partner of killing them or organizing to have them killed. She said that a dark figure had entered her apartment and that she had fainted.

This is what he is saying, Kimberly Singler told them. have them killed. She said that a dark figure had entered her apartment and that she had fainted. This is what he is saying, Kimberly Singler told them. It was also revealed that Ellie and Aiden were shot and stabbed and they were found in their bed. But Singler's ex-husband, according to the prosecutor, had a solid alibi. Singler is arguing that she shouldn't be extradited because she could face life in prison without parole, a sentence that violates European human rights laws. But the prosecutor noted that Governor John Hickenlooper actually commuted some sentences of people convicted of murder in Colorado. News reports show that some of those people were actually juveniles who had been sentenced to life in prison, and life sentences for juveniles was determined to be unconstitutional. I want to turn now to David Tafuri. He's an international lawyer and a former

State Department official. So, David, these things, these extradition cases can take an incredibly long time. They can. You know, each country has its own extradition process. First of all, you have to have an extradition treaty with another country in order for there to be even the possibility of extradition. In this case, obviously, the U.S. and U.K. do have an extradition treaty. The defendants are extradited from one country to the other frequently, although in recent times, it's been a more difficult process, especially if a defendant in the U.K. is able to hire a lawyer and make a number of different defenses, which can play out over a couple of years of different court hearings.

This hearing has now been delayed until December. The judge adjourned the hearing after hearing that there was this issue brought up by Edward Fitzgerald, the attorney for Kimberly Singler, where he said, you know, they may they may gave her life without parole in Colorado. And that's deemed, you know, inhumane under international law. But then the prosecutor said, well, you know, the governor had commuted some sentences of some people convicted of murder now these people were this was a foreigner governor and these people were juveniles so this is a totally different type of situation when you're talking about juvenile offenders sentenced to life in prison but is is that a way to really hold this up citing the law in the United States when somebody appears to have

fled the country to avoid prosecution? So the answer is it possibly is. And that's because the European Court of Human Rights about 10 years ago issued a decision which suggested that if there is a life sentence without the possibility of parole and without the possibility of review, penalty is a violation of human rights. And now many countries in Europe will not extradite people who defendants who might get the death penalty in the United States for that reason. So this would be an extension of that now extending that to that defense to when you have a life sentence without the possibility of parole or review. It's not clear if the UK would agree with that.

Notably, this defendant has the same lawyer that defended Julian Assange. He also defended Arik Naqvi, who was the head of a private equity fund in the Middle East, and he was accused of fraud in the United States. And he also made various defenses to try to prevent extradition and extended out the extradition over a few years. So that would be part of the strategy of the lawyer here. Although I would note, as I'm sure you have noted, that this is not the best case to make this defense, because what the defendant is accused of here is so atrocious, so tragic, you know, killing her own young children, two of them, and injuring a third. It would really probably play out to public opinion in a very bad way.

I'm sure the people of the United Kingdom really don't want to harbor a woman who's accused of such terrible crimes. And that's what confounds me is the delay here because of the nature of the charges. This is not a Julian Assange type case. I mean, this is much, much different. I mean, the whole Julian Assange thing, that was a whole different ball of wax here. So you said this could take a couple of years. And in the officials in Colorado seem that they seem like they're prepared for that. They realize that. So how do you see this unfolding? Do you think she just will eventually, as the process moves forward, be extradited? Because I don't see the UK dying on this hill.

I happen to agree with you, but I'm not exactly sure how this is going to play out. And it really depends on the judges in the UK, whether they find this argument that a life sentence without the possibility of parole and review is a proper reason to deny extradition. Again, bad law can be made when the facts are extreme. And in this case, the facts are very extreme. And so the UK judges may be inclined to recognize the defense, but reluctant to recognize it in this instance. Sok Nafi and Julian Assange, is really going out on a limb taking this case. It's probably one of the hardest extradition cases he'll ever try to defend. And so he might have had he might have better success in other cases than one with extreme facts like this. Let's say she wins this fight. Let's look at it from that angle.

What happens? Do they just release her and then she just kind of hangs out in the UK for the rest of her life? It's really scary to think about, right, that you could kill two of your kids and seriously injure another, stabbing them and just be free and live your life, you know, enjoying freedom in Europe. It's a possibility, though. If she is not extradited, it's hard to imagine that the UK would have jurisdiction over these crimes because, you know, they're violent crimes that occurred in the United States. There's no apparent connection to the UK.

So I don't think the UK would have jurisdiction to try her for the same crimes there. Very interesting. Well, David Tafuri, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it. Thank you. So this extradition hearing in the UK has actually been adjourned until December. So this could take a long time. And the DA in Colorado has noted that in prior statements. He's quoted as saying, regardless of the timeline, we will continue to work closely with local, national, and international agencies during the extradition process. Singler, like all persons accused of a crime, is innocent until proven guilty beyond a

reasonable doubt. And the extradition process is an important step in ensuring due process is afforded to her. The loss of two young children in a case like this is a tragedy and demands the full support of my office. And we stand ready to be their voice in our search for justice. I reached out to the DA's office for a comment. So far, I have not heard back.

And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.