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Our four years of pure hell


Devoted ... freed Angela with husband Terry yesterday
Picture: PAUL EDWARDS

 

By OLIVER HARVEY

AN anguished mum was yesterday cleared of murdering two of her babies.

As Angela Cannings, 40, walked free from a life sentence, husband Terry, 49, said: “We have been through a living hell — but I never doubted her once.”

Angela was convicted last year of killing 18-week-old Matthew and seven-week-old Jason.

But Terry said: “I knew she didn’t do it. She adores children and her dream has always been to have a family.”

 
I never doubted you ... Terry kisses his wife Angela outside court yesterday
Picture: PAUL EDWARDS

Angela was arrested after Matthew died in 1999 — eight years after Jason’s death.

Her first child Gemma, died at the age of 13 weeks in 1989.

The loving mum, who also has a seven-year-old daughter, insisted all three suffered sudden infant death syndrome — the medical term for cot death.

And yesterday she was backed by the Court of Appeal in London after serving 20 months in tough Bullwood Prison, Essex.

The ruling was the THIRD of its kind this year. Terry, of Salisbury, Wilts, told The Sun:

“We have taken Ange’s sentence minute by minute, hour by hour and day by day. We have cried an ocean of tears.

My wife has had scalding water thrown in her face and been called a baby killer in jail.

Imagine having to put up with all that at the same time as coping with the death of three of your children.

Ange has never had the chance to grieve for our babies and I have had my own cell — my front room at home.”

Terry, an ex-Tesco manager, went on: “I’ve been so depressed I have been unable to work and I don’t really go out.

"When she was inside, Angela never showed much emotion. I don’t think she wanted to upset me.

"But a prison friend of hers told me she would cry herself to sleep every night — clutching a photo of me and our surviving daughter. The thought of it cracked me up.”

 
Heartbreaking ... Terry at the grave

Terry revealed that every few weeks he had made a heartbreaking pilgrimage to the grave of the dead babies in Winterbourne Gunner, Wilts.

He took his seven-year-old daughter and added: “If it wasn’t for her I don’t know if I’d have kept it together.”

 

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