BBC
ONE's Real Story With Fiona Bruce uncovers three new infant deaths
in "cot death killer" appeal
Angela
Cannings - convicted of murdering her babies - may be the victim
of a miscarriage of justice, according to fresh evidence uncovered
by BBC ONE's Real Story With Fiona Bruce.
When
Angela Cannings was convicted in April 2002 the jury was told that
her three cot deaths, Gemma, Jason and Matthew, could not have been
caused by a genetic defect because there was no evidence of other
infant deaths in her close relatives.
But
an investigation by BBC ONE's Real Story With Fiona Bruce has discovered
that this is not true.
The
programme found out that Angela's paternal great-grandmother suffered
one infant death and Angela's paternal grandmother two.
This
fresh evidence of three infant deaths directly in line provides
compelling new evidence according to Professor Michael Patton, Clinical
Geneticist at St George's Hospital Medical School in London.
Professor
Patton said: "This is an exceptional family.
"The
deaths are more likely to be explained by some form of genetic inheritance
where some members of the family are affected and it is passed through
other members of the family who don't express the gene."
Until
the Real Story investigation the police, the judge and the jury
all thought Angela's grandmother had seven children.
Irish
birth records prove she had nine – with two dying in early
infancy.
Professor
Patton commented: "We would have seen diseases like measles
and whooping cough a couple of generations back.
"There
is no suggestion that these children, from what we know, died from
infectious diseases."
Real
Story's investigation also discovered that Angela's half brother,
Joshua Connolly, now aged 21 months, suffered three sudden attacks
in his first year - all of them, it seems, triggered by an allergic
reaction to cow's milk.
His
mother Katherine Connolly was able to intervene.
"When
we were feeding him he was having problems, gasping for breath so
we had to take the bottle out, he was finding it hard to breathe.
We took him straight to the doctor," she told the programme.
It
appears that Joshua has an allergy to cow's milk.
Research
carried out at Cambridge University 40 years ago suggested that
cot deaths could be caused by an allergic reaction to cow's milk.
Angela's
last child to die, Matthew, had taken cow's milk shortly before
he died and the other two babies were bottle fed, raising the possibility
that Angela's cot deaths were caused by a genetic allergy to cow's
milk.
As
in the cases of other alleged "cot death killers" Sally
Clark and Trupti Patel, the prosecution relied on evidence from
Professor Sir Roy Meadow. Both were released after appeals.
In
the Sally Clark case Professor Meadow's evidence was condemned by
the Court of Appeal as "manifestly wrong" and "grossly
misleading".
In
Angela Cannings' case Professor Meadow told the jury that her babies
could not have died a normal cot death because they appeared healthy
immediately before they died.
However,
new evidence from Professor Ronald Harper at the University of California
suggests that this is perfectly consistent with cot death.
He
told Real Story: "Cot death can happen very quickly. We have
recordings in which the process appears to occur over one or two
minutes.
"We
have encountered cases where a child was feeding and the mother
had looked down and the child had succumbed.
"There
are cases in which the infant is perfectly awake and happy a few
minutes before death and then suddenly had died."
Angela's
appeal will begin on 13 November.
Real
Story With Fiona Bruce, Monday 3 November, 7.30 pm, BBC ONE
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