‘Killer Nanny’ Louise Woodward seen shopping 25 years after being accused of violently shaking baby to death
‘KILLER Nanny’ Louise Woodward has been seen out doing her food shopping 25 years after being accused of violently shaking a baby to death.
The Brit Au Pair was initially found guilty of the second-degree murder of baby Matthew Eapenn and was sentenced to life in prison in 1997 – but her conviction was overturned by judge Hiller Zobel.
The shock ruling downgraded the verdict to involuntary manslaughter and saw teenage Woodward freed after spending 289 days behind bars on charges related to Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS).
Now, 25 years on, a new Channel 4 documentary, The Killer Nanny: Did She Do It?, has examined what happened on that fateful day in 1997 and what evidence the jury used to originally convict Woodward of murder.
And wearing a coat and cropped leggings, Louise, once dubbed the ‘killer nanny’ was also spotted walking to her car after collecting shopping this week.
Now aged 43, she teaches dance classes and mingles with fellow mums on the school run, reports The Mirror.
One neighbour said: “She’s lived here for years. Everyone knows her past but she’s just another mum to us.”
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Louise Woodward was a normal teen from Elton, Cheshire, at 18 years old when she flew 3,100 miles to work for an au pair for an agency in Boston, Massachusetts after she finished her A-levels in 1996.
She was placed with a family but reportedly was “unhappy” with the 11 pm “curfew” they had enforced on her and left.
Soon after she was hired by Sunil and Deborah Eappen, both 30-year-old doctors, to take care of their young son Matthew, in November.
On February 4, Woodward called an ambulance to their home after eight-month-old Matthew stopped breathing.
He was rushed to Boston Children’s Hospital and put on a life support machine.
As he lay in a coma, the young teen was arrested on suspicion of child abuse.
But when Matthew died of a brain haemorrhage five days later, the charges were upped to murder.
In 1997, the trial divided opinion across the Atlantic with many in the US convinced Woodward shook little Matthew to death.
TRAGIC CASE
But her supporters in the UK accused her of being an innocent victim caught up in the country’s arcane legal system.
At her trial, expert prosecution witnesses claimed Matthew’s injuries, which included a cracked skull displayed the “triad” of symptoms consistent with him being violently shaken and used scans of his brain to back their argument.
One expert, Dr Patrick Barnes, testified this was the “classic model” of shaken baby syndrome (SBS) and dismissed the defence’s argument that the boy’s injuries had been sustained at an earlier date.
Jurors were presented with black and white scans of Matthew’s brain scans throughout the case, which both sides of aisle using it to hammer home their arguments.
The defence famously paraded the scan – which appeared to show an old hairline fracture along Matthew’s skull – around the courtroom to claim he had died from earlier injury that were agitated when Woodward ‘lightly’ shook him.
The argument around shaken baby syndrome has raged on both sides of the Atlantic ever since.