Mom Drowns Her Boys After Smoking Too Much “Skunk”

Marley Jamal Thomas was born on February 11th, 2017. His little brother came along a little over 3 and 1/2 years later. Elijah Mosiah Thomas was born in September of 2020 in Hackney Downs in East London. To everyone who knew him, he was called Teddy. Their parents were Cara Alexander and Selvin Thomas.

 Marley and Teddy had two siblings whose names we’ve chosen to omit for their privacy. The family lived together on Dalston Lane in Hackney. At the time of the events of today’s story, Marley was 5 years old and Teddy was 2. That’s close to everything we could find about them and we’d rather tell you that than try to fill the spaces with guesses.

 What we do have is one photograph of the two of them together. In it, they were clambering around a tree trunk, both of them smiling. They shared a bedroom and a bunk bed. >> Cara Alexander was born on December 23rd, 1977. She had two older children before she had Marley and Teddy, one son and one daughter.

 She met Selvin Thomas and by his own account, they were together for around 7 years. They raised Marley and Teddy together at the address on Dalston Lane. In September of 2022, Cara and Selvin split up. She moved out with Marley and Teddy and into a home on Cornwallis Road in Dagenham, which is also in East London.

 Selvin stayed behind in Hackney and he kept in regular contact with her and with his sons. Late in the afternoon of December 15th, 2022, a street camera recorded Cara with Marley and Teddy and this footage is the last time that anyone saw these two boys alive. That evening, Cara was smoking weed and according to reports, had been smoking high potency strains every night.

 Also known in the UK under the catch-all term skunk, these strains have a high psychoactive potency and make up over 90% of illegal cannabis seizures in the UK. As of the date of this recording in August of 2026, weed is illegal for recreational use in the UK and is classified as a class B controlled drug. However, it is legal for medicinal use if prescribed by a doctor.

 Should be noted that in 2016, Cara did have a psychotic episode. She was assessed afterward and the agreed diagnosis at the time was a psychosis that had not been brought on by cannabis. For the events of today’s story, she had no criminal record. >> At some point that evening, Marley and Teddy were in their pajamas getting ready for bed.

The bath had probably already been run as it was part of the normal evening routine in their house. And then, out of nowhere, Cara drowned them both. She later testified that she held her two small children under the water for up to a minute or two. Then, sometime later, she dried them off, put them in clean pajamas, and she laid them side by side on the bottom bunk of the bed they shared, and then tucked them in.

The next morning, Selvan was supposed to have the boys for the weekend. He tried contacting Cara and when she didn’t respond, he started to worry. He went out to her home and knocked on the front door. It took a while, but Cara answered. She was wearing a hoodie. She told him the boys were upstairs asleep, and then she slammed the door in Selvan’s face.

 Selvan told her to open up or he was calling the police, so she opened it. Behind the door was a pile of toys that looked like they had been stacked there to barricade it shut. Selvan went upstairs to the back bedroom where his sons were in the bottom bunk. According to attorney Philip Evans, who later prosecuted this case, and I quote, “They were bunched up together and it looked like they were asleep.

 They had the duvet up to their shoulders, only their faces were visible. Selvin ran down the stairs screaming, “Kara, Kara, Kara, what the [ __ ] You’ve killed my children.” But she was already gone, out through the backyards and into a neighboring street. Selvin called emergency services at around 2:00 in the afternoon.

 He told the operator, “She killed my children. I’ve come here to check on them. She slammed the door in my face. I said, you need to open the door or I’ll call the police. So she let me in. I said, where are the children? She said, they’re in bed. So I’ve gone to check on my children. She’s run across, now she’s running to a neighbor’s house, jumped the fence.

 My children are dead, they’re dead. They’re both in the bottom bunk freezing cold. She’s lost her mind and I don’t know what she’s done. She’s killed both my little boys.” Outside the house, he said to a man, “She knows I’m going to kill her for no reason, for no reason, for no reason, bro.

 They’re 2-years-old and 5-years-old. Emergency services arrived, but there was nothing anyone could do. Marley and Teddy had been dead for hours. Officers found Kara in a nearby yard around an hour later and arrested her. Her phone turned up in a sink full of water. Detectives pulled footage from local street cameras and from residents’ doorbells and Kara’s phone was sent off for forensic analysis.

 The phone had been in regular use right up until the night the boys died and then nothing. Detectives turned up no trace of anyone but Kara having been inside. A man was also arrested over the deaths. He was released over the weekend with no further action taken against him. Detective Inspector Shaun Treeweek said, “This is clearly an extremely distressing incident with many unanswered questions.

 However, at this very early stage, nobody else is sought in connection with the deaths. The autopsies and toxicology reports came back showing no natural cause of death. In fact, before the night they died, there was no sign at all that either of them had been physically mistreated. Both had died the same way, which was later described as an interference with the normal mechanics of their breathing through smothering or immersion in water.

Carla was charged on December 19th, 2022 with two counts of murder. She appeared at the Barkingside Magistrates Court the following day wearing a gray tracksuit with her hair pulled across her face. Said nothing beyond her own name and date of birth. The hearing lasted under 5 minutes and she was held in custody without bail.

December 22nd, she appeared in a gray sweater at the Old Bailey by video link from HMP Bronzefield, a woman’s prison. Judge Mark Lucraft set a plea hearing for March and a provisional trial date of July 10th, 2023. March 30th, 2023, Carla appeared before Judge Richard Marks and pled not guilty. July of 2023 came and went with no trial.

 The case also moved off the Old Bailey list and out to the Kingston Crown Court. It finally opened in early February of 2025, more than two years after Marley and Teddy died and ran 3 weeks. Attorneys Philip Evans and Philip McGee prosecuted while attorney Jeremy Dein defended. Attorney Evans opened the case to the jury.

 He said, “On Friday, 16 December 2022, two young brothers, Marley Thomas and Elijah Thomas, were found lying together in the lower bunk of their shared bunk bed in their bedroom at their home in Dagenham. They were both dead.” Carla had offered a plea. She admitted two counts of gross negligence manslaughter.

 That meant owning that she was responsible for keeping her sons safe and had failed at it badly enough to kill them. It also meant denying she ever meant them any harm. Her account was that she had put the boys in the bath, fallen asleep while smoking, and they had drowned by accident. The Crown refused to accept it as the prosecution case was built on one single driving factor.

 Given the ages of the two boys, they felt the two of them accidentally drowning in the same bath wasn’t logistically possible. The only reasonable explanation left was that Cara caused it herself. On the question of intent, Attorney Evans told the jury, “The prosecution case is that if a person smothers or immerses a young water, the very least intention that person must have is to cause really serious harm to that child.

 This is all the more so when there are two children killed.” Attorney Dyne ran a defense of diminished responsibility, which is a partial defense under English law. It doesn’t clear defendant of anything. What it does is knock murder down to manslaughter if the person’s mind was working abnormally at the time. He argued Cara had an acute and transient psychotic disorder.

 Three psychiatrists gave evidence. They disagreed with each other about a great deal of things. The jury deliberated for 6 hours and 54 minutes. On February 21st, 2025, they found Cara Alexander guilty of two counts of murder. Justice Joel Benneton told the jury, “I am not going to pass sentence today. I want to have up-to-date psychiatric reports and I want the wider family to have a chance to make statements.

 This has been a particularly tragic and sad case and I anticipate it has taken a strain on everyone in the court.” He set sentencing for April 11th. Justice Benneton opened his sentencing remarks with something that was not really addressed to Cara at all. He said, “The heavy use of skunk or other hyper strong strains of cannabis can plunge people into a mental health crisis in which they may harm themselves or others.

If any drug user does not know that, it’s about time they did. At your trial, Cara Alexander, the three psychiatrists who gave evidence disagreed about a number of things, but on that they were unanimous. It will comfort nobody connected to this case, but if these events bring home that message to even a few people, some slight good may come from what is otherwise an unmitigated tragedy.

 He didn’t think for a moment that what Cara did that night was premeditated. Cara was in a psychotic state when she killed her sons. That finding came from the analysis of Dr. Farnham. He built it on Cara’s behavior before the killings, including what the judge called atypical religious comments. He also weighed how she behaved afterward in the sheer enormity of what she had done.

On the medical definition of that psychotic state, the judge accepted the diagnosis of Professor Blackwood that it was cannabis-induced, even allowing for other stressors in her life. That finding lined up with the jury throwing out her diminished responsibility defense. Of the 2016 episode, the judge found cannabis had probably played a part in that one, too.

 Whether Cara knew cannabis could trigger another psychotic state, he couldn’t be sure. Dr. Ratnam testified that she might have known, but that rested on Cara having read one general reference buried in many pages of psychiatric reports. That December, two of Cara’s friends had been hearing from her regularly about how much she was smoking.

 Both of them knew she was looking after two small children. At least one of them knew about the psychotic episode in 2016. Justice Penfold said, “Yet neither of them warned you of any risk or sounded any note of caution at all.” >> When discussing aggravating factors, the judge named two. The vulnerability of the boys because of how young they were, and what he called the shocking of the trust that any small child ought to be able to have in their mother or father.

Cara was 47 by the time she was sentenced. She had been 44 when the boys died. On mitigation, he named three. Her previous good character, her psychotic state at the time, and the fact that she will carry what she did with her for the rest of her life. He said, “You not only lack any previous convictions, but before that terrible evening in December 2022, you had been a caring mother.

 That stands as a stark contrast to the history that more normally confronts the courts when a child is killed of persistent abuse and mistreatment.” A witness who saw Marley and Teddy in December of 2022 said, “Both boys seemed really well-behaved.” Salvin said of Carr that she never shouted or raised her voice at the boys. She never showed violence to the boys.

>> The judge also worked through a difficult legal question. English law at times treats getting voluntarily intoxicated as making an offense worse, not better, and it blocks a defendant from using drink or drugs to claim diminished responsibility. So, the question was whether a psychotic state that Carr brought on herself could count in her favor, and Justice Bendeth decided that it could.

Being drunk or high isn’t on the list of aggravating factors that Parliament wrote. Mental health disorders that fall outside diminished responsibility are on the list of mitigating factors, and the Sentencing Council’s guidance implies that self-induced intoxication can fall under mitigation where the person didn’t know what it might do to them.

 He said the necessary public interest in not letting offenders hide behind drink or drugs they chose to consume had already been served by taking the diminished responsibility defense away from her. His conclusion was that Carr had been grossly disinhibited and unable to make rational choices or exercise judgment, and that this very significantly reduced her culpability.

 On the third point of mitigation, he told her, “Despite the fact it is all your doing, you will mourn Marley and Elijah for the rest of your life. From all I have read and seen of you, I have no doubt that every day when you awake, you will remember and grieve for the little boys whose lives you snatched away. The only sentence English law allows for murder is life imprisonment.

 What the judge sets is the minimum term, the point at which the prisoner can first apply to the parole board. If the board isn’t satisfied it’s safe to release them, they stay in prison. So, it’s not guaranteed they’ll just immediately get out for a minimum term. If they are released, they are on license for the rest of their life and can be recalled.

 The starting point for a murder of this kind is 30 years. Balancing the aggravation against what he called unusually weighty mitigation, Justice Beaney then set the minimum term below 30 years. He set it at 24 years. Then he deducted the time Cara had already spent in custody since her arrest, 2 years and 112 days. That brought the final figure to a life sentence with a minimum term of 21 years and 252 days.

On sentencing day, the judge heard from four people about what these crimes had done to them. Selvin, Cara’s mother, and Cara’s elder two children. Selvin was too sick to be there. Philip Evans KC read his statement out for him. He said, “The events of December 2022 have obviously had a profound impact on me and my family.

 Cara ensured there would be maximum impact on me by engineering a situation where I would find Marley and Elijah deceased in bed. I am coming to terms with the fact I dedicated 7 years of my life to a cold-hearted, selfish, and extremely stupid demon. I believe Cara’s intention was to frame me for the murders and somehow present herself as a victim.

 She was able to brutally end the lives of two innocent children, put them in the bed, and wait calmly for me. She has shown no remorse or provided any kind of explanation or apology. She did not consider the impact this would have. Despite the correct verdict being handed down, there still remain many unanswered questions.

 It is a pain that follows me all day, every day, and will do for the rest of my life. Kara’s mother and her older son wrote statements. The judge said they wrote about the loss of those lively, cheerful little children, and about the emotional chaos and heartbreak of losing the boys and losing Kara in the same moment.

 Her daughter spoke in court about what these crimes have done to her life. The judge said she spoke movingly. Detective Chief Inspector Paul Waller led the investigation. After the verdict, he said, “Our thoughts are with the family, especially the boys’ father, who found them dead when he went to collect them for the weekend after Kara Alexander had failed to return his messages.

 No parent should have to go through such a horrific experience, and then have to listen to the detailed evidence highlighting what led up to these events.” He also thanked the officers and paramedics who were first on the scene, and said the guilty verdict couldn’t turn back the clock, but did give the family some form of resolution.

 Samantha Yealland, the senior Crown Prosecutor on the case, said, “It is unimaginable to think what those poor children went through in their final moments. It is a parent’s job to keep their children safe, and Kara Alexander not only failed to do that, but robbed them of their lives.” >> Marley and Teddy were both cremated.

Neither of them has a burial plot listed anywhere we could find. What exists is two memorial pages put up by someone who is only listed as a contributor. Both Marley and Elijah’s Reed, “Beloved son of Selvin.” Whoever wrote that line made a choice. Both boys had two parents, but only one of them is named. Detective Chief Inspector Paul Waller finished his statement on sentencing day by talking directly to Marley and Teddy’s family.

He said, “I hope you can now move on with your life, remembering the boys as you knew them, and treasuring the happy times you spent with them.