Amanda Hartley violently murdered 15 years after killing her baby

Amanda Hartley was violently murdered, 15 years after she killed her baby son in a house fire.

Richard Payne, high on drink and drugs, strangled Hartley with a dog lead at their home in Leeds.

Payne was jailed for a minimum of 15 years on Tuesday, when Amanda Hartley’s wretched past was revealed.

In 1994, Hartley was known as Amanda McKenna, at 20 years of age she and her former partner Michael Cunningham set fire to their home in Seacroft so they could claim money to pay off debts.

The couple managed to flee the burning building but the fire left 22-month-old and his brother badly burned.

Amanda and the boy’s father, Michael Cunningham, made a bogus appeal on television to catch the arsonists, the community rallied round the pair who made emotional appeals to catch the arsonists.

They claimed they had been sent hate letters in the weeks before the blaze and even tried to apportion blame on a neighbor.

At Leeds Crown Court, initially the couple denied the charges, but later admitted manslaughter.

Cunningham was jailed for seven years and Hartley was sent to a young offenders’ institute for five years.

Although the sentencing judge Mr Justice Kennedy said the parents had never intended to harm their children, he said both must bear responsibility for their deaths.

He said what was particularly distressing was that even when the couple, who grew up in the Irish town of Drogheda, had realised the enormity of what they had done, their first thought was still for themselves.

The court was told Mrs Hartley had been pregnant six times by the time she was 20.

They were both told the chances of seeing their surviving children again were remote.

Mrs Hartley was then found dead at a house in Leeds in May after being strangled with a dog lead by her partner Richard Payne, 29.

The Recorder of Leeds Judge Peter Collier QC told Payne: “You are clearly a dangerous man. In the end, nothing can avoid the plain fact that her life was taken from her by you.”

Payne must serve a minimum of 14 years and 183 days before he is eligible for parole.

         

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