American woman accused of killing her two children extradited to US from UK | US crime
An American woman accused of murdering two of her children after a Colorado judge asked her to comply with a custody order has been extradited from Britain, where she was arrested, to the United States to face charges.
Kimberlee Singler was arrested in Kensington, west London, by officers from the UK’s National Crime Agency in December 2023, a week after her nine-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son were found dead in their home in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Singler’s 11-year-old daughter was injured but survived. Singler had superficial knife wounds and told police a man entered the apartment and attacked the family. The surviving daughter initially supported Singler’s story, but eventually told an investigator that her mother said God made her do it, according to U.K. court documents.
Police launched the search for Singler on December 26, 2023. She was found four days later in London’s upscale Chelsea district and arrested. We don’t know why she ended up there.
Singler, 37, fought extradition and denied attacking her children. Her London defense lawyer, Edward Fitzgerald, argued that Singler should not be extradited because if convicted of first-degree murder in Colorado, she would face a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole – a sentence that violates European human rights law. Fitzgerald represented Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in his long fight against extradition to face espionage charges in the United States.
Singler does not yet have a U.S.-based attorney listed as representing her in court documents, according to the court registry.
A judge rejected Singler’s challenge in January 2025, and his request for an appeal was denied in November.
Singler was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of the two children. The family lived with Singler’s mother during the custody battle, but the mother was away at the time, according to British court documents.
Singler also faces one count of attempted murder, three counts of child abuse and one count of assault.
According to British court documents, the children’s bodies were found by police shortly after midnight on December 19, 2023. Police said they found no footprints in the snow leading to a terrace where Singler said an intruder entered through an unlocked door and attacked her, knocking her unconscious.
She told police that her ex-husband “had previously dreamed of killing her family, that the children’s father was always trying to ‘trap’ her and ‘get her arrested’ and take the children away from her,” Judge John Zani said in a January judgment against Singler at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
Police said GPS records showed her ex-husband was driving a truck at the time of the murders, about 80 miles away.
The day before the children’s bodies were discovered, a Colorado judge ordered Singler to comply with an earlier order allowing the father to take custody of them during the holidays, according to state court records. She was told to give the children to her ex-husband herself or bring them to a court hearing on December 20, 2023 to exchange custody.
On the day of the hearing, Singler asked the judge to delay it, writing in a motion that she and her children had been attacked and that two of the children had been murdered. She asked for time to grieve the loss of her children and “get my bearings after this incident”.
