Mother Murdered Her `Inconvenient` Baby

Just hours after Tara Haigh, 24, killed her young son Billy at her home in November 2005 she went on the Internet looking for a boyfriend.

A mother who smothered to death her three-year-old son because she saw him as an "inconvenience" to her social life, was jailed for life on Monday.

Just hours after Tara Haigh, 24, killed her young son Billy at her home in November 2005 she went on the Internet looking for a boyfriend, the Old Bailey heard.

"There is some evidence he had a temper tantrum and his life was cruelly taken from him by your actions driven out of exasperation and frustration," judge Peter Thornton said, adding her exact motives were a mystery.

He said that Billy was a "well developed child who would almost certainly have battled for his life before becoming overpowered" by the mother he loved and "looked to for protection".

"It does not bear thinking about," the judge said.

Prosecutor Sally Howes said Billy had been on the council's at-risk register for neglect as Haigh had learning difficulties and an IQ of only 74, while his father was in prison at the time for assaulting her.

Howes said after attempts to resuscitate her son in hospital failed, Haigh went to her parents' home.

"An examination of the computer showed that within a few hours of her son's death, she was accessing messages sent to her by men on the website Girls Date Free," Howes said.

She even arranged a date with one man, posting a message on the website saying her son had died from a tumour behind the ear.

Haigh, who denied murder, had told medical staff she put the boy to bed at their home in Guildford, Surrey, but found him collapsed when she checked on him.

"This was a dreadful and tragic aberration due to the emotional and intellectual problems she suffered from," defence lawyer Robin Spencer said.

Police said it was an upsetting crime.

"Tara Haigh saw her son as an inconvenience to the life of socialising and dating that she wanted to lead," said Detective Inspector Jo Sidaway.

"Her inability to put Billy's needs ahead of her own culminated in her taking his life prematurely."