A British woman has been handed a life sentence after she was convicted of murdering her husband by pouring a boiling mixture of water and sugar over him while he slept. According to the prosecution, she carried out the attack after learning of allegations that he had sexually abused her two children.
Corinna Smith, 59, of Highfield Road in Neston, Cheshire, on the Wirral, attacked 81-year-old Michael Baines in the early hours of July 14, 2020, the Liverpool Echo reported. Smith, who was also her husband’s carer and had been married to him for 38 years, was previously known as Corinna Baines. Baines suffered burns to more than a third of his body and died five weeks later in hospital.
Prosecutors told Chester Crown Court that the sugar “made the liquid more viscous, thicker and more sticky so that it stays on the skin and causes greater damage.” Officers said Smith filled a bucket from her garden with water boiled in a kettle and mixed it with three bags of sugar — roughly three kilograms — before pouring the piping hot liquid over Baines’s arms and torso as he slept.
Shortly afterward, Smith ran to a neighbour’s house and told the occupant, “I’ve hurt him, I’ve hurt him really bad… I think I’ve killed him,” according to the Crown Prosecution Service. Responding officers found Baines in severe pain with significant burns. He was taken to Whiston Hospital’s burns unit, where he remained in a stable condition for around two weeks before his condition deteriorated. He died on August 18, 2020, after repeated surgery and skin grafts.
Smith’s daughter told the court that Baines had sexually assaulted her and her brother “for many years when they were children.” The daughter’s brother, Craig, had been imprisoned over an assault and died by suicide in 2007; according to reports, he had told his mother that the man he assaulted was a “pedophile” who had “touched him sexually.” Importantly, prosecutors were explicit that they took no position on whether the allegations against Baines were true, telling the jury only that the claims had been made and that Smith believed them to be true at the time of the attack.
Smith was initially charged with grievous bodily harm, but the charge was upgraded to murder after Baines’s death. She denied murder and argued she should instead be convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of loss of control, but the CPS rejected that and a jury at Chester Crown Court found her guilty of murder on June 15, 2021, following a five-day trial.
Detective Chief Inspector Paul Hughes of Cheshire Constabulary’s Major Crime Directorate described the killing as “painful and cruel,” saying that throwing boiling water over a sleeping person was “absolutely horrific” and that mixing in three bags of sugar showed a determination to cause serious harm.
A judge ordered Corinna Smith to serve a minimum of 12 years in prison before she can be considered for release on parole. You can read more of our reporting in the Crime News and International News sections.
