After the 11-year-old was transferred to foster care, she allegedly told a caretaker that her mother had killed her two younger siblings in their Colorado apartment and had instructed her to cover for her.
The 11-year-old, identified by her initials M.W., ultimately told authorities that her mother, Kimberlee Singler, had instructed her children to drink milk laced with powder, telling them to close their eyes as she led them to a bedroom, according to an account of events provided in court by a London prosecutor and reported by the Associated Press.
“The defendant told her that God was telling her to do it, and that the children’s father would take them away,” prosecutor Joel Smith said, per the AP, at the three-day extradition hearing last week.
Singler, 36 – who is charged with first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of her 7-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter, as well as the alleged attempted murder of M.W., according to the Colorado Springs Police Department – fled to the United Kingdom, where she was arrested in a London hotel Dec. 30.
Police said in a December press release that Singler was additionally charged with several counts of child abuse, as well as assault in the first degree.
She is also charged with additional counts of murder and attempted murder based on Colorado law adding charges for such violence against children under the age of 12.
Shortly after midnight on Dec. 19, a 911 caller reported a burglary at the apartment.
Elianna Wentz, 9 (left) and Aden Wentz, 7 (right), were found dead in bed Dec. 19, 2023.
GoFundMe
Both Singler and her 11-year-old daughter were hospitalized for injuries, while police say the two younger kids were found dead in the home.
Over the course of the Colorado Springs Police Department Homicide Unit’s investigation, “it was determined the initial report of a burglary was unfounded,” according to police.
At the Westminster Magistrates’ Court hearing last week, Smith said, per the AP, that police had found 7-year-old Aden Wentz and 9-year-old Elianna “Ellie” Wentz together in bed, both fatally shot and stabbed.
The 11-year-old – who was stabbed multiple times as she begged her mother to spare her, according to Smith – was also seriously injured, and at first police listed Singler, who had superficial knife wounds, as a victim in the purported burglary, per the AP.
Kevin Wentz with his three children.
Smith told the London court that Singler had tried to pass off the blame on her ex-husband, Kevin Wentz, with whom she was then in a custody battle, saying per the AP that she suspected him “of killing them, or organizing to have them killed. She said that a ‘dark figure’ had entered her apartment and that she had fainted.” (A judge had awarded Wentz with more time with his children, and Smith said she had ignored an order to turn them over starting Dec. 16.)
But Wentz’s alibi – confirmed by his truck’s GPS tracking device – checked out, and the blood on the weapons allegedly matched Singler and her children, say police.
The 11-year-old first told police that a man broke into their home through the patio, attacking the family, per the AP. She later told a caretaker that her mother had told her to lie to officers.
The Palomino Ranch Point apartment complex, where the family lived in Colorado Springs, Colo., was cordoned off by police tape following the children’s killings in December 2023.
Parker Seibold/The Gazette via AP
Singler’s defense lawyer, Edward Fitzgerald – who previously represented Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in his prolonged extradition proceedings – argued in court per the AP that Singler had not hurt her children and believed police coerced the claim from her daughter.
On Friday, Sept. 6 Fitzgerald said that she should not be extradited to Colorado because there she could face life without parole, which violates European human rights law.
Fitzgerald further argued that Colorado Governor Jared Polis was unlikely to commute her sentence, saying that for Polis to do that would amount to “political suicide,” per the AP.
Then Smith stood up in court, per the AP, claiming that in 2018 former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper had commuted the first-degree murder sentences of six men.
The hearing was then adjourned until Dec. 2.
