Mother gets 23 years for drowning girl

SEATTLE – A woman who drowned her 6-year-old daughter because she believed the girl was a demon was sentenced to 23 years in prison for first-degree murder Friday.

“At the time of my action, I did not realize I was doing anything wrong,” Samara Spann, 32, wrote in a letter to King County Superior Court. “I wish I could rewrite the script, because then my daughter would be living.”

Spann, 32, formerly of White Center, admitted to investigators that on Dec. 31, 2004, she grew frustrated when her daughter, Kyeimah, wouldn’t go to sleep and repeatedly interrupted her phone conversation. She drew a bath and drowned the girl.

Two days later, she told investigators, she took an ax to the body, decapitating it and tossing the remains off a bridge into a body of water. The girl’s remains were never found.

For six months after the death, Spann claimed she had sent the girl to live with her father. Investigators persuaded her to confess.

Her sentence was near the middle of the standard 20- to 27-year range. King County Deputy Prosecutor Kristin Richardson agreed that Spann had a troubled past but said the woman just wanted to get rid of her daughter.