That last one collapsed after forty-eight hours, when Detective Davies recovered a deleted family group chat from Samantha’s cloud account.

The messages had started two weeks before the incident.

Gertrude: The child needs a serious lesson. She needs to understand her father can’t always step in and protect her from us.

Valerie: Make it look dramatic on camera. He checks those feeds constantly. He’ll see it.

Brenda: Samantha should record it. It’ll prove she’s finally standing up to her husband.

Samantha: I’m just sick of coming in second to a child.