Mother starved baby and left body to decompose in a cooler bag

Tamara Louise Thompson pleads guilty to manslaughter.

A West Australian mother who starved her 3-month-old daughter then allowed the body to decompose in a cooler bag in a shed has pleaded guilty to manslaughter midway through her murder trial.

Tamara Louise Thompson had been on trial in the West Australian Supreme Court accused of failing to provide proper sustenance and nourishment to baby Destiny, whose body was discovered wearing a nappy and wrapped in a muslin cloth inside a cooler bag in July last year.Thompson pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter on Wednesday and will face a sentencing hearing on Friday.

Last week the court heard the mother told people her pregnancy was unplanned.

Some members of the Supreme Court jury cried as prosecutor Carmel Barbagallo outlined the state's case last Thursday. Thompson also wept throughout the proceedings.

Barbagallo said Destiny was last seen alive by someone other than her mother in mid-May.

She said Thompson lied about where Destiny was after she had died, telling some people she was with friends and others that she was in the care of the Department for Child Protection because she had post-natal depression.

Destiny was born six weeks premature in Perth, but was healthy and moved to Geraldton, 424km from Perth, with her mother, who had five other children, two of whom lived with her.

"Destiny was not a planned or wanted baby," Barbagallo said.

Given the fact that Thompson had other children, she should have known how to adequately care for an infant, the prosecutor said.

Instead Thompson failed to feed the baby properly and would leave the bottle with Destiny even though she could not feed herself.

Barbagallo said Thompson also began selling toys and clothes Destiny had not yet grown into.

"She was intending to kill Destiny," Barbagallo said.

Barbagallo said Destiny's cause of death could not be determined because of the
decomposition of the body.

Defence counsel Helen Prince said all of Thompson's relationships had been marred by domestic violence and the baby's father was Thompson's meth dealer who wanted nothing to do with them.

She agreed the pregnancy was unplanned, but said once Destiny was born, her mother did love her and Thompson's life fell apart when the baby died.

"This case is a tragedy," she said.

Prince said Thompson was locked in a custody battle over her two other daughters and when "tragedy struck" with Destiny, she was worried about being blamed and losing them.

She said her client was aware she was not a good mother, but moral blame was different to criminal guilt.

Prince said when police asked Thompson why she had named her daughter Destiny, she replied: "Because she was destined to be here."