Father jailed for 18 years for murdering his daughter, 19, with car

Father who murdered his 19-year-old daughter by running her over with his car twice before ringing his estranged wife to taunt ‘I will bring your daughter over, she’s dead’ is jailed for 18 years

• Nigel Malt, 45, repeatedly ran over daughter Lauren’s body in horrific murder
• He then put her body in the passenger’s side of his killer car and drove off
• Malt rang estranged wife Karen and said he was bringing over her dead daughter
• Ms Malt told court she had screamed ‘which one’ but he refused to tell her
• Malt was today been jailed for life with a minimum term of 18 years for murder 

A father who murdered his daughter by twice running over her body with his car has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 18 years.

Nigel Malt, 45, reversed his car over his 19-year-old daughter Lauren Malt in West Winch in Norfolk after she tried to protect her boyfriend Arthur Marnell.

Malt backed over Lauren, then stopped and drove forward over her body on January 23 this year, after he threatened her partner with a crowbar.

Afterwards, the defendant put his daughter’s body in the passenger side of his Mercedes car and drove to the shop where the girl’s mother, his estranged wife Karen Malt, worked.

Malt was estranged from both his wife and his children and he was living separately at a different address.

At the time, he was on bail awaiting trial on two counts of assaulting his wife in March and April 2021.

Karen Malt, fighting back tears as she read her victim impact statement at Norwich Crown Court, said: ‘I remember the call saying ‘I will bring your daughter over, she’s dead’.

‘I was screaming ‘which one’ to him down the phone but he wouldn’t tell me.’

Murderer Nigel Malt (right), victim Lauren, 19, (left), and  Lauren’s mother Karen (in the middle)

Malt backed over Lauren, then stopped and drove forward over her body on January 23 this year, after he threatened her partner with a crowbar.

The Mercedes car driven by Nigel Malt when he murdered his daughter Lauren Malt in Norfolk

She said that when Malt said he was driving to her, she thought that her daughter ‘must be okay’.

But when his car arrived and she saw inside the passenger door ‘the feeling of dread started to come over me’.

‘I just knew she wasn’t going to make it,’ said Ms Malt.

‘She was stuffed in the footwell. I saw her face and felt sick.

‘I couldn’t believe she had been stuffed down there.

‘Seeing her in that position for me was worse than knowing she had been run over.’

She said she tried to move her daughter into the seat, with no help from the defendant.

‘I can’t fathom how a parent could kill their own child,’ she said.

Lauren Malt, 19, died in January after being hit by the car in Leete Way, West Winch, Norfolk

Flowers left in Leete Way, West Winch, Norfolk, in memory of Lauren Malt, 19, earlier this year

‘How do you forgive?’

She said she will ‘forever remember that night and think about ‘what if’, including what if she had left the relationship sooner.

Malt ran over his daughter outside the home where she lived with her mother and younger siblings.

Lauren Malt was pronounced dead at hospital in King’s Lynn, where the defendant took her.

Judge Anthony Bate said Malt used his car as a ‘lethal weapon in an alcohol-fuelled rage in a residential street’.

He told Malt: ‘She (Lauren) should have been safe in her father’s company.’

The judge sentenced Malt to life in prison with a minimum term of 18 years, which is the amount of time he must spend behind bars before he can be considered for release.

He said Malt was tested by police at the time and found to have 170 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, more than the legal limit of 80 milligrams.

Malt, who had short-cropped grey hair and walked with a crutch, bowed his head through much of Wednesday’s hearing and showed no reaction as his sentence was read out.

Andrew Jackson, prosecuting, earlier told jurors that Malt argued with his daughter and threatened her boyfriend, Arthur, with a crowbar in Leete Way.

Malt, of Lynn Road, King’s Lynn, denied his daughter’s murder, claiming it was an accident, but was found guilty following an earlier trial.

Mr Jackson said that after Malt ‘failed in his bid to inflict violence’ on his daughter’s boyfriend and she told him to go home, ‘he was totally consumed with anger’.

Allison Summers KC, mitigating, said: ‘Had he not been drinking, it’s highly unlikely he would have behaved in the way that he did.’

The judge directed that the two counts of assault of Karen Malt will lie on the file.

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