A senior civil servant is facing a lengthy jail spell after being convicted of spiking his pregnant mistresses’ drink with an abortion medication.
Darren Burke was taken into custody after a jury found him guilty of putting a crushed pill in a glass of orange juice, despite his intended victim repeatedly saying she wanted to keep the baby.
The 43-year-old tried to talk Laura Slade, with whom he had been having an affair for five years, into a termination after she fell pregnant.
He repeatedly sent her messages trying to persuade her to get an abortion and sent links to clinics.
When that approach failed, he laced a glass of orange juice with mifepristone in an effort to induce an abortion during a visit to her flat on December 4, 2020.
Ms Slade suspected something was wrong and refused to drink it, before locking herself in the bathroom where she noticed white residue on the glass.
She previously told the court she had ‘an instant gut feeling something was not right’ when Burke offered to bring a Starbucks drink the day before, something he had never done.
On the day of the spiking, she said he appeared ‘very flustered, walking between the front room and the kitchen’.
The mother-of-two suffered an unrelated miscarriage weeks later on Christmas Day.
Burke was previously suspended from his role as a deputy director for the emergency services mobile communications programme at the Home Office.
He denied obtaining the drug with intent and attempting to administer it to procure a miscarriage.
Burke, from Windsor, Berkshire, claimed he had crushed up the abortion tablets after buying them online and flushed them down the sink when it became clear Ms Slade was determined to keep the baby.
A jury at Isleworth Crown Court found him guilty of the second count, while the first will lie on file after the jury failed to reach a verdict.
Burke was told to expect a ‘sentence of immediate imprisonment of some length’ on June 16 and was taken into custody.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.