Mother's note says daughter drowned

A mother from Felpham who fell from a cliff after leaving her four-year-old daughter dead at home wrote a suicide note saying the girl had drowned in a tragic accident.

Forty year old Cathy Madden was found dead below Seven Sisters cliff at Birling Gap at the same time as police discovered her daughter Keira's body at their home on Saturday.
 
Police found a note saying that the little girl had slipped and drowned in the sea during one of their regular trips to the beach on the Friday.

DCI Nick Sloan of Sussex Police's Major Crime Branch yesterday said that anyone who saw the pair on Friday may be able to help to establish what had happened. They were known to visit the beaches at Felpham, Witterings, Climping and Pagham.

The police have also released photographs of Cathy's car, which she would have driven to Birling Gap.

She abandoned the green Renault Megan near Beachy Head. Police traced her address from the car and broke in to the house she shared with her daughter, finding the body of Keira in a bedroom.

A post mortem carried out on Sunday was unable to determine how she died.

Keira's devastated father, Steven Madden, 42, who was going through a difficult divorce with Ms Madden, paid an emotional tribute to his "cheeky little monkey" on Monday.