Smith was forty-two and lived at Maes y Groes, Prestatyn, in north Wales, in a converted house. She had a long-running dispute with the family in the flat above, and she drank heavily.
On October 19, 2012, after an argument that evening, she set fire to a pushchair in the shared hallway. The fire took hold in the stairwell, the only exit. Five people died: Lee-Anna Shiers, twenty; her partner Liam Timbrell, twenty-three; their son Charlie, fifteen months; and Miss Shiers's niece and nephew, Bailey Allen, four, and Skye Allen, two.
She denied it and claimed the fire was accidental. She was convicted of five counts of murder at Mold Crown Court and sentenced on May 7, 2013 to life with a minimum of thirty years.
The case turned on the fire investigation and on evidence of the argument, and there was no confession. It is a single act, not a serial case, and it is in the archive under that classification. Like the Winnipeg rooming-house fire in this archive, it is a case in which the layout of the building, one staircase, no second exit, determined the number of deaths.