How an average English girl became the ‘White Widow’ By Maureen Callahan When Samantha Laithwaite’s husband blew up a London subway, she played the grieving victim. Then she became a killer. She grew up middle-class in suburban Buckinghamshire, England, and was considered an average girl in every way. Her father, Allen, was a former British Army soldier-turned-lorry driver; her mother, Christine, a homemaker. She has one older brother, Allen, and friends recall that as early as junior high, Samantha Laithwaite was a pretty and popular girl. When her parents broke up in 1994, she took it hard but seemingly no...