A woman “erupted” into violence and killed her two children before stabbing her husband and telling police she wanted the death penalty, a jury has been told.
Veronique John, 50, who has been deemed unfit to plead, stabbed her children aged seven and 11 because she did not want her husband to take them from her, a trial of the facts heard.
She stabbed her son, Ethan, more than 20 times and inflicted brain damage on her daughter, Elizabeth, before tracking down her husband, Nathan John, and stabbing him in the stomach.
Jurors at Nottingham crown court heard she then returned home, dialled 999 and said: “I am calling to report I just killed my two kids.”
The two children were pronounced dead at the scene. Nathan John survived. After police arrived at her home in Stoke-on-Trent on 11 June last year, Veronique John allegedly said to them: “If you have a gun, shoot me. I am not a monster – he was going to take them from me.”
She had been arrested the previous day for assaulting her husband, who she believed was having an affair. John told interviewing officers: “I didn’t want my husband to get them.”
“It’s something I was thinking about for a long time – just kill myself and the kids. Unless you guys are offering me the death penalty, I have nothing else to say,” she added. “I did it because I love my children – to protect the children. If there’s any possible way I could be put to death, I would like that. I mean it 100%.”
John, a charity shop worker who was born on the Caribbean island of St Vincent, killed her children hours after searching online: “Can a foreigner be charged with murder in the UK?” the prosecution said. She was charged with two counts of murder, attempted murder and an alternative count of wounding, but has been ruled unfit to plead and is being treated at a secure hospital.
The judge, Mr Justice Choudhury, told jurors: “This trial is slightly unusual – the defendant has been found to be under a disability. She is unable to participate in the trial in any meaningful sense. Your task is to decide whether the defendant did the acts of unlawfully inflicting injuries on and killing Ethan and Elizabeth which led to their deaths, and unlawfully inflicting injuries to Mr John.”
Peter Grieves-Smith, prosecuting, said John’s “rage was boiling just under the surface” on the day of the murders on 11 June last year, after she had struck her husband with a wooden slat the day before. She was arrested at home that night, interviewed under caution and given a community resolution notice.
The couple had been experiencing relationship difficulties, the court heard, with John not wanting her husband to have an internet-enabled phone. “What happened on 11 June didn’t come out of the blue,” Grieves-Smith told jurors. “Tension grew in the days before. That day she just erupted, killed her children and attacked Nathan.”
After being stabbed shortly after 2pm, Nathan John called 999 and said: “My wife just came to the car wash and stabbed me – she said she had just killed the kids.”
Ethan was pronounced dead after being found in a bedroom with a 17cm-long neck wound, while Elizabeth was discovered in the living room, having suffered head trauma and “three areas of sharp force” injury, including to her stomach.
The trial of the facts continues.
