Mother Allegedly Killed Her Two Children and Stabbed Husband Amid Custody Fears, she didn’t want him to take them from her’
A mother allegedly killed her two children and then stabbed her husband because she feared he would take them away from her, a court heard. Veronique John is accused of stabbing her 11-year-old son, Ethan, multiple times and inflicting a fatal head injury on her seven-year-old daughter, Elizabeth.
After the tragic incident, John reportedly went to a car wash in her dressing gown and stabbed her husband, Nathan John, in the stomach. Nottingham Crown Court heard that John, 50, called 999 and confessed, “I am calling to report I just killed my two kids.”
When police arrived at her home in Stoke-on-Trent, the charity worker told officers, “If you have a gun, shoot me. I am not a monster – he was going to take them from me.”
John later claimed her husband had been unfaithful, adding, “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. 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 percent.”
Prosecutor Peter Grieves-Smith described her “rage as boiling just under the surface.” The court heard that John had been arrested the day before the incident for assaulting her husband with a piece of wood. She was interviewed under caution and released with a community resolution notice, reported Sky News.
On June 11 last year, John, originally from the Caribbean island of St Vincent, allegedly Googled, “Can a foreigner be charged with murder in the UK?” Hours later, Ethan was found dead in his bedroom with a 17cm-long neck wound, and Elizabeth was discovered with head trauma and multiple sharp force injuries, including to her stomach.
Mr. Grieves-Smith stated, “What happened on June 11 didn’t come out of the blue. Tension grew in the days before. That day she just erupted, killed her children, and attacked Nathan.”
John faces charges of two counts of murder, attempted murder, and an alternative count of wounding. However, she has been ruled unfit to plead and is undergoing a trial of facts. This means the jury will determine whether she committed the offenses rather than delivering a formal verdict of guilty or not guilty.
Mr. Justice Choudhury explained, “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 on Mr. John.” The trial continues.