Boy Tried To Fight Off Killer Mum, Jury Told
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A MUM struggled with her young son as she tried to suffocate him, stopping only to put the family’s dog outside, before returning to kill him, a jury has heard.
In a letter to a psychologist the day sons Thomas, 11, and Matthew, 9, died, Donna Fitchett said she planned to drug them, the Supreme Court heard.
The September 6, 2005, letter, signed “Hugs and Kisses, Donna”, said she’d told her husband their marriage was over ‘because I’d already decided on my plan”, the court heard.
Ms Fitchett, 49, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder.
Prosecutor Gavin Silbert argued Ms Fitchett had hatched a plan to kill her sons and get back at her husband over an unsatisfactory marriage.
The killings, he said, were planned to the most minute detail and carried out “consciously, voluntarily and deliberately”.
The court heard the qualified nurse had given the boys a cocktail of drugs before strangling or smothering them.
The jury was told Ms Fitchett strangled Thomas, but Matthew started to wake up and put up a fight; when their dog tried to stop her, she put it outside, returning to suffocate Matthew.
She then injured herself, later telling a paramedic: “I don’t deserve to be treated. Leave me alone. I want to die. I killed my kids and I want to die.”
Deemed a suicide risk, she was then involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
Defence counsel Graham Thomas, SC, said his client did not deny killing her boys. The question was whether she had been mentally impaired.
“I expect the evidence to show that she was suffering from chronic depression,” he said.
But In extracts of the letter read in court yesterday, she said, “I asked him (husband David) to take the boys out on Father’s Day and have a wonderful time, as it would be his last as the Fitchett family.
“Sadly I’m too broken to go on. Today the boys will be given an overdose as I cannot and wouldn’t ever abandon them.
“They think we are going on an exciting trip today but I’ve told them they need to take some medicine so they won’t get air-sick.
