Distressing content warning
An Australian mother who stabbed her two young sons to death has avoided a prison sentence after being found not criminally responsible because she was suffering from a “severe case of major depression”.
The boys, aged nine and 11, were killed in their beds in their Blue Mountains home in September 2024, and their mother, 44, was found with self-inflicted knife wounds and charged with two counts of murder.
In NSW a court can enter a special verdict of “act proven but not criminally responsible” if the both the defence and the prosecution agree, and a judge is satisfied the defence is established after considering the evidence in the case.
NSW Supreme Court Justice Richard Cavanagh made the ruling on Thursday after the woman pleaded not guilty in May, and at the request of the boys’ father did not name the mother or include details that might identify her or the children.
Justice Cavanagh found that the woman did kill her sons, but accepted the evidence of three “expert and eminent” psychiatrists, who he said in his judgement “considered that at the time of the acts, the accused was suffering from such a severe case of major depression that her thought processes were psychotic”.
“They also considered that the accused was nihilistic in her thinking and was unable to reason other than that her children would be better off dead, in such a bad world,” he told the court.
“The expert psychiatric evidence is overwhelmingly to the effect that the accused did not know that her actions in killing her children were wrong, even though she knew the nature and quality of the acts that she was undertaking.”
Justice Cavanagh ordered that the woman be detained as a forensic patient under the supervision of the Mental Health Review Tribunal, which will review and supervise her, and provide her with treatment.
She can be released at any time if the Tribunal is satisfied that her safety and the safety of the public will not be “seriously endangered”, and once the NSW Attorney-General and Health Minister have been given an opportunity to be heard on the issue.
The court heard that the mother was separated from the boys’ father, and when he told her that his new partner was pregnant in August 2024 she began to make internet searches about murder, suicide, and the killing of children.
On the day of the killing she went with the children and their father to buy them shoes, and while in the shop made more searches on the same topics.
That night she armed herself with a knife, stabbed both boys multiple times, and cut her youngest son’s throat. The older boy had defensive wounds on both of his hands.
The woman then filled herself a bath and slashed her wrists and neck. She then made internet searches about how to cut arteries after she did not bleed out.
The next day the boys’ father turned up at the home at 12.33pm after being unable to contact the woman and learning the children were not at school, and discovered her semi-conscious in the bathtub.
He asked “What have you done? What’s wrong? Where are the children?” and she replied “I killed them.”
He then found his sons dead on the floor of the older boy’s bedroom.
The woman was arrested and police found notes at the scene, which the judge summarised as saying she “felt overwhelmed and sad”, “was committed to repairing the marriage and family but was simply too tired and anxious”, and “was tired of hurting and was ready for some peace”.
“I can’t leave my [children] alone in such a bad world,” she wrote.
She was later examined by the three psychiatrists between February 11 2025 and February 17 this year, and all three diagnosed her with major depressive disorder, with one finding she was at the “very extreme end”, and another describing her condition as a form of “psychotic depression”.
Header image: The NSW Supreme Court (NSW Government).
