Mother Kills Children

I still love him, 'child killer' tells trial of boyfriend on paedophile charges

She was calm at first, almost matter of fact.

In a soft, clear voice, Lianne Smith insisted she still loved her long-time partner, even though he is in court on paedophile charges.

She faltered only occasionally and if she had any tears, she didn’t let them spill.
Occasionally she would smile; once she even laughed.

It was when she started to talk about her children that her remarkable composure broke.

The 44-year-old explained to a jury yesterday that she had moved to Spain with her partner Martin Smith three years ago to keep their two-year-old daughter from the clutches of social services.

She did it to ‘protect’ her, she said, using the word completely without irony.

What she failed to explain was that shortly after Smith was arrested on child sex charges last May, she was in a Costa Brava hotel room with the little girl and her baby brother lying dead on the bed beside her.

Soon she will face her own trial in Spain, accused not of protecting them, but of murdering them.

Yesterday she never once mentioned their deaths.

... Her long dark hair was in much the same style as it was last May, when she took a series of heartbreaking snapshots of the ‘wonderful holiday’ she had organised for her children Rebecca, then five, and Daniel, 11 months.

They didn’t know it then, but it would be their final hours together.

They were found suffocated soon afterwards in a Lloret de Mar hotel.