REBECCA MARTINE SMITH - Aged 5 years - Lichfield (UK)

Daily Mail

12 March 2011

Betrayed by my killer mother: Woman who smothered toddlers in a Spanish hotel callously ignored sex abuse of eldest girl by TV hypnotist lover

Sarah Richardson has no kind words to describe her mother. ‘Cold,’ she says of the woman who gave birth to her, as well as ‘deeply flawed and deluded’.

She wishes she could say something more forgiving, but it’s impossible given the circumstances, which couldn’t be more distressing.

Sarah’s mother, Lianne Smith, 44, is being held in a Spanish jail awaiting trial for the murder of her two youngest children, Becky, five, and 11-month-old Daniel.

The children were found dead in a hotel room in Lloret de Mar on the Costa Brava last May, allegedly smothered with a plastic bag by their mother, who then tried to kill herself.

This devastating tragedy followed the arrest and extradition of Sarah’s stepfather Martin Smith, a 45-year-old former Butlins entertainer turned TV hypnotist, who was wanted back in the UK to face ‘unrelated’ child sex abuse charges.

In a note, Lianne Smith allegedly confessed to the killings saying she couldn’t bear the thought of Becky and Daniel being taken into care over charges which she described as ‘lies’ and ‘utter nonsense’.

Only they weren’t lies, as her eldest child, Sarah, knows only too well. Yesterday, Martin Smith, who once appeared on Living TV’s Most Haunted show, was jailed for 16 years having been found guilty on 11 counts of rape, attempted rape, indecency with a child and indecent assault.

At his trial in December, the court heard how he used violence and hypnotism to abuse his victim for almost a decade, starting in May 1995 when she was seven.

What could not be reported until now, however, is that Martin Smith’s victim was none other than Sarah, Lianne’s own daughter.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1365479/Lianne-Smith-callously-ignored-years-sex-abuse-TV-hypnotist-lover.html

Daily Record

13 March 2011

Courage of abused daughter betrayed by 'killer' mum

A MUM accused of killing her two young children ignored sex abuse of her eldest daughter by her TV hypnotist lover.

Lianne Smith, 44, is being held in a Spanish jail awaiting trial for the murder of her kids Becky, five, and Daniel, aged just 11 months.

She allegedly killed them after evil Martin Smith, who appeared on TV's Most Haunted, was charged with a string of sex offences.

Martin Smith was jailed on Friday for 16 years after being convicted of 11 counts of rape, attempted rape, indecency with a child and indecent assault.

Lianne Smith is said to have killed the children and attempted suicide in Spain last May because she didn't want the children taken into care over charges she said were "lies" and "utter nonsense".

But her oldest daughter Sarah Richardson, 22, has revealed she was the victim abused by her stepfather, former Butlins entertainer and TV hypnotist Martin Smith.

Student nurse Sarah, whose dad split up with her mother when she was three, waived her right to anonymity to tell how she had been the victim of sex abuse and violence at the hands of her stepdad from the age of seven.

Sarah said she complained to police about her abuse to protect her half-sister Becky.

She added: "I thought Becky needed protecting only from him.

Never in a million years did I think she would need protecting from our mother too.

"The worst thing is that Becky and Daniel needn't have been taken into care - I told social services that I'd happily bring them up as my own if they were taken away from my mother."

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/2011/03/13/courage-of-abused-daughter-betrayed-by-killer-mum-86908-22987211/

Cumbria Police Website

Detective Inspector Kim Fulton, who led the investigation, delivered the following statement on the court steps after sentencing:

Martin Smith jailed for child sex abuse

A former Carlisle man has been jailed for sixteen years for sexually abusing a young girl over the course of a decade.

Forty-five-year-old Martin Smith was originally arrested by Cumbria Constabulary in November 2007 after his victim reported the abuse to police. However, while on bail Smith left the country and went on the run. National and International enquiries and appeals were made until he was located in Spain on May 7 2010 and extradited back to the UK.

Today, he appeared in front of Judge Irwin at Liverpool Crown court where he was handed a sixteen year sentence.

The jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict in December 2010 when Smith was found guilty of three counts of rape, three counts of attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault and one count of indecency with a child.

Detective Inspector Kim Fulton, who led the investigation, delivered the following statement on the court steps after sentencing: “Today, Martin Smith has been sentenced to a significant term of imprisonment.

“Smith inflicted a decade of abuse on a vulnerable young girl and although nothing can make up for the physical and mental suffering she endured, I hope she takes comfort from the fact that her abuser will spend the next 16 years behind bars.

“Smith thought that he could escape justice when he fled the country - but he was wrong. This case demonstrates how seriously the Police and Crown Prosecution Service treats complaints of sexual abuse. Detectives from Cumbria and the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) worked together over the course of three years to trace him and bring him to justice.

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank the law enforcement agencies across Europe who assisted us in finding Smith and bring him back to the UK.”

http://www.cumbria.police.uk/news/latest-news/martin-smith-jailed-for-child-sex-abuse

Evening Chronicle

Mar 12 2011

by Andy Hughes,

Pervert Martin Smith jailed for 16 years

TWISTED paedophile Martin Smith has been locked up for 16 years.



The 45-year-old – whose partner is accused of murdering their two children in a Spanish hotel – used hypnotism to groom and sexually abuse his step-daughter Sarah Richardson, who has waived her right to anonymity – over a period of nine years.

While Smith awaited trial, his long-term girlfriend Lianne Smith, 43, allegedly suffocated their other two children, Rebecca, five, and Daniel, 11 months, in 2009.

Smith, originally from North Shields, was found guilty of 11 counts of rape, attempted rape and indecent assault following a trial at Manchester Crown Court in December.

Sentencing him at Liverpool Crown Court, Mr Justice Stephen Irwin said Smith “trapped and overwhelmed” his victim with repeated sexual assaults.

The judge also branded him “a high risk of serious harm” to any girls who might find themselves under his influence in the future.

The trial heard Smith had regular access to the victim and abused her for almost a decade from when she was just seven.

Smith would attempt to hypnotise, hit and bully Sarah to ensure she complied.

He fled to Spain after his initial arrest in 2007, and was in hiding with his family until he was extradited last spring.

Shortly after his return to the UK, his children were found dead in the Hotel Miramar in the resort of Lloret de Mar on the Costa Brava on May 18, 2009.

Their mother Lianne Smith faces two counts of murder.

Smith’s solicitor Kim Whittlestone said: “Since his extradition to the UK, the events in Spain were out of his control.

“He has found that extremely distressing.”

She added that he has found his time in prison “very difficult”.

Hilary Manley, prosecuting, said the abuse began with Smith forcing Sarah to touch him intimately and Smith touching her.

On occasion he would turn violent, act in a “domineering and bullying manner” and use hypnotism in an effort to bend her to his will, the court heard.

Eventually Smith stopped trying to hypnotise her and simply went on to rape her repeatedly from the age of 13, the court heard.

In 2007, Sarah reported the abuse to police and he was arrested in November that year.

He “emphatically denied” all the allegations and was bailed, and went to Spain with his family.

Linda Vance, District Crown Prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service in Cumbria, praised Sarah for reporting the attacks.

“She has shown great courage in reporting what happened and in giving evidence against him during the trial,” she said.

Jailing him, the judge said: “You had so domineered her that she was crushed by you.

“Despite all the evidence, you continued to deny what took place.”

In a statement, Sarah said: “My motivation has always been to protect other children from Martin Smith.”

Victim breaks scilence over years of abuse

TORMENTED by years of sex attacks, the step-daughter of jailed paedophile Martin Smith today branded the fugitive a "monster" as she re-lived her decade of abuse.

Smith, originally from North Shields, abused 22-year-old Sarah Richardson for almost a decade after taking control of the family when she was aged just seven. He would attempt to hypnotise, hit and bully her to ensure she complied, a jury was told.

Today student nurse Sarah broke her silence after Smith was jailed for 16 years for the sexual abuse that ruined her life.

And today she criticised her own mam for failing to protect her when she was being sexually abused by the convicted rapist.

She said: "I didn’t like him from the start. He was strict and moody with a temper. Mum asked me to be the one who asked Martin to move in with us, and I told her, ‘I don’t want him to’. She knew I disliked him.

"He was never nice to me or my brother Chris. I think he saw us as an inconvenience, wanting us to be quiet and out of the way. There was always an atmosphere. It was almost as if they liked to pretend they didn’t have children." By the time Sarah was 10, Smith had started to use hypnotism to try to put her in a trance before raping her.

She said: "He’d say to me, ‘You are getting sleepier and sleepier’, and I’d pretend to go along with it because he was going to do whatever he wanted to me anyway.

"Afterwards he would say something like, ‘you’ve had a dream’.

"My mam never wanted to hear anything bad about Martin. She knew he was beating us, but did nothing, so what was the point? As I grew older, I’d say to Mum, ‘I hate him. I can’t live in the same house as him’, but she’d just reply, ‘Fine, leave then’."

Read More http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/north-east-news/evening-chronicle-news/2011/03/12/pervert-locked-up-after-abusing-girl-for-9-years-72703-28324500/#ixzz1GoJA8b00

Daily Mail

20 October 2011

Mother who admitted killing her two children in Spain after TV hypnotist boyfriend sexually abused young girl will 'seek aquittal on mental health grounds'

A British mother who has admitted killing her two small children at a Spanish hotel will seek an acquittal on mental health grounds, it emerged today.
Lianne Smith, 44, has confessed to suffocating daughter Rebecca, five, and 11-month old son Daniel with a plastic bag at a Costa Brava resort last year.

Prosecutors will call for her to be jailed for 38 years for two counts of premeditated murder when the case goes to trial, court documents revealed today.

But defence lawyers will try to convince a jury Smith was not criminally responsible for her actions because she was suffering from mental illness and extreme stress.

A court source said: 'The key to the trial will be whether the jury believes Smith was suffering from a mental illness which prevents her from being criminally responsible for her actions.

'Her lawyers have informed the court they will seek an acquittal on the grounds Smith was not of sound mind and therefore cannot be found guilty of any offence.'

If the defence is successful Smith could be sent to a secure psychiatric unit but would be released when a judge and doctors agree she is cured.

No minimum tariff would be set, meaning she could be freed at any time, and she would have no criminal record.

Last month prosecutors lodged a 16-page indictment at court calling for Smith to be jailed for 19 years for each count of murder - close to the maximum of 20 years available for each count.

The indictment accuses Smith, a former manager at Cumbria county council's children's services department, of killing the youngsters in their sleep 'taking advantage of the trust the children gave her as their mother'.

Two state doctors have interviewed her several times since her arrest and say they do not believe she suffers from any recognised mental illness.

But they admit her case is complicated and have yet to provide a definitive conclusion.

Two expert defence witnesses will argue Smith was suffering from mental illness when the children were killed.

At her trial, expected to be held at Girona Provincial Court early next year, prosecutors will impress on the jury Smith's lucid mental state in the hours after she allegedly killed the two children.

They will play the jury a DVD of police interviews in which Smith calmly admits the killings and will show them a hand-written note in which she also confessed.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2051315/Lianne-Smith-seek-aquittal-murdering-2-children-mental-health-grounds.html

Sky News

25 January 2012

TV Psychic Paedophile Found Hanged In Prison

A paedophile whose partner is accused of killing their two children in a Spanish hotel has been found hanging in a UK prison.
Martin Smith was jailed last year for 16 years after sexually abusing his victim from when she was seven years old.

A Prison Service spokesman said the 46-year-old was found hanging by staff at HMP Manchester on Monday at about 6.30pm. Staff attempted to revive him but he was pronounced dead at 7pm.

The independent Prisons and Probation Ombudsman will be launching an investigation.

Smith's children Rebecca, five, and Daniel, 11 months, were found dead in a hotel on the Costa Brava in May 2010.

Their mother, Lianne Smith, awaiting trial in Spain accused of their murder.

http://news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/16156123

Expatica

31 march 2012

British mother admits suffocating her two children: judge ‎

A British woman has confessed to suffocating to death her two young children in a hotel room using a plastic bag, a Spanish judge said Friday and ordered her held without bail.

Lianne Smith, 43, is accused of two counts of murder over the deaths of her five-year-old daughter and 11-month-old son, whose bodies were found in their room at the four-star Hotel Miramar at the eastern coastal resort of Lloret del Mar.

"A statement made by (Smith) in detention confirms one she made earlier confessing to the murder of her two minor children," the judge at the court in Blanes, eastern Spain, said in the ruling.

"There are notes purportedly written by the accused, found at the scene, which are self-incriminating. Ms. Smith acknowledges she ended the lives of her children by suffocating them by placing their heads inside plastic bags."

Police detained Smith on Tuesday, the same day that her husband and the father of at least one of the two children, 45-year-old Martin Smith, was extradited back to Britain from Spain to face charges of sexual offences with minors.

The judge said that Lianne Smith had left her home in Barcelona because she feared she would lose custody of her children following her husband's arrest on May 6, and moved to the Hotel Miramar, "which produced the fatal outcome."

She was ordered held without bail due to the "high risk" she would flee, given that she is a foreign national, "the nature and severity" of the alleged crimes and the fact that she and her husband had fled to Barcelona to escape authorities in Britain.

Lianne Smith faces 15 to 20 years in prison if tried and convicted.

British media has said she checked into the 54-room hotel on Saturday with her two children after arriving by car and paid in advance for four nights.

Spanish media has said she had tried to kill herself and left a suicide note after her alleged crime, before asking a hotel receptionist to call an ambulance.

Autopsies on the two children found no evidence that they had been sexually abused, and confirmed they had died from suffocation.

Lianne Smith had been reported missing in England since December 2007 and police believe she had been living on Spain's Costa Brava.

Martin Smith was arrested in Barcelona after being placed on a list of top suspects wanted in Britain who are believed to be living in Spain following his failure to answer bail in January 2008.

He was wanted in connection with the rape of a child under 16, gross indecency with a girl under the age of 16, indecent assault of a girl under 16 and attempted rape of a girl under 16.

http://www.expatica.com/es/news/spanish-news/british-mother-admits-suffocating-her-two-children-judge_69870.html

The Mirror

22 June 2012

Lianne Smith killed her children - but she is a victim too
When a woman kills her family she is seen as a monster - but Lianne Smith's partner is guilty too

When a man kills his family there's always a reason, however screwed-up it might be.

So it's because he lost his job, his wife was leaving him, or he had built up massive debts. Stress and pressure of horrible circumstances pile up to the point where a certain sort of person decides they can't go on and their children would be better off dead.

It's always appalling, but there is a degree of public understanding - as well as head-shaking - about how that troubled man ended up in a dead end.

When a woman does the same, she is seen as a monster. She is flouting her programming, she is a disgrace and a freak of nature. The crime of a woman killing her children has a public reaction worse than that of a man doing exactly the same.

Lianne Smith suffocated her two children - Rebecca, five, and Daniel, 11 months - because she feared they would be taken into care after her partner Martin Smith, a TV hypnotist, was convicted of raping a child. In the words of a Spanish prosecutor her crimes were "the most abominable, despicable, vile and horrible" it is possible to imagine.

I'm not too twisted but I can think of worse ones, and more awful murders too. Fred and Rose West managed quite a few for example, and with a great deal more pain and suffering.

It doesn't detract from the obscenity of Lianne killing her children but there are one or two other people who bear a share of the responsibility for what happened to Becky and Daniel.

The first and most guilty of all is Martin Smith, a former Butlins entertainer who appears to have been a naturally gifted manipulator. He became a hypnotist and psychic, he appeared on Living TV's Most Haunted, and he started raping his stepdaughter when she was seven.

Sarah Richardson, who waived her anonymity to talk about her abuse, was Lianne's oldest child from a previous marriage.

She and her younger brother Chris didn't like Martin when he moved in but their mother seemed to be in his thrall. Sarah, who was four at the time, remembered: "My mum didn’t stay in the room when he beat us, but she knew what he was doing. Chris would have black eyes, but when we complained, she’d say: 'You shouldn’t annoy him.' She was more interested in him being happy than us."

When Lianne went out to work at night, Martin raped his stepdaughter. As she got older he hypnotised her first in the hope it would stop her telling anyone. It continued for nine years.

Police say Lianne was working as a prostitute for a while because they had no money.

Martin didn't work, he made the family move and lose contact with relatives, and at one stage they were so poor the four of them were living in a static caravan.

Sarah remembers Martin driving her mum to a house at night to work, and making the children hide under blankets in the back seat. She says he almost broke Lianne's arm in a row, and threw hot tea over her.

Despite all of these things, no-one seems to have noticed the children were at risk. They were taken out of school and home-educated, they weren't allowed to see grandparents, and Martin had everyone exactly where he wanted them.

Lianne - ironically now working as a child protection expert for Cumbria County Council - fell pregnant.

It was Sarah and Chris who raised little Becky while their mother worked, who taught her to walk and saw her first smile. Sarah, now 15, was still being raped and Chris was being beaten.

At 18 Sarah escaped to university, and shortly afterwards Chris was kicked out of the family home. Worried no-one would look after Becky, Sarah finally went to the police. When she told Lianne about the abuse she was accused of making it up.

"You are no daughter of mine," said Lianne, and they never spoke again. Martin was arrested on 1 November 2007, and social services in two counties were made aware of the potential risk to Becky.

They did not take her into care, and a few days later while on bail Martin and Lianne fled with their daughter to Spain.

For three years they eked out a living in Barcelona while police looked for them, and Lianne gave birth to Daniel in 2009. DNA has since shown neither child was Martin's, so the chances are he'd forced their mother back into prostitution.

While on the run Lianne became obsessed with the fear her two youngest children would be taken into care. She had dismissed her two oldest offspring entirely.

Martin was arrested by Spanish police on 7 May 2010, and on May 15 Lianne checked into a seaside hotel. She took photos of her children playing happily on the beach, and two days later suffocated them with plastic bags.

Lianne tried to hang herself, cut her wrists, suffocate and drown herself without success. The next morning she told reception what she had done and was arrested.

In December that year, after a trial in which Lianne described him via video-link as "kind" and "generous", Martin Smith was found guilty and sentenced to 16 years for raping Sarah .

He hanged himself in his cell last January and had he not he would have been free in eight years - a paedophile, a manipulator, a pimp, an abuser of women and children.

He is the person responsible for what happened to Lianne, a woman who her daughter remembers as normal and loving until he came along. He did what many conmen and perverts do, which is to find a suggestible victim and make them utterly dependent so he was free to do as he liked.

Whether he did it by hypnosis or pure brainwashing we'll never know - Lianne's not in a state to tell us. She pleaded guilty to murder on the grounds of insanity, but a jury felt that although she was depressed and psychotic she was in control of her actions and she faces up to 34 years in a Spanish jail.

She took her children's lives, but since 1992 when she met him Martin Smith had taken hers and twisted it around his little finger. Not every woman who is beaten or pimped for 20 years ends up killing her children, but the fact she has done so makes her no more abominable than a man who commits the same crimes.

They are known, to criminologists, as 'family annihilators'. Abuse, domestic violence and marital upsets are common factors, and a study found that the deranged reason for most of them is to stop the suffering of children.

Ninety five per cent of perpetrators are men who generally feel they have been 'unmanned' in some way and can no longer provide for their families, and in the US the rate of such killings almost doubled in the credit crunch.

Well Lianne was 'unwomanned'. She took on the role of breadwinner, she slept with men for money to provide for the family, she was beaten and controlled so well that she still thinks Martin is a wonderful man despite his conviction, despite her daughter's evidence and despite the fact he's dead.

Lianne should serve a sentence, but one which reflects that the architect of all this horror is Martin and he's now beyond the reach of justice.

Sarah and Chris meanwhile will have to come to terms with the fact their abuser will never serve his time, and that their little sister and brother could be alive and well if things were handled better.

And, not for the first time nor probably the last, social services need to work out how and why this happened on their watch.

Why when Lianne was working as a prostitute no-one seems to have noticed, why when they were home-schooled the local authority did not keep better track of them, why when Martin was finally arrested for raping his stepdaughter social workers didn't see that as a reason to worry about Becky, and why Sarah - by now in her 20s and begging to be allowed to care for her little sister - wasn't able to do so.

They ought to wonder why they gave a sensitive job in child protection to a woman who's so detached from reality she can't even look after her own.

Cumbria Social Services say they passed the file to Staffordshire when the family moved, who then relied on the police when they went on the run, and when Martin was finally found and deported no-one warned the Spanish authorities the children were in danger.

Two weeks later they were dead. Meanwhile we are so horrified that a mother can kill her children we forget to do anything about why she did it.

Which means it will happen again, and again, and again. And that's the most truly vile, monstrous, despicable abomination I can imagine.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/lianne-smith-killed-her-children---906183

Telegraph

21 June 2012

Lianne Smith found guilty of murdering children: timeline
Lianne Smith has been found guilty of murdering her two children in a Spanish hotel. Here is a timeline of events surrounding the tragedy.

:: October 1992 - Lianne Smith and Martin Smith meet through a dating agency as she is going through a divorce from her first husband.

:: September 1995 - Lianne Smith sees her mother Doreen for the last time as she develops a “total emotional” dependence on Martin.

:: July 2004 - Rebecca Smith is born.

:: December 2007 - Lianne, Martin and Rebecca Smith arrive in Spain after he is reported for sexual abuse by Lianne’s eldest daughter from a previous marriage.

:: June 2009 - Daniel Smith is born in Barcelona.

:: May 7 2010 - Spanish police arrest Martin Smith in Barcelona.

:: May 15 2010 - Fleeing Barcelona in the belief that British social services are in Spain to take her children away from her, Lianne Smith arrives at the Miramar Hotel in Lloret de Mar on the Costa Brava with Rebecca and Daniel.

:: May 17 2010 - At 9.30pm Lianne Smith suffocates Daniel and then Rebecca with a plastic bag as they sleep and then tries to take her own life by cutting herself with razors, covering her head with a plastic bag, hanging herself with telephone cable and trying to drown in a bath.

:: May 18 2010 - After asking for police and ambulance to be called in the Miramar’s reception, Lianne Smith shows officers her children’s bodies and confesses to killing them.

:: May 19 2010 - Martin Smith appears at Carlisle Magistrates’ Court charged with 11 specimen counts of rape, attempted rape, indecency with a child and indecent assault, spanning nine years from May 1995 to May 2004.

:: December 2010 - A jury at Manchester Crown Court finds Martin Smith guilty of using hypnotism and violence to groom and sexually abuse his stepdaughter.

:: January 2012 - Prison officers find Martin Smith hanged in his cell at Strangeways prison in Manchester.

:: June 2012 - A jury at the Provincial Court in Girona, north-east Spain finds Lianne Smith guilty of murdering Daniel and Rebecca after deciding she was criminally responsible for killing them.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/9348034/Lianne-Smith-found-guilty-of-murdering-children-timeline.html

Daily Mail

3 July 2012

Lianne Smith jailed for 30 years for murdering her baby son and his sister, 5, in their Spanish hotel room

• 45-year-old given 15 years for each count of murder in written sentence

• Was obsessed that children would be taken into care by UK social services because of paedophile charges against boyfriend

• Asked daughter if she'd prefer 'brilliant few days' or lifetime without her

• Spent two days in resort playing on beach before suffocating them both in their sleep

A British woman was yesterday sentenced to 30 years in a Spanish jail for murdering her two ‘defenceless’ children.

A judge said it was ‘absolutely clear’ that Lianne Smith had planned the deaths of Daniel, 11 months, and Rebecca, five.

The prosecution had called for the maximum sentence of 34 years, but Judge Adolfo Garcia Morales jailed her for 15 years for each murder.

He described how Smith had suffocated the sleeping youngsters who were ‘totally incapable’ of defending themselves.

The judge said: ‘Daniel was less than a year old. He was a baby and therefore, by his very nature, was totally defenceless.

‘The daughter Rebecca was almost six years old which also made her totally incapable of defending herself in the face of a murderous act carried out by her mother.

‘In her own description of the crimes, the accused told how she took them sleeping from their bed, pinned down their legs with her own legs to prevent them moving and put a plastic bag over their heads until they were asphyxiated.’

Smith, 45, of Lichfield, Staffordshire, was found guilty of double murder by a jury following a four-day trial at Girona provincial court in north-east Spain last month.


Jurors rejected defence claims that she was criminally insane. She is on suicide watch at a secure psychiatric hospital inside a prison near Barcelona.

Smith feared the children would be taken from her by social services after her fugitive paedophile partner Martin Smith, 46, a TV psychic, was arrested on child sex charges at their home in Barcelona in May 2010.

He was later jailed for 16 years for repeatedly raping a minor and hanged himself in prison in Manchester in January this year.

The couple, who shared a surname but were not married, had fled to Spain after Martin Smith was accused of the rapes.

After his arrest Lianne Smith, a former county council children’s services manager, took Rebecca and Daniel to the Costa Brava resort of Lloret de Mar where she gave them ‘a perfect holiday’ before suffocating them in their hotel room.

The next day – having tried to commit suicide – she told reception to call police.

During her trial, Smith refused to answer more than 100 questions from prosecutor Victor Pillado Quintas.

The jury were shown the chilling video of Smith calmly confessing to detectives as she sat on a bed in the next-door hotel room.

She told officers: ‘I have ended the lives of my two children. I gave the children a three-day holiday, a perfect holiday. I knew they were going to take my children to England.

‘My intention was that my children and me together would go. It wasn’t just the children.’

Smith- a former manager at Cumbria county council’s children’s services department - described how she had killed Daniel first, saying: ‘I put a bag on his head.

'All of the head was in. [I knew when he was dead] because I was holding him.’

Asked if her daughter had put up a struggle, Miss Smith replied simply: ‘She moved, yes.’

Miss Smith then spent the night in the hotel room cuddling her dead children, writing a series of notes. One to Rebecca and Daniel said: ‘I love you very much. I wanted to give you a lovely life together. I’m very sorry.’

The court heard Smith was ‘pathologically obsessed’ with her partner Martin Smith. The couple, who were not married but shared the same surname, first met in October 1992 through a dating agency.

Smith was going through a divorce from her first husband at the time and was then living in Wallsend, Tyne and Wear.


Mr Smith, originally from North Shields, had been a singer in a band in clubs in the North East before working as a TV psychic.


The couple lived together in Cumbria and in 2007 they moved to Lichfield, Staffordshire, but only stayed there for a few months before fleeing to Spain with Rebecca.

Daniel was born in Spain in June 2009. The court heard it was not clear who was the father of Rebecca and Daniel.

In May 2010 Martin Smith was tracked down and deported to face trial in the UK. He was convicted of repeatedly raping Lianne Smith’s daughter from a previous relationship, Sarah Richardson, when she was a child.

Sarah, now 24, waived her anonymity after Smith was jailed last year in Manchester. He hanged himself in prison last January.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2168193/Lianne-Smith-jailed-30-years-murdering-baby-son-sister-Spanish-hotel-room.html