Paedophile’s partner jailed for 30 years over children’s murder

Lianne Smith, 45, had admitted smothering 11-month-old Daniel and five-year-old Rebecca with a plastic bag at the Miramar Hotel in Lloret de Mar on the Costa Brava in May 2010.

In a written judgement Judge Adolfo Garcia Morales jailed Smith for 15 years for each of the murders.

A jury in Girona, Spain, decided last month that Smith was criminally responsible for the deaths.

Her defence had sought an acquittal claiming she was in a state of “psychiatric disturbance” and suffering insurmountable fear when she killed the children, after which she had planned to take her own life.

Judge Garcia Morales said he was imposing the minimum sentence for murder because he considered that Smith was indeed suffering a degree of “mental disturbance” when she committed the crimes.

But he wrote: “The jury stressed that this mental disturbance was not as important as the defence had argued.

“This was based on facts such as several suicide attempts made by Smith, a statement she gave during which she appeared normal and did not make any significant mistakes as she described what had happened and how it happened, the composition of several coherent notes, and calculations she made in order to pay what she believed she still owed to the hotel.”

The judge also dismissed the defence’s claim that Smith had been suffering “insurmountable fear” because she feared her children would be taken away from her.

“It would have been consequent with insurmountable fear if she had attacked or even killed the members of English social services who she felt were threatening to take her children away,” he added. “It is illogical that out of insurmountable fear of losing her children she decided to kill them.”

The killings took place shortly after Smith’s partner, Martin Smith, was arrested in Barcelona by Spanish police.

The family had fled to Spain in 2007 from Lichfield, Staffordshire, when Mr Smith was accused of sexual abuse. He was deported to the UK and in December 2010, and found guilty at Manchester Crown Court of using hypnotism, bullying and violence to groom and sexually abuse his victim.

Last January, Martin Smith, a TV psychic who appeared on Living TV’s Most Haunted, was found hanged in his cell in Manchester.

When Smith was approached in the street and asked if she was “the woman whose husband had been arrested”, she fled to Lloret.

On the night of May 17, she murdered Daniel and then Rebecca by smothering them with a plastic bag as they slept.

The jury heard Smith then tried to end 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.

Before attempting suicide, she left four notes and an envelope containing money for the hotel.

In one of the notes, addressed to Rebecca and Daniel, she wrote: “I love you very much. I haven’t been able to give you a marvellous life together. I am so sorry.”

After failing to kill herself, she went down to the Miramar Hotel’s reception at 1.30pm the following day and asked for police and ambulance to be called. When police arrived, Smith immediately confessed to killing the children.

Smith told the officers: “This was the end of the road, I knew my children would be taken back to England. My daughter didn’t want to go, she didn’t want to leave me.

“So I know it’s not right to take another life, but I felt I was in a corner and my intention was for me and my children to go. It was not just the children, it was me as well.”