Police 'error' let mum return home to murder her children

Inspector 'didn't think kids were at risk'

- Sentinel Reporter

A MOTHER searched online for information on overdoses and prison sentences for murder on the day she killed her children, an inquest heard.

Veronique John carried out Google and YouTube searches on the morning of June 11, 2023 - just hours before she called police to report she had killed daughter Elizabeth, aged seven, and 11-year-old son Ethan.

She was handed an indefinite hospital order last year for the fatal attacks, which happend at the family home in Flax Street, Stoke.

An inquest at Stoke Civic Centre is investigating events leading up to the children’s deaths. On Wednesday coroner Emma Serrano heard from a consultant psychiatrist and consultant forensic psychiatrist on Mrs John’s mental state.

Dr Gillian Bennett, who produced a report on the mother, concluded she had not met the threshold of insanity at the time of the killings 'because of her behaviour and her admission she had made to the police afterwards.

Dr Bennett said: “It indicated she did understand the nature of the acts and they were wrong. In the course of the interview, she was unable to give an account of what happened.”