Mother who suffocated children tried to kill herself

A WOMAN who admitted suffocating her two children with a plastic bag in aSpanish hotel room last week tried to kill herself before she was arrested, police said yesterday.

Rebecca Smith, five, and her 11-month-old brother Daniel were found dead at the Hotel Miramar in Lloret de Mar, on the Costa Brava, on Tuesday last.

Their mother, Lianne Smith, is believed to be on suicide watch in jail in Girona in Spain, and said to be eating and drinking very little.

A Girona police spokeswoman said: “She tried to commit suicide before police arrested her.”

Smith, 43, was transferred to prison on Friday afternoon after a judge ruled that a case should be brought against her.

She is being held in isolation and British consular staff are holding regular meetings with her.

She is expected to decide soon whether her children’s bodies should be repatriated or buried in Spain.

The former Cumbria County Council employee confessed to the horrific killings in notes left at the crime scene, a court in Blanes, near Lloret de Mar, was told.

Judge Rafael Fernandez remanded her in custody at the end of Friday’s hearing, which was held behind closed doors.

The children died around the time Smith’s partner Martin Smith, 45, was extradited to Britain to face child sex charges.

Reports in Spain suggested they were killed on Monday night and that their mother spent the night in her hotel room with their bodies.

The court heard that Smith was worried theauthorities would take her children away.

The family went on the run in 2007 and had been living in Barcelona, where Smith was believed to have run a nursery.

After her partner’s arrest, Smith fled with her children to the Lloret de Mar hotel.

A court document detailing Friday’s hearing read: “Smith spontaneously declared that she had killed her two children...

“Asked if she wanted to be present when the two bodies were removed, she declined as she said she had already said goodbye to her two children.”

Results of psychological tests carried out on her were normal, the court document said.

Smith was formerly a manager at Cumbria County Council’s children’s services department but did not work directly with children.

The shocking events on the Costa Brava unfolded just two days after her partner and father of the children appeared before Carlisle magistrates charged with 13 sexual offences and one for jumping bail.

Smith, originally from North Shields, was one of Britain’s most wanted men until his arrest by Spanish police earlier this month.

At the time he faced charges of rape of a child under 16, gross indecency with a girl under 16, indecent assault of a girl under 16 and attempted rape of a girl under 16.