Breaking: Two British Toddlers Dead In Spanish Hotel

I've just read that the mother has been charged with the murder of the two children and that post mortem examination has shown they were asphyxiated.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8697830.stm

Hard to know what to say or even what to think; it's beyond tragic and beyond reason.

I just read on another forum that Brunty is reporting that the children died the day before and that she stayed in the hotel room with them...

I'm not sure what to think either, such a tragic loss of two little ones and I'm wondering what her motives were. Part of me is thinking that she had ample time to end her own life, but didn't. Part of me is thinking that she was using the time to figure a way out. Who knows?...

Hi sterling, yes, I heard she spent the night with the childrens bodies.
It really is a sad story.

Pictured arriving at prison: The British mother who 'spent night sleeping next to her dead children after suffocating them'

By Tom Kelly and Christian Gysin
Last updated at 8:58 PM on 21st May 2010

Suspected child killer Lianne Smith spent the night in the same bed as her dead children before attempting to commit suicide herself, it emerged today.

The 43-year-old is suspected of smothering her daughter Rebecca, five, and 11-month-old son Daniel with a plastic bag after her partner Martin Smith was extradited to Britain on child sex charges.

But after a failed attempt to kill herself using the same plastic bag the distraught mother spent hours lying beside the lifeless bodies she had tucked into a bed in Room 101 of the Hotel Miramar in the resort town of Lloret de Mar.

It was not until just after 2pm on Tuesday afternoon that she finally left their bodies and went downstairs to ask reception staff to call the police and emergency services.

Once police entered the £53 a night hotel room in the four star hotel in they found a note which simply read: 'I hope you can forgive me'.

The revelations of the children's last hours came as Mrs Smith was questioned by a magistrate at a closed court hearing in nearby Blanes yesterday.
Traumatic: Smith, 43, is said to have slept next to her two children's bodies after suffocating them

Traumatic: Smith, 43, is said to have slept next to her two children's bodies

The magistrate will decide exactly what charges Smith faces, and rule whether she can stand trial amid concerns about her mental health.

She has confessed three times to killing the children by smothering them using a plastic bag over their heads, a statement produced by the magistrate into the circumstances of the deaths alleged.

It said she admitted to the crimes at the scene, in a note left in the hotel room and during police questioning.

Asked by officers at the scene whether she wanted to be present when police removed the bodies from the hotel she said she 'didn't to be because she had already said goodbye to the children,' the statement said.

She said she fled Barcelona to the holiday resort because she was 'scared' that the children were going to be taken away from her by the authorities after her husband's arrest and feared that social services were following her, the statement said.

Asked by police at the scene whether she wanted to be present when police removed the bodies from the hotel she said she 'didn't to be present because she had already said goodbye to the children.'

Mrs Smith cowered on the floor of a police car as she was driven the short distance from the police cells to the hearing.

The former child minder and English teacher has been on suicide watch since her arrest after repeatedly telling the police: 'I want to join my children on the other side.'

She is already understood to have made one suicide attempt by slashing her wrists and is under 24 hour surveillance whilst in custody.

Mrs Smith was said to be distraught that she triggered the horrific chain of events which led to the arrest of her partner Martin Smith and the subsequent deaths of her children.

The couple fled to Spain two and a half years after Martin Smith skipped bail in the UK after facing a string of child sex charges dating between 1995 and 2005.

Once they were abroad the pair kept a low profile using the aliases Tony Ross and Lianne Ross-Smith.

However they were discovered when Mrs Smith contacted police in Barcelona to report a burglary at the flat where the fugitive couple had been living with their two children.

Officers discovered there was an arrest warrant out for Martin Anthony Smith on child sex crimes and they staked out the building in central Barcelona and arrested him on 7 May when he finally left the flat.

Lianne Smith then convinced herself she had caused her partner's arrest.

Last Saturday she took the children to Lloret de Mar, fifty miles north of Barcelona, and checked into the hotel.

She is alleged to have put a plastic bag over their heads to kill them on Monday night.

She only asked a hotel receptionist to call police and an ambulance the following day, the Spanish newspaper El Punt reported.

Officers found both her dead children in bed when they arrived at 2pm on Tuesday.

The judge ruled that Mrs Smith is now officially the subject of the investigation into the murders and is the main suspect.

The status is similar to being charged in the UK, although she had yet to be formally charged under Spanish law.


Yesterday one guest at the Miramar told of seeing Lianne Smith on the day the children were discovered.

'She was pale and had bags under her eyes. She looked bad,' said the French holidaymaker.

During her time on the run in Barcelona Mrs Smith ran an English language preschool group.
Martin Smith: Lianne Smith's partner was arrested in Barcelona for child rape last week

Martin Smith: Lianne Smith's partner was arrested in Barcelona for child rape last week

The sessions were held in a number of different venues across the city, but were said to be poorly attended.

Parents who knew Mrs Smith yesterday described her as looking extremely nervous and unhappy.

'I thought they were very religious, Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons, because they were such an odd couple,' said one woman who would not be named.

'He was very aggressive, and complained a lot about living in Spain. It was clear he was pulling the strings.

'She was like a vicar’s wife. Extremely smartly dressed and strait-laced, but she looked like a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, so frightened, and scared.'

Mrs Smith also made ends meet by running an unlicensed B&B at the three-bed flat charging British holidaymakers £17 a day for a small room and breakfast with a minimum stay of two days and maximum of ten.

Yesterday it was also claimed that Mrs Smith had originally planned to kill just herself and leave her children with a nanny she had employed earlier this week.

Mimi Buckley, aged 21, from Merseyside, worked for Mrs Smith for two days before she took the children from Barcelona to Lloret de Mar.

'I think she meant to hire me as a nanny, leave her children with me and then commit suicide,' she said.

'But I don't think she could bear to leave them.'

Miss Buckley described the children as 'beautiful' and told of Rebecca's love of drawing and doing 'girly things.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1280296/British-mother-spent-night-sleeping-dead-children-suffocating-them.html

http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_26146.shtml

Lianne Smith, who is believed to have suffocated the children will appear in court in Blanes on Friday

Europa Press reports that the autopsy results from the Legal Medicine Institute in Girona regarding five year old Rubecca and 11 month old Daniel, the British children who were allegedly killed by their mother, Lianne Smith, in a hotel room in Lloret de Mar on Tuesday, has shown that the children had not been sexually abused, but had indeed died from suffocation.

Lianne’s partner, Martin Smith, is now in custody in the U.K. on paedophile charges. He is accused of sexually abusing youngsters aged 13 to 16 between 1995 and 2005 in the U.K.

The couple and the two children had been on the run from the U.K. authorities for two years, spending that time living in a flat in Barcelona. Neighbours said that the family had been in their last flat in Travessera de Gràcia de Barcelona for more than a year. They describe the mother as shy, saying she normally avoided conversation, but always took the children with her wherever she went.

It has now also been revealed that the mother tried to kill herself after suffocating the children. That is why she left a note in the room explaining that she had done what she had done out of fear of losing the custody of the children. But when she failed to commit suicide, she decided to go to the hotel reception to call the emergency services.

It has been confirmed also that Lianne Smith will be called to declare before the judge in Instruction Court 3 in Blanes on Friday. The judge has imposed reporting restrictions.

Lianne Smith was taken by police to the flat she shared with her paedophile husband, and the children in Barcelona on Thursday afternoon. The generally quiet Barcelona district of Horta-Guinardó was invaded by a large number of journalists and cameramen, many of them from the U.K as Lianne was taken back to the home where she had been living with her husband and the two children for the past two years.

She is now expected to appear before the judge tomorrow, Friday.

Earlier some 200 people gathered to hold a minutes silence in the Plaza de Vila in Lloret de Mar, Girona, on Thursday morning, for the two children who died in a hotel in the town on Tuesday this week.

Meanwhile the Independent Police Complaints Commission in the U.K. is to consider investigating the case.

It is now reported that she is going on hunger strike and is now on suicide watch.

Badboy wrote:It is now reported that she is going on hunger strike and is now on suicide watch.

Well if that is in the Daily mail or on Sky then it must be true

If true, I don't think the hunger strike will last too long, somehow.