By Lee Bottomley, BBC News, West Midlands • PA Media, BBC News
Staffordshire Police
A woman killed her seven-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son, a jury in a trial of the facts has concluded.
Ethan John was stabbed 21 times, Nottingham Crown Court heard, while his sister Elizabeth was also stabbed and left with a severe brain injury in the attacks at their family home in Stoke-on-Trent in June 2023.
Veronique John was charged with murder, as well as the attempted murder of her husband, but was ruled unfit to enter a plea due to mental illness.
On Monday, a jury found she carried out the attacks.
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Jurors deliberated for about 30 minutes before unanimously ruling that the 50-year-old unlawfully inflicted fatal neck and head injuries on her children and stabbed her husband Nathan John in the stomach.
A trial of the facts involves the prosecution setting out the case in front of a jury, but the defendant does not have to play a part in proceedings.
The jury decides if the defendant committed the offences, but their conclusions cannot result in criminal convictions and there is no finding of guilt or innocence.
Instead they were asked to decide whether John “did the acts alleged against her”.
The 50-year-old, of Flax Street, in Stoke, was not in court to hear the jury’s findings.
She now faces a mandatory hospital order.
‘Shoot me’
During the trial, the jury heard John “erupted” into violence and killed her two children because she did not want her husband to have them.
After the attacks, she then headed to a car wash to stab Mr John before returning to her home and phoning 999, the prosecution said.
The jury heard the charity shop worker told police who arrived at her home on 11 June: “If you have a gun shoot me. I am not a monster – he was going to take them from me.”
The prosecution said the 50-year-old’s “rage was boiling just under the surface,” a day after she was arrested on suspicion of assaulting her husband with a piece of wood, amid her own suspicion he was having an affair.
A forensic pathologist told the court that Ethan, 11, suffered wounds to his hand, which suggest he tried to defend himself.
In total, he suffered 21 separate knife wounds – including to the head, chest, neck and hands.
His sister Elizabeth also suffered a fatal wound to her neck and had extensive bruising on the left side of her face and forehead.
The seven-year-old had a stab wound that went through her stomach and a brain injury that was caused by at least one forceful blow, the pathologist said.
John, who is originally from the Caribbean island of St Vincent, was deemed unfit to enter a plea or take part in the trial.
She is being treated at a high-security hospital, and was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder as well as personality and depressive disorders.
The judge will decide on the disposal – the equivalent of the sentence – for Veronique John on Monday afternoon.
Mr Justice Choudhury said the jury may have wondered why the trial was necessary given the “strong and overwhelming evidence” against her.
He made clear that the only disposal available in the “unusual” circumstances of the case was an indefinite hospital order.
