Killer mother spent night with dead bodies in Spanish hotel

Lianne Smith, 45, has admitted suffocating daughter Rebecca Smith, five, and 11-month-old son Daniel with a plastic bag at the Miramar Hotel in Lloret de Mar on the Costa Brava in May 2010. She went on trial yesterday at the Provincial Court in Girona, north-east Spain, so a jury can determine whether she is criminally responsible for the children’s deaths. Her defence is seeking an acquittal, claiming she was in a state of “psychiatric disturbance” and suffering insurmountable fear when the tragedy happened. If found guilty, she faces a total of 38 years in prison. The killings took place shortly after her partner, Martin Smith, was arrested in Barcelona by Spanish police acting on a European Arrest Warrant. He was deported to the UK. The family had been living in Spain since 2007 after fleeing Lichfield, Staffordshire, when Mr Smith was accused of sexually abusing a young girl. Victor Pillado Quintas, prosecuting, said in his opening statement: “At around 9pm on May 17 2010, the defendant was in room 101 [at the Miramar Hotel] with her two children. Knowing full well that their young age and the surprising nature of her behaviour would not allow them to react, more so since they were asleep, and taking advantage of the trust the children would have had in their mother, she took her son in her arms and put a bag over his head, closing it around his neck. “She did not stop tightening the bag until she had killed him. Immediately she did the same to the five-year-old, closing the same bag around her neck and tightening it until she killed her daughter.” Smith looked haunted and cried as the court heard the charges she faced. In December 2010, Martin Smith was found guilty at Manchester Crown Court of 11 specimen charges of rape, attempted rape, indecency with a child and indecent assault. Jenifer Lahoz Abos, for the defence, told the jury that Smith had a “total emotional dependence” on her partner and was left in a state of psychosis after he was arrested on 7 May, 2010. She said: “The defendant came to Spain fleeing the British judicial authorities and social services because her husband Martin was accused of sexually abusing another daughter she had from an earlier marriage, which they considered a totally false accusation.” Ms Lahoz Abos said that, after Martin’s arrest, Smith felt “persecuted, hounded and threatened”. She said: “She tried to carry on in this state of psychological instability, going back to work and hiring a girl to look after the children. But on 15 May she went out shopping early in the morning with both the children and saw two people in a car who she later saw walking down the street. She felt observed and threatened and made a clean break with reality and thought she was being chased by the two people, who she thought could be members of the British social services. “She thought they were going to come and take her children away and give them to other families in adoption…” Ms Lahoz Abos said: “After spending two days at the Miramar Hotel, and not seeing any way out for them, she decided to end their lives.” Ms Lahoz Abos said that under the Spanish Criminal Code her client is not criminally responsible for the killings because she was in a psychotic state.