Theresa Riggi gets 16 years for the killing of her three children

A MOTHER who killed her three children in the deluded belief that she was giving them a "last gift" of protection from the ills of the world has been jailed for 16 years.

The devastated father, whom Theresa Riggi had come to see as the greatest danger to the children she "loved too much", said the crime had left an indelible mark on the rest of his life.

A tearful Riggi, 47, left the dock at the High Court in Glasgow yesterday to begin her jail sentence, firm in her resolve never to see the end of it.

She had failed to take her own life when stabbing to death her twin eight-year-old sons, Austin and Luke, and her daughter, Cecilia, five, but her lawyer said she had been left with "no life at all".

Her QC Donald Findlay said: "I fear that, if given the chance today, she would follow them to wherever it is they now are. Everything will be done to prevent that happening but, ultimately, it is her life and she is entitled to do with it what she likes."

US-born Riggi and her husband, Pasquale, had been involved in a court battle over the children. She killed them, inflicting eight stab wounds to each, just before a hearing at which she had convinced herself she was going to lose them.

Mr Riggi, wearing a lapel ribbon in the three favourite colours of his children, saw his estranged wife being jailed, and said: "I will never forget Austin, Luke and Cecilia. They left ever-lasting impressions on me. They were such wonderful, energetic, bright and happy children. The horrific manner in which my children died will leave an indelible mark on the rest of my life. It pains me to the core that I was unable to protect them from the selfish, brutal and murderous acts that ended their lives so unfairly. There is no justification for this heinous crime, repeated three times. Nor is there any sentence that can provide justice for the overwhelming loss of three lives."

Riggi has been diagnosed as suffering from a number of personality disorders, which diminished her responsibility for the killings. As a result, murder charges, which carry a mandatory life sentence, were reduced to culpable homicide.

Lord Bracadale said Riggi had a genuine but abnormal and possessive love of her children.

He told her: "The number and nature of the stab wounds to each child is indicative of a truly disturbing degree of violence which, in order to bring about the deaths of three children, must have been sustained over a significant period of time. It is difficult to envisage the physical commission of such acts. (Psychiatrist] Dr Crichton considers that the degree of violence and the sustained nature of it are inexplicable in terms of your disorder of the mind. It is clear that any degree of responsibility for such ghastly and grotesque acts must be visited with a lengthy sentence of imprisonment."Riggi killed the children in August last year, in a town house in Slateford, Edinburgh, where she had been staying. It was just before another hearing in the Court of Session in Edinburgh where she and her husband, a petroleum engineer working in Aberdeen, were locked in a dispute over custody and access.

The following day, a gas explosion occurred in the house and Riggi was seen throwing herself from a second-floor balcony. A witness, Jordan Cochrane, broke her fall and deflected her on to the bonnet of a car.

Mr Findlay said Riggi, through no fault of her own, suffered from a collection of personality disorders and was "not in touch with reality" at the time of the offences. She had believed "in her world" that Mr Riggi was a danger to the children - the claims were rejected as "not true" by the Crown - and that the children needed to be protected from him. She had convinced herself that the court was going to give him the children.

Mr Findlay said: "She thinks constantly about the children and cannot imagine what it was they thought in their last moments."