Theresa Riggi: She's not evil, not a monster... she just loved her children too much

Theresa Riggi pleaded guilty to reduced charges of culpable homicide on the grounds of diminished responsibility at the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday.

The court heard how she laid out the bodies of her twin boys Austin and Luke, eight, and their sister, Cecilia, five, on the floor, leaving a space between them for herself. Cecilia was placed in between her brothers, with Luke's arm laid across her.

Riggi, 47, cut her own neck, wrists and abdomen and jumped from the first-floor balcony of the townhouse in Slateford Road, Edinburgh, to which she had fled from their home in Aberdeen, in fear of losing her children.

On the eve of a custody hearing, she spoke to her estranged husband, Pasquale, on the phone.She asked if he was going to take the children away from her. He replied that she had left him "no choice".

"Say goodbye then," she said, and hung up. Two days later, on 4 August, the children's bodies were found by a caretaker after neighbours smelt gas coming from the property.

Donald Findlay, QC, representing Riggi, said: "She is not evil. She is not wicked. She is not a monster.

"If it is possible to love one's children too much, she loved them too much. She believed the children and she were safer together in death than they ever could be in life."

As he spoke, Riggi sobbed. She will be sentenced next month.

After the hearing, Mr Riggi said in a statement read on his behalf that the three children "will live in our minds and hearts forever".

The court heard the story of a mother who was both loving and doting, but also protective and obsessive. She suffered from narcissistic and paranoia personality disorders, as well as histrionic, obsessive and antisocial character traits.

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Dr Brenda Robson, a child psychologist, said the children "appeared to have been conditioned to fear him (Mr Riggi] and the outside world by their mother, who home-schooled them, and who was rarely out of their sight".

Advocate-depute Alex Prentice, QC, told the court: "She was very possessive about the children and felt she was the only person capable of looking after them and protecting them.

"On any occasion when the children were outside … they always wore locators - tags - which were controlled by her."

They were also given mobile phones, pre-programmed to call her number, and encouraged to do so any time "their father did or said something that they did not like".

The couple, both originally from the US, married in 1989 but separated in 2006. They were already locked in a custody battle when her fears of losing the children were exacerbated by them meeting his partner, Michelle Ross, who was introduced as "Daddy's friend". Dr Robson said Riggi "remained infatuated with Mr Riggi and her notion of the perfect family reconciled".

The court heard Riggi accused Mr Riggi of "trying to replace her with his girlfriend" and made several calls to both.

She fled to Edinburgh on 7 July last year and stayed at a house owned by Andrew Bain, whom she had met on the dating website Urban Social.She was visited three times by Lothian and Borders Police officers, initially following up a missing persons inquiry launched by Grampian Police, and once by a Messenger at Arms dispatched by the Court of Session in Edinburgh, who took away the children's passports on 21 July to ensure Riggi could not take them out of the country.

When Cecilia asked when she would get hers back, Riggi replied: "You'll not get them back until Mummy's dead."

But it was Cecilia and her brothers who were stabbed to death less than two weeks later. All three of the children suffered eight knife wounds, mainly to the chest.

At 3pm on 4 August, neighbours told caretaker Derek Knight they could smell gas coming from the house in Slate-ford Road. As he went to investigate he heard a small explosion.

Inside the house, Mr Knight saw Riggi standing on a second-floor balcony, blood-stained and screaming.

He went upstairs and found the children's bodies lying on the bedroom floor.

Mr Prentice said: "He did not touch them and, while he does not remember seeing any injuries to them, commented that he did not want to look."

At the same time, Riggi threw herself off the balcony.

Jordan Cochrane, one of the witnesses who had gathered at the scene, tried to break her fall and deflect her on to the bonnet of a car.

She suffered fractures to a leg and an elbow, as well as the multiple stab wounds she had inflicted to her wrists, neck and chest, and singed hair from the explosion.

Paramedics who were first to examine the children said they had been dead for hours. But pathologists were later unable to conclusively determine the children's time of death.

Mr Prentice said: "Austin was nearest to the door with his head turned towards Cecilia, who was in the middle and facing Luke, who was lying nearest to the balcony and who was looking at Cecilia. Luke had his arm lying over Cecilia.

"Music was playing from a laptop which sounded similar to that heard at church services."This was found to be on an iTunes account which held the title of the song playing as Angel and the artist as Tess Riggi."

When she was younger, Riggi had hoped to become a professional violinist and vocalist.

A hob in the kitchen had been tampered with, allowing gas to fill the apartment.

While in hospital after the deaths, Riggi told a chaplain: "I'm not meant to be here, I'm meant to be with my babies."

Another person who interviewed her said she had stated, before the children's deaths, that "she had felt that God was perhaps calling them home". At one point during her stay at the hospital, she asked that the Pope visit her.

Mr Prentice said: "The chaplain's perception of the conversation was that the only way to protect them all from her husband was for them all to die."

Mr Findlay said: "This is without doubt the most tragic and difficult case I have ever had to deal with in over 35 years in these courts.

"She suffers from three separate disorders … at the time she was in the midst of an acute stress reaction … she could no longer resist or withstand the pressure … that led her to take the lives of three children whom she loved more dearly than one can say.

"It was all four of them that were to die that day. She came to the point where she believed the only thing she could do was to allow the children peace, safety and security in the afterlife, in an afterlife where she intended to be with them to guard them and to protect them."

He referred to a photograph of the children's bodies lying on the floor that was "as poignant" as any he had ever seen.

There was a space in the middle of them, which was not there by accident. "It was deliberately put there by Theresa Riggi because that was the place where, in death, she wanted to be with her children," he said.