French mother 'sacrificed children to get out of debt'

A French woman denied yesterday killing her two children with poisoned cannelloni the day before she gave birth to a stillborn baby whose rotting body was later found on her balcony.

"I am innocent," Marie-Helene Martinez told a court in the southern town of Aix-en-Provence, where she and her husband Jean-Paul Steijns are on trial for the murder of eight-year-old Melissa and seven-year-old Jason.

The couple allegedly decided in 2005 to poison their children, believing they would be better able to pull themselves out of debt without them.



"I loved my children. I could never have done this," Ms Martinez, 29, said as she took the stand, dressed in black and fighting back tears.

But her husband told the court that both he and his wife were guilty.

"I am conscious that I took part in a horrible act that claimed the lives of three innocent children," Mr Steijns said, before adding: "I should have prevented her from committing such a crime."

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