A MUM killed her two children then stabbed her husband because she didn't want him to take them away from her, a court heard.
Veronique John allegedly stabbed Ethan, 11, more than times then inflicted a fatal head injury on seven-year-old daughter Elizabeth.
She then headed to a car wash where her husband Nathan John was in her dressing gown and knifed him in the stomach, it is said.
Nottingham Crown Court heard John, 50, dialled 999 and said: "I am calling to report I just killed my two kids."
When police arrived at her home in Stoke-on-Trent, the charity worker told officers: "If you have a gun shoot me. I am not a monster - he was going to take them from me."
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She later claimed her husband had been cheating on her, adding: "It's something I was thinking about for a long time - just kill myself and the kids.
"Unless you guys are offering me the death penalty I have nothing else to say.
"I did it because I love my children - to protect the children. If there's any possible way I could be put to death, I would like that. I mean it 100 per cent."
Prosecutor Peter Grieves-Smith said her "rage was boiling just under the surface".
John had been arrested the day before the horror after assaulting her husband with a piece of wood, the court heard.
She was interviewed under caution and released with a community resolution notice.
Then, on June 11 last year, the mum - from the Caribbean island of St Vincent - Googled: "Can a foreigner be charged with murder in the UK?"
Hours later, Ethan was found dead in his bedroom with a 17cm-long neck wound.
His younger sister Elizabeth had head trauma and "three areas of sharp force" injury, including to her stomach.
Mr Grieves-Smith said: "What happened on 11 June didn't come out of the blue. Tension grew in the days before.
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"That day she just erupted, killed her children and attacked Nathan."
John is charged with two counts of murder, attempted murder and an alternative count of wounding, but has been ruled unfit to plead.
She is facing a trial of facts, which means a jury will decide whether or not she committed the offences rather than formally finding her guilty or not guilty.
Mr Justice Choudhury said: "This trial is slightly unusual - the defendant has been found to be under a disability.
"She is unable to participate in the trial in any meaningful sense. Your task is to decide whether the defendant did the acts of unlawfully inflicting injuries on and killing Ethan and Elizabeth which led to their deaths, and unlawfully inflicting injuries to Mr John."
The trial continues.
