A mum has been made the subject of an indefinite hospital order after she killed her two children. Veronique John, 50, also stabbed her partner following the incident but he survived his injuries.
John, of Stoke-on-Trent, was deemed unfit to plead by the court. She was subject to a trial of facts at Nottingham Crown Court which she did not participate in.
Police had been called to a car wash on Campbell Road, Stoke, following reports that a man had been stabbed on June 11 last year. Officers then travelled to a home on Flax Street where they found Ethan, 11, and Elizabeth, seven, with "significant injuries."
Both of the children were unresponsive and died at the scene. John was made the subject of an indefinite hospital order today (Monday, July 1).
She was unable to stand trial after the court determined she was unfit to do so, meaning that criminal proceedings were unable to continue. The jury concluded that Veronique John carried out the attacks on her two children and her partner.
Elizabeth and Ethan John (Image: Staffordshire Police)
Detective Chief Inspector Cheryl Hannan, from Staffordshire Police's Major Investigations Department, said: "This case was distressing for all involved, it was traumatic for the local community and has left so many people devastated by what happened.
"It’s not lost on me nor any of the officers that were involved in this investigation the lasting effect it will have on the many people that knew Ethan and Elizabeth, and the fond memories they have of them.
"My thoughts remain with their father, family and friends at such a tragic time both here and in other parts of the world. I’d also like to thank everyone from the local community who pulled together in such desperate times to help us investigate what happened and to provide as much support as possible for those affected."
A spokesperson for Staffordshire Police added: "The difference between a trial-of-facts and a criminal trial is that a jury does not need to decide if the person is guilty or not guilty, nor do they consider the mental state of the person involved. Instead, they are only asked to decide if the person involved committed the acts they have been charged with.
"If the subject was deemed to be fit to plead in the future, a trial would then be called."
A mayor in Tenerife has insisted police are continuing to investigate several lines of inquiry and defended the decision to call off the search for missing British teenager Jay Slater.
"The investigation that the Civil Guard is carrying out in this case has several lines of inquiry open," local Mayor Emilio Navarro told Sky News.
"It's not that the search has stopped. Maybe, yes, in the territory, the field search, but other lines are open."
The Civil Guard announced on Sunday their search of the mountainous area in northern Tenerife where Jay was last seen had ended.
It was less than two weeks after the teenager had been reported missing.
The Rural de Teno national park had been the focus of the hunt for Jay after he'd travelled to a nearby village with two British men after a night out.
His phone was last located in the area the following morning, on Monday 17 June. He'd called a friend to say his mobile was about to run out of battery.
Mr Navarro, who is mayor of Santiago Del Teide, defended the police against accusations the search was halted too soon, telling Sky News "a magnificent job has been done by the Civil Guard".
"Until last week, many resources were allocated to the search," he added.
Image:The slopes of a steep valley, where part of the search was carried out
He also denied the search had been hampered by online conspiracy theories about the disappearance of the teen from Lancashire.
"I believe that in this case the Civil Guard is very professional and they do not deviate from the investigation and what they have is quite clear and verified," Mr Navarro insisted.
Jay's family, who have travelled out to Tenerife, intend to stay and are waiting to hear what authorities plan to do now the active search has ended.
The Civil Guard has provided scant information on their enquiries.
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However, they did confirm they do not consider the two British men whom Jay stayed with on the night before he went missing were relevant to the investigation.
British climber and social media personality Paul Arnott was once again searching the mountainous terrain on Monday.
He has vowed to continue and has called the final police search on Saturday - which included a call for volunteers to join professionals - a "PR stunt".
However, police have said although the active search phase has ended the investigation into the disappearance continues.
A woman has been handed an indefinite hospital order after a jury ruled that she killed her two young children in a knife attack and stabbed her husband in the stomach.
Veronique John, 50, was not physically present at Nottingham Crown Court on Monday as a jury in a fact-finding hearing decided she was responsible for unlawfully causing wounds in attacks which the prosecution described as "almost too horrific to contemplate".
Her daughter Elizabeth, seven, was pronounced dead at her home in Stoke-on-Trent on 11 June last year, having suffered a fractured skull and knife wounds, while John's 11-year-old son, Ethan, suffered more than 20 sharp force injuries.
John, who has been diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder as well as personality and depressive disorders, was ruled unfit to enter a plea or take part in the trial.
She is currently being treated at Rampton high security hospital in Nottinghamshire and was seen wiping away tears with a tissue as she listened via a video link as judge Mr Justice Choudhury imposed the order.
The judge said the reason for the "abominable savagery" shown in killing the children appeared to be an attempt by John to "hurt" her husband.
He stated: "The facts of this case are almost too horrific to comprehend.
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"You claim that you are not a monster... but your acts were either those of a monster or someone who has lost all capacity to reason."
The trial of the facts hearing did not require jurors to return verdicts of guilty or not guilty on charges of murder and attempted murder, with the panel instead asked to decide whether John "did the acts alleged against her".
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After hearing evidence over five days, the jury took around 40 minutes to reach its unanimous decision.
The court was told John, originally from the Caribbean island of St Vincent, "erupted" into violence at her home because she did not want her husband, Nathan John, to have their children.
She then headed to a car wash where he worked to stab him in the stomach.
After returning home, John dialled 999 and told the operator: "I am calling to report I just killed my two kids."
The charity shop worker told police after her arrest: "If you have a gun shoot me. I am not a monster - he was going to take them from me."
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John, said to be boiling with rage after being arrested for assaulting her husband while suspecting him of having an affair, later stated in an interview: "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. When I say that, I am not joking. I mean it 100%."
She went on to claim that she could not remember anything about the nature or number of the injuries inflicted on the children.
Medical efforts to save the children, who both had neck wounds, were "futile" due to the severity of their injuries, the court heard.
The judge had ruled that John, who did not advance a defence of insanity, was unfit to plead after being told by psychiatrists that she was "mentally very unwell" and would be unable to follow the course of the proceedings.
In a victim impact statement read to the court by a barrister, Mr John stated his wife had "viciously and brutally" taken their two children's lives and said it was horrific that one of the siblings may have witnessed the other being "put to death in a beastly manner".
Mr John said his "whole world was turned upside down", adding: "I lost the two most important and precious persons in my life at once."
Teenager Jay Slater has been missing for two weeks and Tenerife police have ceased their active search efforts. This article delves into the six key pieces of evidence that have emerged, with a former detective opining that the case should have been approached as a homicide from the outset.
Jay, hailing from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, disappeared on the holiday isle of Tenerife since Monday, June 17. The young bricklayer was last spotted by his Airbnb host, and it's believed he missed his bus to meet friends in the island's south, a hotspot for British holidaymakers, after attending a music festival.
Spanish authorities have decided to end their search, having found no trace of Jay. Yet, his heartbroken relatives are determined to continue the hunt. Rachel Hargreaves, a close friend of Jay's mother, Debbie Duncan, who started a Facebook page to collate details about the missing youth, said: "We're still going to go out and search. No one is leaving until we find Jay. We stay, we do what we need to do."
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Below we have put together the crucial clues that have surfaced during the investigation, as reported by the Mirror. They include his last Snapchat, his injury and the people who spoke to him just before he disappeared.
Who was last to speak to Jay Slater?
Jay was last in contact with Lucy Mae, who said that he phoned her on the morning of his disappearance, expressing confusion and an urgent need for water, while also mentioning his phone battery was running out. In a statement on Jay's GoFundMe page, Lucy said: "On the last day of the festival, I left alone, earlier than everyone else, because I was tired from the weekend. I woke up to a phone call off Jay at 8.30am saying 'he was lost in the mountains, he wasn't aware of his surroundings, he desperately needed a drink and his phone was on 1%'.
"He had met two people on Sunday night and left with them to go to their apartment. Their apartment was miles away from civilisation and in a very secluded location. He left at 8am, and walked half an hour before frantically ringing me when his phone reached 1%. No one has seen or heard from him since."
Brad Hargreaves, another friend, also spoke about his last conversation with Jay. In an interview with Isla Traquair on This Morning, Brad relayed: "He was on the phone walking down a road and he'd gone over a little bit - not a big drop - but a tiny little drop and he was going down, and he said 'I'll ring ya back, I'll ring ya back' because I think someone else was ringing him. If he was thinking like me, he would have gone back up and started walking on the path again... He wouldn't have gone all that way down there."
Where is Jay Slater's phone now?
Utilising data from Jay's phone, detectives have been able to narrow down a specific location for the 19-year-old. Jay's phone died at approximately 8.50am on Monday morning near a hiking trail in Rural de Teno park. The Spanish Civil Guard is certain of this location, using it as their starting point for searches, they confirmed this in a press conference.
They stated: "We know to a certain science that he was here because the coverage of his phone its undeniable that he was around this point. And that's where we have difficulties, because once you turn off your phone, it can no longer be traced. So while he was walking - and we don't know how long he could have walked for - with his phone switched off, no antenna is going to pick that up. And the technology we have - it traces phones, but not people. We have certain clues, and we have to stick to those."
What were the threats to Jay Slater's mum?
On arriving in Tenerife just a day after Jay's disappearance, mum Debbie Duncan was subjected to disgusting prank calls and even death threats concerning her son. The origin of these messages is unclear, but uncovering them may be crucial to the family gaining some understanding of what happened to Jay.
55-year-old Debbie received a troubling Snapchat message insinuating she would never see her son again due to a large outstanding debt he supposedly had. Debbie shared: "There's no ransom demand come in yet but I got a Snapchat about 10 minutes after I got off the plane saying 'Kiss goodbye to your boy, you're never going to see him again, he owes me a lot of money'."
How did Jay Slater get injured?
Jay mentioned to his friend Lucy during a phone call that he had injured his leg on a cactus. Civil Guard officers indicated that this information prompted them to comb through a nearby ravine, which was in the vicinity of the last known location of Jay's mobile phone signal.
At a press briefing held at Mirador La Cruz de Hilda near the search area, officers shared: "Another thing that leads us to that conclusion is that when he was on the phone to Lucy, he got caught by a cactus and he was worried that they might be poisonous - she said, don't worry, it won't be poisonous - but for that, he had to have left the main road.
"If you were walking along the main road you wouldn't get pricked by a cactus. To do that, you would have had to have left the main road and be halfway up the mountain."
What was Jay Slater wearing when he vanished?
A Snapchat video captured just hours before Jay disappeared shows him having a good time in the Arona district of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The footage, recorded around 8.35pm on Sunday, June 16, by relative Isabelle Price, has been circulated in a Facebook group set up to aid in locating Jay, which boasts over 40,000 members.
Accompanying the video was the caption: "This is a clear video of what Jay was wearing the night he went missing. All of our family and friends are so worried, we're all just praying and hoping he gets found soon unharmed."
The final Snapchat sent from Jay Slater's phone
The final Snapchat photo from Jay shows a hand holding a cigarette, believed to be taken at a property in the Buenavista del Norte area around 7.30am on Monday. Given the puzzling circumstances, Lucy shared her confusion, stating: "I can't understand why he would come out of the house and then decide he was going to walk. I think he maybe set off walking with battery and had not realised how far the walk actually is."
Sir Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak are set to begin a frantic final few days of campaigning as polling day rapidly approaches.
Both men will today reiterate their core messages as they try to motivate their backers to get out to the polling booths on Thursday.
The Labour leader will impress on the nation that if they want change they "have to vote for it" - while the Conservative leader will warn there are "four days to save Britain from a Labour government".
Mr Sunak has suggested that Labour are on track for a "supermajority", with the opposition having managed to maintain a roughly 20-point lead in the opinion polls, according to the Sky News Poll Tracker - something Sir Keir will do everything to ensure does not change.
The Liberal Democrats are set to continue their push to replace the Tories in seats that have traditionally been considered their heartlands - while the SNP will try to convince Scots to back them as polls show Labour could become the largest Scottish parliamentary contingent once again.
Mr Sunak is set to campaign in the Midlands today, where he will warn against giving "Keir Starmer and Labour a blank cheque".
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Speaking at a rally later, the prime minister will say of Labour: "If they get the kind of majority, the supermajority that the polls suggest, they will set about entrenching themselves in power.
"They will rewrite the rules to make it easier for them to stay in office and harder for anyone to replace them. So, don't surrender your voice to Labour on Thursday."
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Seemingly in a bid to limit the scale of the defeat, rather than emerge victorious, the Tory leader will say that "an unchecked Labour government would be a disaster from which it would take decades to recover".
"We Conservatives will stand up for you and make sure your voice is heard, your values represented."
The Conservative Party is also claiming today that Labour's immigration plans will result in a "deluge" of asylum seekers, leading to tax hikes of £635 per family each year - something a Labour spokesperson has branded a "ludicrous lie from an increasingly desperate Tory party".
The opposition claimed the Tories have "completely lost control of the asylum system or border security" and if they are re-elected "the chaos will continue and costs will soar further".
Labour win 'not inevitable' - Starmer
Labour will also vow to ensure petty theft is punished by scrapping a rule allowing people stealing goods worth under £200 to escape punishment, it is understood.
More broadly, the party will continue to make the wider case for change, with national campaign coordinator Pat McFadden saying: "If people don't want to wake up on 5 July to five more years of economic chaos, to wake up knowing that all the future offers is the same as the recent Tory past, then they have to vote Labour and vote for change on Thursday."
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12:24
Leader interviews: Labour Party
Sir Keir Starmer also hammered home that message in an interview with The Guardian, saying: "People talk about the inevitable outcome. It isn't inevitable. I think there's a yearning for change. But, you know, what we always say, if you want change, you have to vote for it."
He also told the paper "hope has been kicked out of many people" because of the Tories' failure to deliver, adding: "There's a near universal view that almost everything is broken, and we're going backwards as a country. That's very demoralising.
"They've also had to witness the politics of self-entitlement and self-enhancement from Westminster... I'm not surprised that people feel disaffected by politics. But we do have to restore it."
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Sir Keir expressed concern about the rise in support for the populist right across Europe, and for Reform in the UK.
"You have to understand why that's happening," he said. "It's based in this disaffection, this sense that politics cannot be a force for good, and you can't trust politicians."
He argued that progressive parties and governments could restore faith, however, saying: "That goes back to credible hope, deliverable hope, making the change that will be material for people's lives."
Lib Dems on bereavement payment cuts
First minister John Swinney will also be out on the campaign trail today, reiterating his core message that Scots need an "alternative" to Labour in Westminster to "represent Scotland's values".
The SNP leader said in a statement that the general election in England is a "foregone conclusion", with a Labour win on the cards, and claimed Sir Keir Starmer would "carry on with the same broken politics and right-wing policies as the Tories".
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1:30
Swinney pledges to continue push for indyref
He is arguing that the result in Scotland is on a "knife edge" - despite polls showing Labour in the lead - and that Sir Keir "simply represents more of the same broken Brexit Britain that does not reflect Scotland's values".
"The SNP is offering an alternative - a vision of hope with an end to austerity, rejoining the EU, eradicating child poverty and a future made in Scotland, for Scotland where Scotland's interests are always put first," said Mr Swinney.
"The only way to deliver that and put an end to the failure of Brexit which has caused so much damage to Scotland is to vote SNP on Thursday.
"Only the SNP offers Scotland the hope of a better future back in the EU - but we have to vote for it."
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18:32
Leader interviews: Liberal Democrats
Sir Ed Davey and the Liberal Democrats will be continuing their bid to take seats off the Tories - and are promoting a pledge they launched yesterday to reverse "heartless Tory cuts" to bereavement payments.
On the latter as it stands, a bereaved family where a spouse or partner has died receives a lump sum of up to £3,500, followed by a monthly payment of up to £350 for 18 months.
The party is calling for this period to be extended, and is pledging to inject an additional £440m a year into the system by 2028-29 to fund it.
'Labour could take Wales for granted'
Plaid Cymru will be making their case to voters in Wales, arguing that the Welsh people will be "voiceless" if they do not have a "strong cohort" of MPs in Westminster.
The party's leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth, said Wales "simply doesn't feature" in Tory and Labour electoral plans, while his party would push for "fair funding deal for Wales".
"When people vote on Thursday, they expect their MP to speak up for them and their community, not to follow the Westminster whip at any cost," a statement said.
"We know that the Tories are finished and the contempt they show Wales is nothing new - but with Labour set to enter Downing Street on Friday, there is a real danger that they will simply take Wales for granted."
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10:03
Leader interviews: Plaid Cymru
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He added: "For a member of parliament who will always give Wales a voice in Westminster, who will always champion fairness and stand up against more cuts which have already devastated our public services, vote Plaid Cymru on 4 July."
Reform UK will also be on the campaign trail as the party tries to stabilise its campaign following racism allegations.
Image:Farage's Reform party will be trying to steady the ship after racism claims. Pic: Reuters
Yesterday, one of the party's candidates disowned them and backed the Tories, saying he had become "increasingly disillusioned" with the behaviour of the party and accused leader Nigel Farage of not taking it seriously.
It followed the controversy over a Reform canvasser who was caught making a racial slur about the prime minister in an undercover investigation.
Former Met officer Graham Wettone has suggested that the case of missing teen Jay Slater might require further scrutiny, stating that certain aspects "don't add up".
Wettone, with 30 years of experience at the Metropolitan Police, suggested that Slater, who vanished on June 17, may not actually be missing in the traditional sense. The former policeman emphasised the importance for local authorities to consider whether third-party involvement is a possibility and to explore "criminal" aspects of the case.
Efforts to find the 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer saw drones, dogs, and international search teams descend upon the Spanish island. The termination of the search has reportedly left Jay's parents "devastated". As of Sunday, the Tenerife police have formally discontinued the search for Jay, reports the Mirror.
In a conversation with MailOnline, Graham said: "It seems to me on the face of it that they are just focusing on the mountain, but I would hope they are looking at other avenues and those include criminality. I've been following this case closely and discussing it with colleagues and it's certainly a very bizarre one, lots of things just don't add up."
Jay Slater has now been missing for two weeks (Image: Instagram)
Graham also suggested many of the witnesses may not be telling the truth and he would start again from the beginning and speak to them all once more. He criticised Spanish police for focusing primarily on the fact they were told told he wandered off into the mountain and said he hoped officers would have at least secured the Airbnb so any potential evidence there could be gathered.
He told the publication that other things that do not add up include - were they any patterns forming that would point to ending up wandering off; was there anything sinister and untoward or related to his past about why he went off with the two men; why hasn't he been found, if he is young and fit?
Graham argued Spanish police should look at other avenues, including criminality, in their investigation.
Sources close to Jay's family express their devastation over the conclusion of the search, driven by a sense that "trolls have won".
A family source in the UK told The Sun: "Jay's family can't help thinking the trolls have won and that they have got the way. So many people have been putting horrible messages out there which has only added to the family's torment.
"They will not stop looking for Jay or giving up. They will be staying in Tenerife and trying to do all they can to keep momentum going and to find Jay. They've been trying to get in touch with groups in Tenerife and beyond who specialise in missing persons.
"Jay's family knew the search would eventually wind down. They get that. But it was a nightmare scenario they didn't want to think about."
A 14-year-old boy has gone missing after swimming with friends in the River Mersey.
Police said he became separated from the group near the radar tower off Crosby beach, Waterloo, and hasn't been seen since.
Emergency services were called just after 7pm on Sunday and a cordon was put in place on the beach.
Local media said there were multiple ambulances and fire engines near the scene, with a coastguard helicopter overhead.
"We are asking people to avoid the area at this time, whilst the emergency services, including the coastguard and North West Ambulance Service, continue searching for the missing boy," said Merseyside Police.
