Mum drugged, murdered two sons: court
A Melbourne mother, who drugged her two young sons before strangling or suffocating them, saw it as her greatest act of love, a jury has heard.
Donna Fitchett, 51, has pleaded not guilty to murdering her sons Thomas, 11, and Matthew, nine, in her Balwyn North home on September 6, 2005.
Her husband David Fitchett found their bodies when he arrived home, the Victorian Supreme Court was told.
Prosecutor Gavin Silbert SC said Fitchett's cold-blooded murders were to punish her husband of 12 years for an unsatisfactory marriage.
But defence counsel Patrick Tehan QC said Fitchett killed her sons because she was mentally ill.
The court on Monday heard that Fitchett drugged the boys with sedatives she had stockpiled from her former nursing job and sent the boys to bed before strangling or smothering them.
She later told a friend she bathed and changed Thomas afterwards because she didn't want people to think he wasn't well looked after, the prosecutor said.
