TRAGEDY IN COURT: The shocking confession of the mother who murdered 2 small children
Janette MacAusland burst into tears as she recounted her crazy plan: Take the lives of her two children and then kill herself to reunite in heaven
Police in Vermont allege that a Massachusetts mother accused of murdering her two children before attempting to kill herself last Friday night admitted to her aunt that she wanted her and her two young kids to “go to God together, but it didn’t work.”
PEOPLE previously reported that Janette MacAusland was arrested at a relative’s home in Bennington, Vt., on the night of Friday, April 24, in connection with the deaths of her two children. She was later charged with two counts of murder back in Massachusetts, where she and her children lived, according to a news release from the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office.
Citing a Bennington police report, MassLive and the Bennington Banner reported that the 49-year-old mother of two showed up to her aunt’s house Friday night acting erratically and with a “major” neck wound.
WFSB and WCVB, citing court documents, reported that MacAusland’s aunt told police MacAusland allegedly said she had killed her children — son Kai, 7, and daughter Ella, 6 — before trying to kill herself by stabbing herself in the neck and attempting to jump off a bridge.
“I wanted the three of us to go to God together, but it didn’t work,” MacAusland’s allegedly told her aunt, police said, according to WFSB.
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A memorial grows outside the home on Edgemoor Ave. in Wellesley, Mass., where the MacAuslands lived.Nic Czarnecki/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
WCVB reported that MacAusland’s aunt told police that her niece “was hysterical” when she arrived at the house.
“I brought her into my house,” the aunt reportedly told police, according to WCVB. “She had knocked on a window to get my attention and I could see that she had a large cut on her throat.”
The aunt also told police: “I asked her where her children were and she told me that she had killed them.”
WCVB reported that Bennington Police officers then interviewed MacAusland, who allegedly also admitted to them that she killed her children at her home in Wellesley, Mass. Police alleged that the mother was carrying a photo of her and her two children on vacation and handed officers the picture when she admitted to killing them.
“I strangled them and then I tried to kill myself,” she allegedly told police, according to WCVB.
Inmate records at the Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility in Rutland, Vt., show MacAusland remains in custody there, one day after waiving her extradition rights in her initial courtroom appearance Monday afternoon. She is expected to be extradited back to Massachusetts within the next two weeks, where she will be charged with two counts of murder.
PEOPLE reported Monday that MacAusland was in the midst of a bitter custody dispute with her estranged husband, Samuel MacAusland, who filed for divorce and sued for custody of their children last October.
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Cale Darrah, who told the Boston Globe she was a babysitter for the family for about one year through June 2024, said both MacAusland children seemed happy and healthy.
“Never did I enter the house and feel like there was anything that was extremely off,” Darrah told the newspaper.
“It doesn’t really feel real at all,” Darrah added. “Not that it should happen anywhere but especially in a town like Wellesley where nothing like this ever happens.”
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