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28th April 2023
10:45am BST
A mother has pleaded guilty to stabbing, strangling and suffocating her three children before burning their bodies in a house fire.
On Friday, Margaret Dale Hawke, 36, admitted at the Supreme Court in Perth, Australia, to murdering her 10-year-old daughter and two sons, aged seven and four months.
They died in July last year in the family's home in the town of Port Hedland, West Australia, sending shockwaves through the local community.
The court heard Hawke strangled her daughter with an electrical cord and stabbed her eight times in her chest and heart, 9News reports.
Her seven-year-old son was found with three stab wounds to his chest and wounds on his neck from also being strangled.
Hawke also smothered her infant son before setting her home alight and walking into the street as it was engulfed by flames.
The court heard that a witness described her as "really calm" as she watched the building burn.
Another witness heard her say: "He's taken everything from me."
Prosecutor Justin Whalley SC told the court that Hawke then screamed and cried, saying: "My babies, my babies ... You don't have to suffer any more."
Hawke later told police she didn't know of any other way to help her children before admitting to lighting the fire.
"My three babies … I hurt my babies. I did it to my babies," she said.
Whilst she was being treated in hospital, she admitted to staff that she had murdered her children.
"I don't know why I did what I did. Maybe to stop the pain in all of us," the court heard she told police in an interview after the incident.
Hawke had told her children that she loved them and asked for their forgiveness, before murdering her daughter and then her sons.
All three of the children had likely died before the fire was lit, as there was no soot in their respiratory systems.
Whilst in court on Friday, Hawke was overcome with grief, and had to be restrained by security staff after she repeatedly hit her head on a balustrade in the dock.
She will be sentenced on May 5.
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