Donna Fitchett guilty of murdering sons

THE ex-husband of a woman found guilty of murdering their sons says justice has been done.

THE ex-husband of a woman found guilty of murdering their sons says justice has been done.

Earlier this afternoon, a Supreme Court jury found Balwyn North mum Donna Fitchett guilty of drugging and killing her two sons Thomas, 11, and Matthew, 9, at their home on September 6, 2005.

Fitchett, 49, had pleaded not guilty to murder, claiming mental impairment.

Her ex-husband David Fitchett broke down as the verdict was read out.

Outside court, he said no decision made dealing with his loss any easier.

"I lost the two boys at the hands of my ex-wife. She knew all along what she was doing. 12 people today saw through a defence that was very shallow. They came to the right decision," Mr Fitchett said.

"There's no real relief from the situation, but justice has been done."

He described having to sit through his ex-wife's trial as "nerve-racking, highly-emotional''.

"To know that I could do it, to know that I could get through it - for my boys I have done it. Justice has been done, that's all I can say."

Fitchett's legal team will make sentence submissions at a plea hearing tomorrow. 

During Fitchett's Surpreme Court trial, psychiatrists said she had a depressive illness at the time.

But the prosecution has argued that the killings were premeditated.

The boys were drugged and strangled or smothered, the court was told.

The jury retired to consider its verdict just before 1pm yesterday and continued deliberating this morning.

The trial, before Justice Geoffrey Nettle, last week heard Fitchett had written a letter to her psychologist the day she killed her sons, outlining her plan to drug them.

She said killing the boys would be her "greatest act of love," and that she had told her now ex-husband thie marriage was over.

Defence counsel Graham Thomas, SC, said his client did not deny killing her boys. The question was whether she had been mentally impaired.

"I expect the evidence to show that she was suffering from chronic depression,'' he said.

But prosecutor Gavin Silbert argued Fitchett had hatched a plan to kill her sons and get back at her husband over an unsatisfactory marriage.

The killings, he said, were planned to the most minute detail and carried out "consciously, voluntarily and deliberately''.

Mr Fitchett sobbed incourt last week as he read out a letter from his wife, who wrote that their sons said nothing but "put up a bit of a struggle'' as she killed them.

David Fitchett also fought back tears as his 000 call   -  after discovering the two boys' cold bodies at the family home - was played to a Supreme Court jury.