A Massachusetts acupuncturist accused of killing her two young children during a messy divorce made a chilling confession to cops when they found her crazed at her aunt’s house, according to documents.
“I strangled them and then I tried to kill myself,” Janette MacAusland, 49, told a Vermont cop who was called to her relative’s home, a police report said.
When police asked where her estranged husband was, she said, “at the lake.”
“I wanted the 3 of us to go to God together but it didn’t work,” MacAusland told the officer.
She has been since been charged with murdering 7-year-old Kai and 6-year-old Ella in their $1.5 million Wellesley home last Friday night — before fleeing to her aunt’s house.
The “hysterical” woman showed up out of the blue at her aunt’s house in Bennington — 140 miles west of her Boston suburb — around 9:15 p.m., and began banging on the windows before the startled family member, Sandra Mattison, finally recognized her niece and brought her inside, Mattison later told cops.
“I asked where her husband was and she said he was at the lake. I asked her where her children were and she told me that she had killed them…Janette told me that she had driven to Quieches [bridge] and tried to jump off the bridge but could not do it. She said she drove to my house,” Mattison’s statement to police read.
Mattison said her niece told her: ‘“I wanted the [three] of us to go to God together but it didn’t work.’”
The aunt called police and asked they perform a welfare check on MacAusland, who had bloody wounds across her throat, the outlet reported.
When police arrived, MacAusland allegedly fessed up to her vile crimes a second time, according to the incident report made public at her first court appearance Monday.
As the responding officers “became increasingly concerned for the welfare of her children,” they asked authorities across state lines to swing by MacAusland’s Wellesley home and check on the children, Bennington Police Chief Paul Doucette previously said.
Both kids were found dead inside the home, according to authorities.
Massachusetts State Police issued an arrest warrant charging MacAusland with two counts of murder on Saturday.
She is currently being held at Marble Valley Correctional Facility in Vermont, where she faces a fugitive from justice charge.
During a Monday appearance in Bennington County Superior Court, MacAusland — who appeared to be wearing a protective vest while tuning in by video from her jail cell — repeatedly answered “Yes, sir” as she waived her right to challenge extradition back to her home state, The Boston Globe reported.
The alleged murderer, who is an acupuncturist with New England Integrated Health, had been fighting to get custody of the children after her husband filed for divorce last October following nine years of marriage.
The children’s father, Samuel MacAusland, was seeking custody of the couple’s children and the family home, court filings show.
The parents had only just filed a joint motion on April 16, agreeing to have a third party investigate and make recommendations about the custody battle, according to records.
An unidentified guardian had been appointed on April 21 — just days before the slayings.
The children were in kindergarten and second grade at Schofield Elementary School.
Their former babysitter, Cale Darrah, told Boston25 the kids were well cared for and “full of life and laughter.”
“They were two beautiful children who were full of life and laughter, and it pains me to think that the world should remember them only by the way their lives were tragically ended,” she said.
The babysitter added in a separate interview with the Boston Globe that MacAusland appeared to be a doting mom.
“I kind of got the impression maybe that she felt like she was shouldering more of the stereotypical child rearing and housework kind of thing,” she said.
“Never did I enter the house and feel like there was anything that was extremely off.”
Read the full article here
