Mum orders pizza then kills children
A CHURCH-GOING mother cut her children’s throats with a knife then committed suicide just hours after ordering a pizza for the family.
Lecturer Claudia Oakes-Green, 44, killed her son Thomas, 13, and daughter Eleanor, nine, in their bedrooms before slashing her wrists in the bathroom of their detached home.
Her husband Iain, 41, a wind energy specialist, was working abroad at the time of the tragedy last February, an inquest heard.
Police officers made the grim discovery after being contacted by Mrs Oakes-Green’s worried mother, Betty.
The lecturer was “very down” after telling family and friends she feared she was going to lose her job at Leicester’s Wyggeston & Queen Elizabeth 1 College.
The hearing at Loughborough was told she bought knives in the week leading up to the killings and had been researching depression, self-harm and suicide on the family laptop.
Yet Coroner Trevor Kirkman said no one “could have anticipated” the tragic events.
I love and miss Claudia, Thomas and Eleanor very much
Seen as pillars of the community in the village of Shepshed, Mrs Oakes-Green and her family were regular worshippers at the local church.
Parish priest Father Michael Eastwood, said: “They seldom missed a Sunday service.” Phone records showed Mrs Oakes-Green had even ordered a pizza shortly before she killed her children.
After verdicts of suicide and unlawful killings, her mother Betty and brother Jonathan said: “Claudia was a loving mother who became ill in a way nobody was able to foresee.”
Her husband Iain said: “I love and miss Claudia, Thomas and Eleanor very much. Now I want to be left alone to grieve.”