A devastated father has told of his pain after he discovered his former partner drowned their two children in the bathtub before hanging herself in a cupboard in a horrific double murder-suicide last week.
Double murder-suicide case
Nancy Johnson, 37, from Semmes, Alabama State, USA, drowned her two-year-old son Jacob and five-year-old daughter Mia in the bathroom, say police.
Then she slashed her daughter’s throat with a knife before hanging herself with a silk belt in a hall coat cupboard on 28th September, local media reported.
The children’s father, Derek Johnson, who was estranged from their mother, stumbled upon the horrific scene after becoming suspicious he could not hear his kids playing in the morning.
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Derek said: ‘I loved Mia, Jacob and Nancy so much. Nancy had been struggling with mental issues and was having an identity crisis since the pandemic started.
Custody battle
‘We have been in a custody battle for the past six months and she kidnapped my kids for around 2.5 months, so I had no contact with them and then they were suddenly taken from this world in the worst way possible around a day before I arrived back to the house.
‘Now I am at ground zero and left with around 25,000 in debt, a bathroom that I can’t possibly stare at where my children were drowned. I want to tear it all out.’
‘I have zero motivation in life right now and can’t function that well at the moment.’
He later told Fox News of how he made the tragic discovery.
‘I had a really bad feeling.
‘I looked to my right and saw my son and daughter, and they were covered in blankets. It looked like they were taking a nap,’ the 33-year-old father recalled.
‘I put my hand on my son’s back to wake him up and realized he was completely stiff and had foam coming out of his nose and mouth.
‘I went into shock. I was yelling. I called the police.’
‘I’m dead inside. I feel lost. I have nothing, absolutely nothing, and I don’t know how I’m going to recover. I just know I’m going to miss them all.’
Local media reports that the couple were recently separated and engaged in a bitter custody battle.
Before killing herself Johnson had arranged her children’s bodies on a sofa and covered them with a blanket, police told local media.
