Wellesley, Massachusetts mother accused of killing 2 young children to appear in Vermont court on fugitive charge
Janette MacAusland, the Wellesley, Massachusetts mother charged with the murders of her two young children, will be in court in Vermont Monday afternoon.
She will appear in Rutland Criminal Court via a video feed from jail on a fugitive from justice charge.
You can watch the hearing at 1 p.m. live on CBS News Boston in the embedded video player.
The investigation began late Friday night when MacAusland showed up at a relative’s home in Bennington, Vermont bleeding, with a neck injury and appearing “highly distraught,” according to police.
Officers in Bennington then called Wellesley Police to check on MacAusland’s daughter and son, ages 7 and 6, at their home on Edgemoor Avenue. When officers arrived, they found the children dead inside the house.
MacAusland was taken into custody by Bennington Police as a fugitive from justice. The Norfolk District Attorney’s Office got an arrest warrant and charged her with two counts of murder. She’s being held without bail at the Marble Valley Correctional Facility.
There’s no word yet on how the children died or a motive in the case. Court records show MacAusland’s husband Sa
muel had filed for divorce last October and he filed for custody of the children and their home.
Cale Darrah, the family’s babysitter, told WBZ-TV she didn’t see this tragedy coming.
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“She seemed to just deeply love her children, like any other mother that I’ve come across,” Darrah said. “They had, like, very small, insignificant kind of arguments in front of me. Nothing that raised any, like, huge alarm bells.”
According to Wellesley Public Schools Superintendent Dr. David Lussier, the children were students at Schofield Elementary School. One was a second grader, and the other was in kindergarten.
“She was a bit of a girly-girl, she always loved when I would do her hair, loved the color purple,” Darrah said of the children. “He loves to read, especially a lot of books about planes, trains, trucks, all that good stuff.”
Support will be offered to students, staff, and families at the school on Monday.
“This is an unimaginable loss that will be deeply felt not just at Schofield but across our entire community,” Lussier said in a statement. “I ask that we all keep this family in our thoughts and prayers during this difficult time.”
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