IN an extraordinary move, a judge has released shocking footage of an interview between detectives and a mother convicted of murdering her three-year-old son, recorded in the days following his death.
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The footage features detectives from Chifley Local Area Command interviewing the mother, as well as images from a park in Oberon where she told police her son fell and hit his head.
The woman and her partner, the boy’s stepfather, were convicted in April of murdering the three-year-old boy at Oberon in 2014.
For weeks before his death, the three-year-old boy was subjected to horrifying violence at the hands of his mother and stepfather, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
In the interviews released last week, the woman could be seen sobbing as she told police investigating the matter how her son had hit his head after tripping on dog leads and falling to the ground.
“I’ve let him down miserably,” she cried.
But she also admitted to police how she slammed the little boy’s head in a cupboard door, and wanted to kill him, saying “don’t get me wrong, I did love that boy, but part of me hated him”.
She said the reason she hated him was because he looked like his father, and was his father’s son.
She also told police she had planned to strangle the boy and walk down to Oberon Police Station and hand herself in.
Her partner, the child’s stepfather, who was also convicted of the little boy’s murder, told detectives in the footage how he locked the child in an ice-filled esky.
When asked by police why he did it, he said the child had kept trying to get out.
The prosecution is calling for life sentences for both parties, with Crown prosecutor Margaret Cunneen SC saying the couple inflicted "gratuitous violence" on the "defenceless" boy during the seven weeks he was in their care after having lived with his grandmother since he was three months old.
The court heard the victim's death must have been terrifying. The pair will be sentenced next month.