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by Kenyon Wallace and Elspeth Lodge in Barrie



It begins as a scene repeated in a thousand home videos: two little girls, the eldest running to see the pink bike she got for her birthday. The youngest, barely a toddler, singing lullabies in the bathtub, her big round eyes smiling at the camera.

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“How much do you love momma?” Elaine Campione asks 3-year-old Serena, who throws her hands open wide. “Is that it?” she asks again. “You don’t love me to the moon and back?”

What comes next destroyed a Barrie father and sent his estranged wife to prison for life.

Ms. Campione tosses a toy to the floor — a Winnie the Pooh stuffed animal Serena was filmed dancing with seconds before. Her tired face crumples as she sinks into a couch and unleashes a venomous tirade against her former husband just moments after she held her baby girls under water in the bathtub until they drowned.

“Leo, there, are you happy?” she spews at the camera. “Everything’s gone.… The idea that you could actually have my children — God believes me and God’s taking care of them now.”