A mother who killed her partner and their four-year-old daughter has been locked up in a secure mental hospital.

Shelley Christopher, 36, was suffering from psychotic illness when she stabbed 42-year-old Richard Brown 29 times and daughter Sophia six times.

She also throttled and repeatedly stabbed a second child who was lucky to survive the attack on February 19 this year.

Christopher then inserted a broken paint brush and pencils in the chest cavities of her victims in a crazed belief they might turn into vampires after death, jurors were told.

Police were alerted by social services on February 26 after Christopher took the injured child to St Mary's Hospital.

The following day, officers went to Christopher's flat in Notting Hill, west London, where they found Mr Brown's body in a bath filled with bloodied water.

Sophia was lying in bed with a blood-stained towel covering her face. The little girl's chest had been covered with coloured sticking plasters and a plastic flower had been placed in her right hand.

After her arrest, Christopher told a psychiatrist the colours red, orange and green had become significant to her, with red meaning that she or someone in her family was going to be killed.

On February 19, she said she had received an "orange signal instructing her to kill" in order to prevent the world being taken over by vampires.

First, she attacked the surviving child, by strangling and then stabbing her with a plastic flower and a small knife.

When Mr Brown arrived with Sophia and asked what was going on, Christopher said: "You're one of them. You're a vampire," and repeatedly stabbed him in the chest.

Prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC told jurors that Christopher had believed the signal to kill had come from a light bulb on the ceiling.

He said: "After she had attacked each of them with a knife, the light bulb had told her to put something wooden in to each of their chests in order to stop them from becoming vampires.

"From Richard's chest cavity the pathologist recovered part of a child's paint brush. The pathologist who examined Sophia's body retrieved part of a pencil."

When surgeons operated on the surviving girl, they removed a 6.5cm long broken pencil from the child's pus-filled chest cavity.

Two days before the killings, Christopher, of Colville Square, went to a Mental Health Unit in north Kensington where she told staff that someone was "out to get" her.

She had left the unit at St Charles Hospital before her assessment was complete because she thought there were vampires there, the court heard.

A psychiatrist has since concluded that Christopher, who is now in a secure mental hospital, had been suffering from a psychotic illness - most probably paranoid schizophrenia - when she killed her partner and child.

Following the one-day trial at the Old Bailey, Christopher was found not guilty of two counts of murder and one attempted murder by reason of insanity.

Mr Justice Supperstone told them: "This is a distressing case which is both terrible and tragic."

He handed Christopher a hospital order and an unlimited restriction order "as she presents a risk of serious harm to the public when she is mentally ill".