TORONTO

Days before she feared she’d lose her kids to the ex-husband she despised, Elaine Campione told her angelic daughters to blow bubbles in the bathtub — and then she held their tiny heads under water until they drowned.

They didn’t stand a chance. But Campione, 39, believes she deserves yet another opportunity to plead not criminally responsible for her heinous actions; it’s her only ticket out of the life sentence she’s currently serving for murdering Serena, 3, and Sophia, 19 months, on Oct. 2, 2006.

Almost exactly four years since a Barrie jury convicted her of two counts of first-degree murder, Campione sent her lawyers to the Ontario Court of Appeal to argue that her bid to be considered not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder was scuttled by a judge who gave “confusing instructions” to the jurors.

NCR is oft in the news these days: It was a defence used successfully by another parent who killed his kids — Quebec cardiologist Guy Turcotte spent just two years in a psychiatric hospital after he was found not criminally responsible for the stabbing deaths of his three-year-old daughter and five-year-old son. He’s now facing a new trial after that province’s appeal court overturned the verdict.

Cop killer Richard Kachkar was found NCR in the death of Toronto Police Sgt. Ryan Russell. And Luka Magnotta plans to use the same defence to get out of paying the price for his admitted butchery of a university student from China.

At the Campione trial, both sides agreed she was mentally ill — she’d been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder not otherwise specified, suffered from paranoia and delusions and was involuntarily hospitalized in the past. From the chilling home video she made before and after the murders, it was also agreed that the mom was aware that what she was doing was legally wrong.

The crux of the trial was whether she understood it was also morally wrong.

She certainly did, argued the Crown. This was a revenge killing by a desperate mother in the midst of a bitter custody battle. This was her “grand gesture” designed to punish her ex and ensure he didn’t win custody of the girls.

And what a macabre, horrifying gesture it was. After drowning their daughters, Campione curled their hair, dressed them in their finest princess dresses and posed them on the bed, clasping hands.

“Here, are you happy now?” she angrily asked her ex as she resumed recording her video. “The children are gone. How does that make you feel?”

She waited 33 hours before finally calling police and then explained that she’d killed them because, she said, “my babies don’t belong to him, they belong to me.”

The defence theory was that Campione was so psychotic she actually believed drowning her daughters was protecting them from her ex-husband and would be seen as morally justifiable by society. “She believed they were unsafe on earth and that by sending them to heaven, she was providing them with a safe haven where they could have a happy life together,” wrote her appeal lawyers Joseph Di Luca and Erin Dann.

“She intended to be in heaven to protect them.”

That warped view of an “altruistic killing” is proof she should be not be held criminally responsible, they argued.

The jury didn’t buy it.

On Nov. 15, 2010 they concluded the distraught mom knew full well that drowning her girls was both legally and morally wrong. Campione told police she would “burn in sin” and told a prison guard, “I guess I won’t be getting out of this because I did it.”

Now her appeal team is contending Justice Alfred Stong didn’t properly explain the central issue of “moral blameworthiness” to the jury. The appeal court reserved its decision on ordering a new trial.

Yet it seems clear Campione was perfectly aware that killing her beautiful little girls would violate society’s moral code. During her police interview, she was asked how she thought others would view her.

“That I’m a monster,” Campione had replied.

A self-assessment that couldn’t be more true.

Read Mandel Wednesday through Saturday

michele.mandel@sunmedia.ca