A SPANISH courtroom fell silent as a British mother described calmly how she killed her two children after treating them to a 'perfect' beach holiday.

In a video interview with police, Lianne Smith demonstrated how she used a plastic shopping bag to suffocate Rebecca, five, and 11-month-old Daniel in their hotel beds on the Costa Brava.

As Daniel struggled for breath, she drew the bag closed around his neck and ‘did not stop squeezing’ until he was dead, Girona provincial court in north-east Spain heard.

Then she did the same to her daughter before giving her children a cuddle and spending the night beside their bodies.

She said she tried to kill herself before telling the hotel receptionist to summon police.

The interview officers recorded in May 2010 in the room next to the one where the killings took place hours earlier was made public for the first time yesterday.

Smith, 45, from Lichfield, Staffordshire, showed no emotion as the jury watched it.

She is asked what she had done and replied matter-of-factly: "I ended the lives of my two children.

'Then I lay in the bed beside them, I gave them a cuddle. I talked to them until about 9 o’clock then I went into the bathroom.’

Smith - a former manager at Cumbria county council’s children’s services department - said that during the night she wrote notes to her children.

One said: "I love you very much. I wanted to give you a lovely life together. I’m very sorry."

Smith claims she killed her children because she feared they would be taken from her by social services after her partner - TV psychic Martin Smith to whom she wasn’t married - was arrested on child sex charges.

The couple fled to Spain in December 2007 but in May 2010 Martin Smith was tracked down and deported to face trial in the UK.

Obsessed with the idea that social services were coming to get her children, Lianne Smith said she took them to the £53-a-night Hotel Miramar in Lloret de Mar.

She began to cry as she told officers: "I gave the children a three-day holiday, a perfect holiday. We were very, very happy.

"(But) it was the end of the road. I knew they were going to take my children to England."

The jury must decide whether Smith is criminally responsible for the deaths. The prosecution is calling for her to be jailed for 38 years.

The defence wants her to be acquitted on mental health grounds.

Martin Smith was convicted of repeatedly raping Lianne Smith’s daughter from a previous relationship, Sarah Richardson, when she was a child. Sarah, now 24, waived her anonymity after Smith was jailed last year in Manchester.

He hanged himself in prison last January.

The court yesterday heard that it was not clear who was the father of Rebecca and Daniel.

The trial continues.

- Daily Mail