A depressed mother who drowned her toddler twins after her marriage broke down has been jailed for 10 years.

Samantha Ford, 38, killed her children Jake and Chloe on Boxing Day last year by drowning them in the bath.

Ford had feelings of "anger and betrayal" towards her estranged husband, Steven, and had wanted "revenge", a psychiatrist told the Old Bailey.

After killing her two children, who were conceived by IVF, Ford drove her car at about 100mph into the back of a lorry without a seatbelt on.

She then told police who had rushed to her aid: "I've killed my babies. Please let me die.


"I put them in the bath. We were meant to be together. I was going to jump off a cliff but it's too dark."

Police found the 23-month-old twins dead in their bedroom at Ford's rented home in Margate, Kent.

The court heard the couple's marriage broke down after they gave up a lavish lifestyle in Qatar to move to Kent in 2018, according to the prosecution.

Ford allegedly told her husband: "You have ripped my world apart. Now we are nothing but a miserable, broken family growing up in a s*******."

Image: Steven Ford said his children's deaths were the 'ultimate punishment'. Pic: JustGiving

In a victim impact statement read out to the court, Mr Ford said he believed his estranged wife had killed their children as a way of "punishing" him.

"It's an extreme version of her character because she couldn't get her own way, knowing how much I loved the children she knew it would be the ultimate punishment for me not going back to her," he said.

Relatives said Ford had suffered with poor mental health following the split and had sent numerous text messages to her husband pleading for them to get back together.

She was said to have been "controlling and aggressive" towards him in the past.

After Ford's mental health deteriorated, her family decided Mr Ford should take the twins and bring them back on Boxing Day.

Image: Jake and Chloe were found dead in their bedrooms at Ford's home

Later that evening, Ford drowned the children once her parents had left the house.

Mr Justice Edis, who passed sentence, said: "Anyone with any imagination can envisage for themselves what must have happened in that bathroom.

"It is unlikely that they died simultaneously and it must have taken some time and required some determination."

Ford denied murder but admitted two counts of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

She will be given psychiatric treatment before serving the rest of her sentence in prison.