Father’s tears for murdered kids

A British father of two children allegedly smothered by their mother broke down in tears yesterday as he told a jury: “They were the only thing she could hurt me with.”

Paul Donnison, 48, described how the last time he saw Harry and Elise alive their mother, Fiona Donnison, watched with “a look of absolute hatred and evil on her face”.

Giving evidence against his former partner, he said the “manipulative” and “controlling” 45-year-old had made his life a “nightmare” after she moved out of the family home without warning, taking the children with her.

And he maintained that an affair with new lover Alison Shimmens, whom he had met through a Friends Reunited school reunion, only started after he had finally ended their “pantomime relationship”.

The bodies of three-year-old Harry and Elise, two, were found zipped into two holdalls in the boot of her car near the former family home in Heathfield, East Sussex, on January 27 last year.

They were most likely suffocated with pillows the night before at Donnison’s rented house in Lightwater, Surrey, the jury was told.

With tears rolling down his face, Mr Donnison told a hushed court of the last time he saw Harry and Elise, on January 24. He had returned from a business trip to the US to find his former partner and the children staying, unannounced, in the family home.

“I had a little police car for Harry,” he said. “He came over and wrapped his little arms around me and we were hugging.

“Fiona was standing two or three feet away and had a look of absolute hatred and evil on her face. Fiona shooed him back into his bedroom and that was the last time I saw him alive.

“I went into Elise’s bedroom, she was peacefully asleep and I gave her a peck on the cheek. She wiggled her nose but didn’t wake up.That was the last time I saw Elise.”

Mr Donnison, an insurance broker, refused to look at his ex-partner as she sat in the dock of Lewes Crown Court with her head bowed.

Psychiatrists who examined her after her arrest diagnosed her as having a narcissistic personality with an inflated sense of her own importance and entitlement.

The jury heard the couple never married during their nine-year relationship but she changed her name by deed poll without telling him.

Mr Donnison said he was left stunned when he arrived home in September 2009 to find his partner, a former City worker, had left the family home without warning, taking the children. They attempted a reconciliation several times but she would suddenly change her mind.

He added: “As long as she had control of the children, she had control of me. She knew they (the children) were my life. They were the only thing she could hurt me with.”

Mr Donnison admitted he had started seeing old school friend Mrs Shimmens but said their friendship was strictly platonic until he ended his relationship with the defendant on January 14. Over the next couple of days he and Mrs Shimmens became intimate.

Donnison denies two counts of murder. The case continues. - Daily Mail