In a sickening act of domestic violence, a father used his children as “weapons” to break his wife’s “heart into 50 million little pieces” by murdering them.
The bodies of Zaraiyah-Lily Headland, five, and Andreas Headland, three, were found inside their Perth home on October 20 last year.
Beside them was their father Jason Craig Headland, 36, who had self-inflicted stab wounds, including three to his neck.
Headland was sentenced to life behind bars, with a minimum of 31 years to be served, by the WA Supreme Court yesterday for his “grotesque act of family violence”.
On the night he killed his children, Headland told his wife: “Say goodbye to your children”.
“I’m going to break your heart into 50 million little pieces,” Headland told her over the phone.
He added it would be the last time she would speak to her children and she heard him giggle before hanging up the phone.
She immediately went to the police for help, but it was too late.
In sentencing, Justice Lindy Jenkins described his cruel actions as “vindictive” and the “most extreme act of selfishness.”
“You had a duty to love and protect them. Instead of protecting them, you used them as weapons,” she said.
“You made your children pay with their lives in order to inflict pain and loss on your wife.”
Headland’s relationship with his wife Anatoria had deteriorated and when she asked for a break, he decided to take the children away from her, the court heard.
Headland never explained how the children had died making Justice Jenkins question how much remorse he had for killing them.
The cause of death could not be ascertained but the court heard the children had been given sleeping tablets crushed in their juice and at some point asphyxiated.
Headland wrote on a note left in the house that his wife would have to “live with this for the rest of your miserable life”.
Justice Jenkins described the note as “callous, shallow and self-centred”.
Since her babies’ murders, Ms Headland has suffered anxiety and depression, still terrified Headland will come after her if he’s released.
“You make me sick. I’ll never forgive you,” she said, addressing Headland in her statement.
She described Zaraiyah-Lily as a “determined little girl” and Andreas as a “brave soldier”.
“Two peas in a pod they were and polar opposites,” she said. “They completed each other and they completed me.”
Headland’s lawyer said he had no memory of the event and submitted that he had a strong sense of family values and was a mentor to young Aboriginal men.
Prosecutor Amanda Forrester rebutted that he may have been a loving parent, but he “destroyed every remnant of that” with his “grotesque act of family violence”, describing him as self-centred and lacking insight or empathy.
