A mother who smothered her autistic son to death has been found guilty of his murder.
Claire Button, 36, had already admitted the manslaughter of her five-year-old son Lincoln Button at their home in South Ockendon last December, but denied murder.
She told Basildon Crown Court how she heard a “commanding” voice in her head telling her to take her own life as well as her son’s.
A jury of seven men and five women were asked to decide whether her level of mental illness met the criteria for manslaughter – where someone is unable to exercise self-control, rational judgement or both.
On the second day of deliberations, the jury returned a unanimous verdict on Wednesday afternoon.
Lincoln’s body was found at the family flat on Windstar Drive on 15 December 2024 by his father Nicky Button.
Mr Button told jurors how his wife did “everything” for their son and how he was “like her shadow”. But he said she would “wake up anxious about what the day will bring, what Lincoln will demand out of her”.
Lincoln was diagnosed with autism, developmental delay, ADHD and could only communicate through gestures or simple words.
Jurors were told how Button had been diagnosed with depression four months before the incident – and had been struggling to cope with Lincoln’s complex needs.
During the school summer holidays in 2024, Button was taken by her own mother to a mental health unit at Basildon Hospital where she was diagnosed with mixed anxiety and depressive disorder, was given medication, and signed off from her job as a receptionist on sick leave.
The court heard how the medication “appeared to be having a positive effect”, and things had improved by the time Lincoln returned to school.
But each time another school break neared, Ms Button began to struggle again, because Lincoln needed routine.
CCTV footage played in court showed Lincoln and his mother leaving their flat on the morning of his death, where jurors heard how the five-year-old had a “meltdown” on a trip to Lidl.
Button told the court that when they got home she heard a “truly psychotic” voice in her head for the first time, demanding that she killed Lincoln and herself.
Giving evidence, Button said she called emergency services at around 11.30am to tell them she was alone and was about to take an overdose and a call handler told her it would take 10 hours before anyone would turn up.
“I just thought the ambulance service didn’t want to help if they were going to take that long and the voice told me I had to go through with it, ” she told the court.
Prosecutor Andrew Jackson later told jurors how she picked up a pillow and smothered it over Lincoln’s face.
“It appears that the challenges of caring for an autistic child had caused the defendant to become depressed and she chose to murder her child,” said Mr Jackson.
He told the jury that what happened had been “a deliberate and unlawful act plainly done with the intention of killing”.
Mr Button returned home from work just before 3pm to find the body of his son and his wife, who had significant injuries, alongside two notes.
One was placed next to Lincoln’s body which said: “Do not resuscitate”, and another was on the coffee table, which read: “He does not fit in the world and where he doesn’t fit I don’t either.”