A mother who smothered her autistic son after claiming to have heard a voice telling her to kill him was jailed for life today.
Claire Button, 35, murdered five-year-old Lincoln at their home in South Ockendon, Essex, following months of struggling to cope with her non-verbal son and her own declining mental health.
The part-time florist had admitted manslaughter, saying she followed the commands of a ‘dark, deep, scary, demanding, male voice’, but was convicted of murder by a jury at Basildon Crown Court yesterday.
She returned to the court today, where Judge Samantha Leigh handed her a life sentence with a minimum of nine years before parole will be considered.
Judge Leigh said: ‘Those who sat through the case know she was very unwell and had on a number of occasions sought help because she knew she was unwell, and had got worse… The facts of this case are truly heartbreaking.’
Button was ‘a loving, caring mother’ to her ‘very challenging’ son’, she added, saying she accepted she was suffering from mental illness which ‘impaired her judgement’.
But the judge said the jury had decided that it was not of a degree that gave her a defence of diminished responsibility.
In a statement after the hearing, the Button family described what had happened as ‘the most painful chapter in our lives’ and thanked the police officers who ‘treated us with compassion and dignity and who helped us navigate the unimaginable’.
Claire Button, 35, was convicted of murdering five-year-old Lincoln (pictured) at their home in South Ockendon, Essex, on December 15 last year
Saying they would ‘carry [Lincoln’s] memory with us always’, they added: ‘We continue to love and support Claire through this incredibly difficult time.’
Social media photos show Button in sun-soaked photos on a Moroccan holiday with a friend where she posed by the pool and tried local dishes.
There are also pictures of her handmade bridal bouquets and sweet images of Lincoln in his school uniform with the caption: ‘Cannot wait to see my Son xxx.’
Describing Lincoln’s last moments during the murder trial, prosecutor Andrew Jackson said: ‘Lincoln was quite clearly a loving child. In his own way, he knew how to show love.
‘We heard how each morning he’d get into her bed for a cuddle.
‘And minutes before she smothered him to death, he’d gone into her [Button’s] room, taken her by [the] hand, led her to his room when she was obviously distressed, because he wanted her to watch the trains from the window.’
He added: ‘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.’
Lincoln, who lived at home with his mother and father, was a physically healthy boy who ‘loved’ going to the mainstream school that he attended, the trial heard.
The parent said she was hearing voices urging her to kill the non-verbal schoolboy, who she smothered to death with a pillow before trying to take her own life
Social media photos show Button in sun-soaked photos on a Moroccan holiday
Button, pictured in a summer dress, had been ‘fighting demons’, according to her husband
Button has also previously shared a series of sweet photos of her young son, with one (pictured) posted to Instagram of him on a swing in the playground in his school uniform. The caption reads: ‘Cannot wait to see my Son xxx’
Button’s mother lived nearby and was ‘part of a large network of family support’ and had even qualified as a carer so that she could help look after Lincoln.
During the school summer holidays in 2024 Button was taken by her mother to a mental health unit at Basildon Hospital, where she was diagnosed with depression and given medication.
The medication ‘appeared to be having a positive effect’ after a week and by the time Lincoln returned to school things had become better.
But the October half-term break ‘marked a return to the problems’.
Button visited her GP and was prescribed an increase of the medication given to her for her depression. Her condition again improved once Lincoln was back at school, Mr Jackson said.
But he added: ‘[With] the school Christmas holidays on the near horizon, the defendant was again saying that her health had deteriorated.’
Jurors were shown footage of Lincoln and his mother entering a Lidl supermarket on December 14, a day before he was killed.
The youngster appeared fixated on the store’s automatic entrance door, being filmed going to and from them multiple times.
Button was jailed for life and told she would have to serve a minimum of nine years before she could be considered for parole
Lincoln’s mother Claire Button, 35, admitted manslaughter has now been found guilty of his murder following a trial at Norwich Crown Court
The following day Button briefly visited her mother with Lincoln. During the visit she told her about what happened at the supermarket.
At 11.25am that same day, December 15, the defendant made a call to emergency services where she asked for an ambulance. She reported to the call handler that ‘she was about to take an overdose’.
Button, who was at home with her son, was asked if she was with anyone and she replied that she was alone.
The 999 operator advised her to wait with a friend as they ‘might not be able to get an ambulance to her for ten hours’.
Mr Button made the tragic discovery of his son when he returned home from work just before 3pm that day.
Paramedics rushed to the scene but Lincoln was declared dead at 3.55pm.
Button was taken to hospital after telling medics that she had taken an overdose. She was later arrested by police officers on suspicion of murder.
Button told the jury she had been having suicidal thoughts while struggling to cope with her son’s behaviour when they were out shopping on the day she killed him.
‘A voice told me to take my own life but that I also had to take my son’s life,’ she said.
‘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.
‘I was talking back to it saying “No, I love him too much to do this” before it then asked me to pick up a pillow. The voice was telling me we didn’t belong in this world.
‘I remember taking the pillow off of Lincoln’s face, before it told me it was now my turn.
‘It was a dark, deep, scary, demanding, male voice and it wouldn’t leave me alone unless I did it.’
Mr Button returned home from work to find his son dead and his wife unconscious beside him.
A note left on the coffee table read: ‘He does not fit in the world and where he doesn’t fit, I don’t either.’
He told the court his wife ‘must have been going through hell’ but didn’t tell anyone how much she was suffering.
Referring to the murder charge, he said: ‘This is not Claire’s character, she was fighting demons, no-one had any idea.
‘This wasn’t pre-meditated over time – something happened to trigger an inner demon.
‘No-one has a bad word to say about Claire. Sweetest person you’ll ever meet.’
He added Lincoln, who loved trains, was so attached to his mother that he was like her ‘shadow’.
In the weeks leading up to his death, Lincoln had become ‘obsessed’ with his scooter and balance bike in the communal hallway of their block of flats, Mr Button added.
He described how his wife was ‘getting dragged outside 15 times a day and if you don’t do it, you get tantrums and lashing out’.
He believed ‘more medication’ was needed for his wife, who he said had not properly revealed the extent of her emotional distress.
In video evidence played to the court, Mrs Button’s mother, Lisa Penfold, said her daughter ‘had the best heart ever’ and ‘hated getting into arguments’.
Psychiatrist Dr Frank Farnham added he believed a defence of diminished responsibility was plausible.
Medical treatment for depression had mixed effects for some patients and Mrs Button had been offered a non-medical intervention called social prescribing but she had never properly received it, he told the jury.
During sentencing, Judge Leigh described Mr Button – who requested that his victim impact statement wasn’t read out in court – as a ‘broken man’ who ‘has lost his son [and] he’s lost his wife who he stands by and still loves’.
She said Lincoln had suffered a ‘meltdown’ when he repeatedly played with the sliding doors at the supermarket on the day of his death and it took Button some time to calm him down.
This incident was the ‘pinchpoint’ which led to the murder, while the long delay for an ambulance to arrive was ‘the final straw’.
The defendant would have died from her injuries if she had not been found by her husband, Judge Leigh noted, adding her mental illness allowed a ‘substantial reduction’ in the minimum term she had to serve in prison.
The fact that Button was now getting more help behind bars than she had before the murder was ‘an indictment on society’.
‘In my view, the whole case was completely avoidable with a number of missed opportunities,’ Judge Leigh added.
Mark Cotter KC, mitigating, said Button was of previous good character and, at the time of the murder, held the ‘belief, albeit an irrational one, that she was acting out of mercy’.
Detective Chief Inspector Alan Blakesley, who led the investigation, said: ‘My thoughts throughout this investigation, and today, remain with Lincoln’s family and all those who knew and loved him.’
