Perth mother of five jailed for killing husband during psychotic episode

A PERTH mother-of-five who murdered her husband and wounded two of their sons while in a psychotic state has been jailed for 18 years.

Cara Lee Hall, 39, killed her 33-year-old husband Glenn Hall in December 2015 by stabbing him at least 16 times at their Leda home.

She began the attack while he slept, then inflicted knife wounds to their 11- and four-year-old sons.

Supreme Court of WA Justice Michael Corboy sentenced Hall on Friday, describing her crimes as horrific, frenzied, brutal and savage.

He noted she had not only stabbed her spouse through the heart and jugular, but also in the back as he tried to get away.

Hall didn’t claim insanity during her trial but instead argued self-defence, claiming her husband had threatened to kill the whole family and she believed it was necessary to end his life to stop that happening.

She called emergency services after the killing, telling them Mr Hall was going to sell the boys into the sex trade, and she claimed during the trial he had been extremely violent towards her, likening him to the Once Were Warriors character Jake the Muss.

Justice Corboy accepted Mr Hall had been violent and emotionally abusive but there was no independent, objective evidence her husband had threatened to kill them all.

“I accept you believed he was going to harm you and the children but that belief was delusional,” Justice Corboy said.

She suffered depression, post traumatic stress disorder and borderline personality disorder, substantially caused by a sexually and emotionally abusive upbringing, and worsened her mental state in adulthood with illegal drug use, Justice Corboy said.

She heard voices, including God and the devil, and moments before the killing, a voice said “one, two, three, go”.

Hall called triple-zero because the voices kept telling her “after you’ve done this, you’ve got to go to hell”.

Justice Corboy said she was in a very disturbed state of mind.

“I find you were psychotic at that time,” he said.

Justice Corboy apologised for a protracted sentencing process, saying it was the most difficult he’d ever undertaken.