Murdered Barrie Children Were Drowned
Posted April 19, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It has been more than six months since the crime that shook the collective soul out of a community.
And now, at last, we finally know more about what happened.
Barrie Police have confirmed that two children who were allegedly killed by their own mother died as a result of drowning.
The tragic case of the deaths of Serena and Sophia Campione has yet to fully wend its way through the courts.
But few will ever forget the three and one-year-old who died in their mother’s Coulter St. apartment in Barrie last October 4th.
The chilling case began when police received a 911 call from Francis Campione that her kids were in distress. They raced to her address, but by the time they got there, it was already too late.
The charming little girls who had been the focus of a custody battle between Francis Campione and her estranged husband Leo were already dead.
Their case was supposed to go to court just days before the two children died.
Their 31-year mother, who had been alone with the kids at the time of their death, was arrested and charged with first degree murder.
How they drowned hasn’t been confirmed, and it’s also not clear why the results of the autopsy – which was held in Toronto on October 5, 2006 – went unannounced for so long.
Campione’s husband, who had long worried about the fate of the pair and wanted to get them out of the home, had originally been accused of assault by his ex-wife.
But the charges were finally dropped in January, after the wife’s credibility and mental state came into question.
There is some evidence that Frances Campione had been suffering from post partum depression, a frequent syndrome in these kinds of tragedies.
The wheels of justice in her case have truly moved slowly.
She’ll be making her next appearance on the charges May 2.
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