Tragic wife’s emotional outpourings and the question: what made this gentle man murder the children he adored?

The police cordon has been removed from across the driveway of the Fuller family home in the gloucestershire village of Milkwall, but a makeshift shrine beside the garden wall serves as a heartbreaking reminder of the horror that lingers here.

Outside the cream semi- detached house, cards left among the bouquets of flowers have been addressed to the children who lived inside: sam, charlotte and rebecca.

‘May god look after you in heaven and give you the full life which you have missed in this world,’ reads one poignant message.

There are references, too, to the children’s grieving 34-year-old mother ruth Fuller — but, tellingly, none mention the name of their father ceri Fuller, who stabbed dead 12-year-old sam, Becca, eight, and charlotte, seven, in a remote beauty spot last week, before throwing himself to his death in an abandoned quarry.

nine days ago, on the morning of Thursday, July 12, police were alerted that ceri had disappeared with the children. his wife ruth was seen by neighbours in a distressed state, pacing up and down outside her house.

Yet it was not until last Monday that ceri’s red Land rover was found on the edge of the shropshire hills, 75 miles away. When officers searched the woods nearby they found the four bodies within 40 yards of each other.

it is a devastating tragedy — one that police and the Fuller family are struggling to make sense of.

WhiLe it is not yet clear what drove 35year- old university graduate ceri to destroy his family, internet messages posted by his wife — in which she hints that she’d suffered a mid-life crisis and suggests there is trouble in the marriage — may hold some clue.

The day before her children were killed, at around the time they disappeared with their father, she wrote this intriguing message on Facebook: ‘Whew, that’s my midlife crisis over with then — and only a few completely bonkers things done.’

Then she added: ‘still, very glad of the urge to reach out to people, loved that.’ Much has been made of this brief sentence and what she meant by it.

West Mercia Police is still interviewing family members to try to get at the heart of this terrible domestic massacre, so far referring to it only as a ‘tragic family situation’.

certainly among the villagers of Milkwall and the surrounding Forest of Dean, there has been much talk about what could have driven ceri to commit such an atrocity.

A member of staff at The cross inn in Aylburton, near Lydney, who knew the Fullers said: ‘The truth is that i don’t know, and i don’t think anybody would know, apart from ceri and god.’

ruth is said to be in a fragile mental state following the murders, and hasn’t yet formally identified the children’s bodies. Like the rest of the Fuller family, she is desperately struggling to understand what could have led ceri, a production supervisor at a nearby paper plant, to take such terrible action.

his devastated parents insist he was a ‘gentle, sensitive and intelligent man’. According to his father David Fuller: ‘he loved his children dearly and they were such a focal point of his life. his relationship with each one of them was one of gentleness, involvement and attentive nurturing.

‘We cannot begin to imagine what was going through the mind of this gentle man to drive him to such tragic actions.’ Yesterday, in an emotional open letter, his father-in-law ron Tocknell heaped praise on ceri, too. he also seemed to be utterly adored by his wife. A family photo shows the couple at a wedding — ruth’s arms draped around her husband’s neck, her cheek pressed into his shoulder, while he smiles lovingly over her head.

in an internet blog ruth once kept, she wrote of her love for the father of her three children, while also referring to their relationship as ‘fragile’. ‘i’m more in love with ceri than ever,’ she said in one entry. ‘i feel without doubt that i’m utterly his and he’s utterly mine.’

And, indeed, despite her hints at signs of trouble within the relationship, they seemed like soul mates. ruth Tocknell and ceri were childhood friends — born just three months apart in the summer of 1977 at the same maternity hospital in gloucester. They were in the same year at Whitecross school in Lydney, then later were separated when ceri went to huddersfield