She made her lover beat her friend to death... so she could steal her kids
Christine Lyons wanted to be a mum, no matter what the cost...
The drinks flowing, guest of honour Samantha Kelly didn’t have to lift a finger – when her glass emptied, it was whisked away and returned full.
She was being thoroughly spoilt by her hosts.
Samantha, 39, lived in a bungalow in the backyard of a home in Kangaroo Flat, Victoria, Australia, that belonged to Christine Lyons.
Christine, 47, had invited Samantha around for drinks with her boyfriend, Peter Arthur, and their housemate, Ronald Lyons.
Ronald and Christine had once been related through marriage – they’d also dated in the past.
But now Christine was with Peter, and the trio lived happily together.
As Samantha chatted and drank her drink, she started to feel groggy.
Looking around, she felt confused and wary.
She couldn’t quite put her finger on what was going on lately, but she knew that something wasn’t right…
Single mum Samantha had moved to Kangaroo Flat to start a new life with her four children.
She’d had problems with an ex, who had assaulted her, and wanted a fresh start.
Samantha, who did have some learning difficulties, was easily led and was considered vulnerable, but she was a kind and loving mum to her kids – aged 11 months, four, five and six– and was focused on wanting the best for them.
She thought she’d d finally found a sanctuary at Christine’s home.
Christine wasn’t able to have children of her own and seemingly doted on Samantha’s offspring.
Christine was desperate to have kids.
She had approached around 10 people, asking them if they would have a baby for her.
When vulnerable
Samantha turned up, she saw an opportunity to get the family she desperately wanted.
If Samantha were gone, there would be four children needing a new mum.
Christine told Peter and Ronald that Samantha ‘had to go’, and they hatched a plan to kill her so Christine could take her children.
In January 2016, they started to crush up drugs and mix them into Samantha’s drinks.
It was a cocktail of medications, including sedatives, beta-blockers and antihistamines.
Some had previously been prescribed to Christine.
Samantha started to feel the effects of the medications, but she didn’t die.
Christine grew frustrated and Samantha grew suspicious.
She told her brother over the phone that perhaps it was time she moved on.
Samantha said the trio were ‘starting to take over.’
Christine had the children in her house more and more – while Samantha felt she was losing control.
Impatient Christine told Peter and Ronald that Samantha had to go on a ‘permanent holiday.’
On the night of 22 January 2016, , Peter hit Samantha around the head seven times with a hammer.
The blows were fatal. Ronald bought two shovels from a hardware store and helped Peter bury her in a dry creek in bushland south-west of the city of Bendigo.
Then they told everyone that Samantha had ‘run off’ with a man in the middle of the night and had left her kids. They said that she had started using drugs and had been violent towards her kids, saying that she didn’t want them anymore. They made up terrible lies to discredit her.
The last sighting of Samantha was on 20 January when she was captured on CCTV using an ATM machine. Friends, family members, and even the police didn’t believe Samantha had left on her own accord. They put pressure on the three three, and it was Christine’s boyfriend Peter who would crack after just a month. At first, he admitted he had killed Samantha and insisted that he’d acted alone. He even
Samantha was given a cocktail of medication
took officers to where Samantha’s body was buried.
But after being charged, he admitted that although he had been the one who had beaten Samantha to death, Christine and Ronald were all part of the plot.
He told them all about the drugs that they had spiked Samantha’s drinks with, how Ronald had helped with the plan, and how Christine had been the mastermind.
By now, Christine had changed the names of two of Samantha’s children to the names she’d picked out for her future offspring – and enrolled them into a new school.
Samantha had family who would eventually take the children in, and they were heartbroken that although the youngest were too young to know any different, the oldest reacted strongly to their original names being used.
Not only had Christine robbed them of their mum, but of their identities, too.
In 2017, as part of a plea deal, Peter Arthur pleaded guilty to murder and received 16 years in prison, with a parole period of just 13 years.
The judge called the crime ‘vicious, calculated and planned.’
He said that while Christine had been the architect of the crime, Peter had made a ‘conscious and selfish choice’ to go ahead with the murder simply because of his ‘foolish and pathetic devotion’ to her. After an appeal by the prosecution, who were unhappy at his vastly discounted sentence, Peter’s sentence was increased to 22 years with a parole period of 18 years. Christine and Ronald went to trial in 2018 and both denied their part in the killing. Peter was the key witness as part of his plea deal.
The prosecution said that the motive was clearly down to Christine. ‘Christine Lyons was unable to bear children herself and she was desperate for children of her own,’ the prosecutor said. ‘She wanted to raise Samantha’s children as her own children.’ The court heard about the elaborate plan to drug Samantha and showed evidence that she went to her GP to get prescription drugs that she would go on to use to spike Samantha’s drinks. There were text messages between the three accused, and everyone knew about Christine’s obsession with having a family. Ronald had been part of the drugging and disposing of Samantha’s Samantha body.
He had known what was going on all along and did nothing to stop it.
But the defence said that Peter had been the one who had hammered Samantha to death and had acted alone. They said that Peter’s story had inconsistencies and that he’d only blamed Christine and Ronald to try and get a reduced sentence.
The jury disagreed. Christine was found guilty of murder and attempted murder. Ronald was found guilty of attempted murder and assisting an offender, but was not found guilty of murder. At the sentencing, Christine’s lawyer claimed that her below average intelligence and difficult upbringing should be taken into account.
But Samantha’s mum Vivienne gave a statement to remind the court just how horrific the crime was.
‘You have stolen the life of my beautiful daughter,’ she said through tears. ‘I will never forgive you for what you’ve done to my family…i hope Samantha haunts you until the day you die.’
Christine was sentenced to serve 30 years with the chance of parole after 23 years.
The judge said that Christine was the architect and was ‘involved in the administration of each stage’ of the crime.
He described the killing of the ‘loving, caring and devoted mother’ as ‘heartless and thoroughly evil.’
‘Samantha was vulnerable and, for all intents and purposes, defenceless,’ he said. ‘You sought to rob an innocent woman of her children so you could take them as your own.’
While the oldest children were struggling, it was heartbreaking to know that the youngest would never even know their mum.
Ronald was sentenced to 12 years and six months.
He will serve a minimum of nine years.
Samantha’s children went to live with her brother, where they struggled to come to terms with what had happened to their mum.
In March this year, Christine and Ronald appealed their convictions.
They claimed that she had been falsely implicated in Samantha’s murder.
The appeal suggested that Peter Arthur had acted alone, and lawyers said that the conviction was ‘unsafe and unsatisfactory’ based on Peter’s evidence that had been given in exchange for a shorter sentence.
But the court denied the appeals, and the murder of Samantha Kelly remains one of the most shocking in Australian history.
An innocent mother was drugged, then beaten to death, so that her children could be stolen from her.
Samantha could tell that something wasn’t quiet right, but the innocent mum could never have imagined just what her so called friends had in store for her.
Ronald did nothing to stop the crime