Wearing a tailored cream suit and heels, Theresa Riggi looked every inch the glamorous, caring mother as she emerged from her first court hearing.
But during the proceedings that followed, the court heard the Californian was perhaps guilty of loving children Austin, Luke and Cecilia “too much” as the full extent of her controlling nature and delusions unfurled.
Riggi came to the UK 15 years ago with her husband, Pasquale, a Shell employee from Colorado, and they moved to the north-east in 2007.
The couple’s three youngsters were born as a result of IVF, but cracks began to appear in the marriage after her dream of having children came true.
Riggi, a devout Catholic, became possessive and refused help or visits. She insisted on sleeping with the babies in her bed and made Mr Riggi move into another bedroom. As they grew older, she decided to home-school the children, another source of friction between the couple.
The situation worsened when Mr Riggi began divorce proceedings, sparking a bitter custody battle.
When he was allowed to have unsupervised time with the children, they wore locator tags controlled by their mother and were given a mobile phone programmed to call her.
A month before the killings, Riggi and the three children disappeared from her home and were later traced to a townhouse in Slateford Road in Edinburgh.
On August 3, 2010, Riggi failed to appear at a divorce hearing, prompting a judge to warn that the children could be in danger.
Twenty-four hours later, the twins – who both wanted to be palaeontologists – and Cecilia – who had been excitedly planning her Disney-themed sixth birthday party – were dead.
Their little bloodstained bodies lay side by side – with a space left for their mother, who repeatedly stabbed herself before eventually plunging from a second-floor balcony.
Police found a song called Angel recorded by an artist named Tess Riggi playing on a computer in the house.
Riggi spent weeks in hospital and made her first court appearances in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, where psychiatrists identified three personality disorders.
After she admitted killing the three children, defence counsel Donald Findlay QC told the court she “couldn’t exist” without them.
He said: “Her deluded religious beliefs led her to believe that the children would be better off in heaven rather than with their father.
“She took the view that the only choice was for them to be together in death. When the children died, it was her intention to join them in a safer place as she saw it – out of this world.”
Lord Bracadale told Riggi she had a “genuine but abnormal and possessive love” for the youngsters and said the number of stab wounds indicated a “truly disturbing” degree of violence.
He jailed Riggi for 16 years and ordered her deportation to the US on her release.
Death-penalty campaigners in the US had called for her to be executed upon her return.