Mother, 35, who murdered autistic son, five, moments after he took her hand and asked her to watch trains from bedroom window is jailed for life

A mother who strangled her autistic son, claiming she heard a voice telling him to kill him, was sentenced to life imprisonment today.

Claire Button, 35, killed five-year-old Lincoln at her home in South Ockendon, Essex, as she struggled to cope with her son, who had been speechless for months, and his declining mental health.

The part-time florist pleaded guilty to manslaughter, saying he followed orders from a ‘dark, deep, frightening, demanding male voice’, but was found guilty of murder by a jury at Basildon Crown Court yesterday.

Back in court today, Judge Samantha Leigh sentenced him to life imprisonment with a minimum of nine years before parole is considered.

Judge Leigh said: ‘Those who followed the case know that he was in a very bad way and that he sought help on many occasions because he knew he was not well and was getting worse… The facts of this case are truly heartbreaking.’

He added that Button was a “loving, caring mother” to her “very difficult” son and accepted that he suffered from mental illness that “impaired his ability to make decisions”.

However, the judge said that the jury decided that this situation was not at a level that would provide him with a defense of diminished responsibility.

In a statement released after the hearing, the Button family described the events as “the most painful time of our lives” and thanked the police officers who “treated us with compassion and dignity and helped us overcome the unimaginable.”

saying they will carry [Lincoln’s] ‘Her memory is always with us,’ they added: ‘We continue to love and support Claire during this incredibly difficult time.’

Social media photos show Button in the sun with a friend on holiday in Morocco. We posed by the pool and tried local dishes.

There are also pictures of handmade bridal bouquets and sweet pictures of Lincoln in his school uniform with the caption: ‘I can’t wait to see my boy xxx.’

Describing Lincoln’s final moments during his murder trial, prosecutor Andrew Jackson said: ‘Lincoln was clearly a loving child. He knew how to show love in his own way.

‘We heard how he crawled into bed every morning for cuddles.

‘And moments before he strangled her to death, he was inside her [Button’s] room took it [the] ‘He took her to his room when she was clearly distressed, because he wanted her to watch the trains from the window.’

He added: ‘The difficulties of caring for an autistic child appear to have caused the defendant to become depressed and he chose to kill his child.’

During the hearing, it was learned that Lincoln, who lived in the same house with his mother and father, was a physically healthy child who “loved” going to the regular school he attended.

The parent said he heard voices urging him to kill the nonverbal student, who smothered him with a pillow before trying to take his own life.

Social media photos show Button in the sun on holiday in Morocco

Button, photographed in a summer dress, was ‘fighting demons’, according to her husband

Button also previously shared a series of sweet photos of her little boy; In one of them (pictured), a photo of herself in her school uniform swinging on a playground swing was shared on Instagram. The caption reads: ‘I can’t wait to see my boy xxx’

Button’s mother also lived nearby and was “part of a large family support network” and even qualified as a caregiver so she could help care for Lincoln.

During the school summer holidays in 2024, Button was taken by his mother to the mental health unit at Basildon Hospital, where he was diagnosed with depression and given medication.

After a week the medication ‘appeared to have a positive effect’ and when Lincoln returned to school things had gotten better.

However, the October semester break was ‘a sign of a return to the problems’.

Button visited his GP and was advised to increase the dose of medication he was given for his depression. Mr Jackson said Lincoln’s condition improved again when he returned to school.

But he added:'[With] As the school’s Christmas break approached, the defendant said his health was deteriorating again.’

Jurors were shown footage of Lincoln and his mother entering the Lidl supermarket on December 14, the day before he was killed.

The teenager appeared to be pinned to the store’s automatic entrance door and was filmed walking to and from it multiple times.

Button was given a life sentence and told he must serve at least nine years before he can apply for parole.

Lincoln’s mother Claire Button, 35, pleaded guilty to manslaughter after a hearing at Norwich Crown Court.

The next day, Button visited his mother briefly with Lincoln. During the visit, he told her what happened in the supermarket.

On the same day, that is, December 15, at 11.25, the defendant called the emergency services and asked for an ambulance. He informed the call handler that he was ‘about to overdose’.

When Button, who was at home with his son, was asked if there was anyone with him, he said he was alone.

The 999 operator advised him to wait with a friend because ‘they might not be able to get him an ambulance for ten hours’.

Mr Button made his son’s tragic discovery when he returned home from work just before 3pm that day.

Paramedics rushed to the scene but Lincoln was pronounced dead at 3.55pm.

Button, who told doctors he had overdosed on medication, was taken to hospital. He was later arrested by police officers on suspicion of murder.

Button told the jury she had suicidal thoughts as she tried to cope with her son’s behavior while they were out shopping on the day he killed her.

‘A voice told me to take my own life, but it also told me I had to take my son’s life,’ he said.

‘I figured if it was going to take this long the ambulance service didn’t want to help and the voice told me I had to do it.

‘I responded by saying ‘No, I love her too much to do that’ and then she asked me to get a pillow. The voice was telling me that we did not belong to this world.

‘I remember lifting the pillow off Lincoln’s face before he told me it was my turn.

‘It was a dark, deep, scary, demanding male voice that wouldn’t leave me alone unless I did it.’

Mr Button returned home from work to find his son dead and his wife unconscious next to him.

The note left on the coffee table read: ‘He doesn’t fit into the world, and where he doesn’t fit in, I don’t fit in either.’

He told the court his wife ‘must be going through hell’ but didn’t tell anyone how much pain she was in.

Addressing the murder charge, he said: ‘This is not Claire’s character, she was fighting demons, no one had any idea.

‘This wasn’t something that was premeditated over time; Something happened to trigger the devil inside you.

‘No one has a bad word to say about Claire. ‘The sweetest person you’ll ever meet.’

She added that Lincoln, who loved trains, was so attached to his mother that he was like her ‘shadow’.

Mr Button added that in the weeks before his death, Lincoln had become ‘obsessed’ with his scooter and balance bike in the common corridor of his apartment blocks.

He described his wife ‘being dragged out 15 times a day and if you don’t she throws tantrums and gets angry’.

He believed ‘more medication’ was needed for his wife, who he said did not fully disclose the extent of her emotional distress.

In video evidence given to the court, Ms Button’s mother Lisa Penfold said her daughter ‘had the best heart ever’ and ‘hated getting into arguments’.

Psychiatrist Dr Frank Farnham added that he believed the defense of diminished responsibility was plausible.

He told the jury that medical treatment of depression had mixed effects on some patients and that Ms Button was offered a non-medical intervention called social prescribing but she never received it properly.

In sentencing, Judge Leigh described Mr Button, who asked that a victim impact statement not be read in court, as a ‘broken man who had lost his son’. [and] He lost his wife, whom he had been with and still loved’.

He said that on the day of Lincoln’s death, he had a nervous breakdown after repeatedly fiddling with the supermarket’s sliding doors, and it took Button some time to calm him down.

While this incident was the ‘critical point’ that led to the murder, the long delay in the arrival of the ambulance was the ‘last straw’.

Judge Leigh said the defendant would have died from her injuries if she had not been found by her husband, adding that her mental illness allowed the minimum time she must serve in prison to be ‘significantly reduced’.

It was “an indictment on society” that Button was now receiving more help behind bars than before the murder.

“In my view the whole case was entirely avoidable due to the many missed opportunities,” Judge Leigh added.

Mark Cotter KC, mitigating, said Button was of previously good character and at the time of the murder he ‘believed he was acting out of compassion, albeit irrationally’.

Detective Chief Inspector Alan Blakesley, who led the investigation, said: ‘My thoughts throughout this investigation and today are with Lincoln’s family and everyone who knew and loved him.’