Incestuous Sheffield parents spend nearly one year behind bars for killing sons
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Sarah Barrass and Brandon Machin were jailed for life and ordered to serve a minimum of 35 years behind bars last November after admitting the heinous crime.
The couple strangled Tristan Barrass, 13, and Blake Barrass, 14, before placing bin bags over the boys’ heads in a property in Gregg House Road, Shiregreen, on Friday, May 24.
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Hide AdBarrass, 36 and her half-brother Machin, 40, were arrested on the day of the double murder and have remained in custody ever since.
They have been told they must spend over three decades behind bars before they can even be considered for parole.
Their sentences were among the longest ever handed down in Sheffield.
Sheffield Crown Court heard that over fears that their children were at risk of being taken into care, the killers forced the teenage boys, as well as two more of their children, to take tablets gathered from around the family home.
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Hide AdThey had expected the cocktail of drugs to end their lives but when their plan failed they killed the two oldest children before attempting to drown another child in the bath.
Barrass had planned to kill herself after killing all the children.
The plan was then for Machin to discover what had happened and raise the alarm.
Speaking after the parents were jailed, Edmund Hulbert from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “This was an appalling crime in which two young lives were lost, and a family torn apart, leaving a community in shock.
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Hide Ad“Two of the surviving children witnessed their older siblings being attacked and the trauma that all the children have experienced, and will continue to experience, is unimaginable.”
Prosecutors told how Barrass had requested help with the children from the local authority, texting a friend to say: “I've thought of every possible solution to this mess. Mass murder, putting them all in care, checking in to the local nut house.
“I love my kids too much to kill them, I can't put them into care for the same reason.”