BENNINGTON, Vt. (Court TV) — A woman is expected to be extradited to Massachusetts after she was arrested in Vermont on charges she killed her two young children.
Janette MacAusland is accused of killing her two children. (Bennington Police Department)
Janette MacAusland, 49, is charged with two counts of murder in the deaths of her children, , Ella MacAusland, 6, and Kai MacAusland, 7.
Officers with the Bennington Police Department in Vermont were asked to conduct a welfare check on April 24, after Janette MacAusland arrived at a family home “appearing highly distraught,” the department said in a news release. Janette MacAusland had a visible neck injury and was bleeding. When officers spoke to her, they became increasingly concerned about her children and reached out to officers with the Wellesley Police Department in Massachusetts.
When officers in Wellesley went to the family home, they said they found her two children dead inside the home. The children, whose causes of death were not released by police, were both students in the Wellesley Public School system, officers said.
Court TV reviewed a petition for divorce initially filed on Oct. 15, 2025, by MacAusland’s husband and father of the children, Samuel MacAusland. The petition cites an “irretrievable breakdown” in the marriage as a cause for the divorce and asks for custody of the two minor children. Janette MacAusland’s counter-petition for divorce cites Oct. 1, 2025, as the date the marriage broke down, but offers no further detail. Her petition also requested custody of the children.
The family’s babysitter, Cale Darrah, told Boston CBS affiliate WBZ she was shocked by the news. “She just seemed to deeply love her children, like any other mother that I’ve come across,” Darrah told the outlet. “They had, like, very small, insignificant kind of arguments in front of me. Nothing that raised any, like, huge alarm bells.”
In a statement, Wellesley Public School Superintendent David Lussier said the children were a second-grader and a kindergartner at Schofield Elementary School, the Bennington Banner reported.
