As an inferno engulfed a home on the main street of a dusty port town in WA's north, a woman walked out the front door.
WARNING: This story contains content readers may find disturbing.
Margaret Dale Hawke appeared calm to some onlookers as she emerged from the blaze. The smell of smoke tinged the air.
"My babies, you don't have to suffer anymore," she said.
"My babies … my babies."
Less than 24 hours beforehand, Hawke and her three children had been turned away from a women's refuge centre. She was told it didn't have enough capacity to take them in.
In the darkness of night, the mother returned home with her 10-year-old daughter, seven-year-old son and four-month-old baby.
She walked out of that same home the next afternoon a murderer.
A shattered town
Firefighters responded to the house fire in Port Hedland late on a Tuesday afternoon in July, 2022.
It was only as the blaze was brought under control that the tragedy was uncovered — Hawke's three children were found dead within the charred remains of their home.
Homicide detectives and forensic teams swarmed in, and the scene was cordoned off with police tape.
There was little sign of fire damage from the outside, and the home remained largely intact. The community, however, had been shattered.
Questions loomed as the town came to terms with the children's deaths.
Did they die before or during the fire, and how did it start?
The rich export hub with little support
Some community leaders have questioned why there was so little support for people like Hawke, in a town which is one of the country's largest wealth creators.
Hawke and her children lived in Port Hedland, home to the world's biggest bulk export port.
Whispers spread within the close-knit town of about 16,000 people about how and why the tragedy occurred.
But it was more than 1,000 kilometres away and many months later, in an old court building in Perth, where the details were laid bare.
Hawke had been struggling to cope with the responsibilities of being a mother and felt intensely judged by others, the court would hear.
Supreme Court Justice Michael Lundberg spoke about the "profound childhood deprivation", and life of hardship, that contributed to her actions.
The court heard the final words Hawke spoke to her children.
"I love you, please forgive me ... Babies, I don't want us to hurt anymore."
One night of violence, a lifetime in the making
Hawke stabbed and strangled her daughter and seven-year-old son, and smothered her baby in their home, before walking to a nearby beach where she disposed of the kitchen knife she had used.
She returned to the house, and with a lighter in hand, set their home ablaze.
"I don't know why I did what I did. Maybe to stop the pain in all of us," she told police.
The mother, now a murderer, wept quietly in the courtroom as her own tragic life was summarised.
Assaulted by her parents from just seven-years-old, Hawke was introduced to alcohol and cannabis in her teenage years, and abused methamphetamines from her mid-20s.
The three relationships she had with men were all abusive. Hawke was stabbed in the neck, punched in the face, and beaten with golf clubs.
She chose to stay in one relationship with a man who assaulted her — causing her to miscarry 13 weeks into a pregnancy — because he was "not as violent" as her previous partner.
"Normalisation of violence in your life made you more prone to use violence yourself," Justice Lundberg concluded.
"Tragically, none of the options [for help] you explored were available."
A struggle for help
Soon after her youngest child was born, Hawke sought support from an Aboriginal hostel, but was rejected by the Department of Communities.
At that time, she was not in an abusive relationship and had her own home, so she was deemed ineligible for the service.
Just weeks before she murdered her children, police attended an incident between Hawke, her daughter and eldest son.
"Your children explained to police they were scared of you hitting them," Justice Lundberg said.
The three children were taken away. But, less than two weeks later, they were returned to her.
Struggling to cope with the demands of motherhood and her life's trauma, she made one final plea for help at the Hedland Women's Refuge with her three children in tow on the night before the murders.
But, she was turned away.
The refuge called Hawke's home to make a welfare check the next morning after a request from her mother.
There was no answer.
The refuge then called police, but it was too late. By then, three children lay dead in a house being consumed by an inferno.
"Their pain and suffering from being attacked by their own mother is beyond words," Justice Lundberg spoke of Hawke's two eldest children.
The only "solace", he said, was the fact the baby's tender age likely meant he couldn't understand what Hawke was doing when she smothered him.
"They depended on you for their very existence. They had their whole lives ahead of them with limitless potential," Justice Lundberg said.
"They trusted you. You breached that trust."
Three lives gone, one life imprisoned
Justice Lundberg ordered Hawke — who had been keeled over for most of the hearing — to stand up, before he delivered the punishment for her crimes.
She was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum sentence of 25 years to be served before the consideration of parole.
Justice Lundberg concluded Hawke had the potential to "break out from the cycle of violence and abuse", but her life's circumstances and abuse of drugs stopped her from fulfilling it.
"Your violence was directed at your children. Not at the world, or others," he said.
"There was no other option available to stop the pain you were experiencing."
The house she set alight has been demolished, with authorities planning to turn the land into a community garden.
But, for now, an empty plot is all that remains of the home where three children lived, and died.
