Emelda Marizani, a woman from Chivhu who killed all her four children in cold blood in 2020 has been sentenced to life imprisonment by High Court judge Justice Munamato Mutevedzi.
Marizani was charged with four murder counts and given four life sentences, NewZimbabwe reported. The judge described the murder as heartbreaking and shocking and called for a stiffer penalty.
Mutevedzi sentenced her to life imprisonment saying:
The murder was committed in aggravated circumstances; it was a mass murder where the accused killed the deceased simultaneously over a relative period of time without cooling off and on an enclosed geographical location.
She also used multiple fatal methods to kill her victims after she admitted to lacing four cups with poison and instructing her children to drink it. She chose two extreme modus operandi used by murderers.
Cutthroat method was savage and brutal whilst poisoning is considered a more humane way to take life.
Accused is a highly dangerous criminal, the court will show little to no mercy to a mother who butchers her own children.
Mutevedzi added that Marizani does not deserve a second chance or to go back to society.
Emelda Marizani, who was pregnant with her fifth child at the time the crime was committed, murdered all four daughters to “hurt” her husband Lameck Brande.
In her defence, Marizani argued that she was mentally unstable when she committed the murders.