Describing what happened on the night of the incident in December 2023, Kollias told the court that she placed her hands over the mouth and nose of 4-year-old Dimitris and 5-year-old Giannis while singing “You Are My Sunshine.” She then jumped from the balcony of their Toronto apartment in an attempt to take her own life.

Police found the children’s bodies in front of a television playing cartoons. Next to them were the clothes prepared for their funeral, a photograph of their father, Kostas Kollias, and a cross. The 27-year-old survived the fall but was left paralyzed from the waist down.

Although she was initially charged with first-degree murder, the charges were reduced to second-degree murder after the court accepted that she had been overwhelmed by grief following her husband’s death.

According to testimony, Kollias told a psychiatrist she felt “completely alone and unable to imagine continuing life without him, and wanted them all to be together again in Heaven.”

In court, she said tearfully: “A part of me will always wonder why I never said I needed help. To my children — I love you more than anything. Thank you for showing me what true love is. You will always be my favorite part. I am so grateful I became your mother. The hardest thing I will ever have to do is learn to live here without you.”

The court sentenced her to life in prison with no possibility of parole for at least 18 years. Kollias told the judge she understood that what she had done was wrong, but said she believed that “others would understand her intention was to save her sons and be with her husband so they could all be together.”

Her husband, 72-year-old Kostas Kollias, died on December 1, 2023. She killed the children nine days later, saying she had been exhausted from caring for him around the clock and watching him deteriorate “day by day before her eyes.”