Original subtitles

[Sophia babbling]

MAN: There's this thing inside of me, it's like...

the appetite.

It's like a wolf that's...

filling...the hunger.

♪♪

MAN: Our communication center received

a call that there was two dead children inside the department.

WOMAN: Neighbors identified the little girls as Serena

and Sophia,

and their mother was the one who

called police to their 4th floor apartment.

♪♪

♪♪

DETECTIVE: Okay?

MORGAN: In a nutshell, I don't believe her.

Amnesia doesn't work that way.

It's not persuasive, but that seems to be

her narrative she's presenting is everything was normal.

She almost sounds childlike herself, helpless, frail.

I think it was this vacillation between trying to

decide if she wanted to come across as mentally unstable,

that she had no memory of what she did, to really dissociating

and not wanting to face

the emotional reality that she's killed her children.

♪♪

TUSSEY: I would scream.

Most people would have a much more extreme reaction

to first hearing that

if they really believed two seconds ago that they were just

with their dad.

Even though she's crying, she's relatively calm.

So that is very striking about her reaction.

I'm a little skeptical about the authenticity of it.

MORGAN: With people who have psychopathy, we'll often see

a meager effort at the display of emotion.

Sometimes a feigned effort if they

can't muster enough of a feeling.

SAHNI: What she's describing is postmortem effects for

the children, and yet

she's talking about them like they're alive and they're

just injured.

So there's a complete disconnect there.

What we know is that after she drowned them,

she dressed them in pretty little princess dresses, and she

did up their hair, and she made

them look beautiful, and then she put them to bed, dead.

It's creepy on a lot of levels.

Her ability to objectify her children and maintain her own

narrative that was not based in reality

allowed her to drown each of them.

♪♪

SAHNI: Make no mistake.

She never misses a beat to stay in control of

the interview, she never misses a beat to exert her legal right.

She's quite clear and definite about that.

When you see that switch

so automatically, that is more consistent with psychopathic

behavior than a broken, psychologically frail

individual who has just lost her two daughters.

TUSSEY: Her lack of an answer is telling.

I think that her plan was to kill

herself with the pills, and it didn't work.

I don't think that she had really thought

beyond what would happen if she didn't die.

Sometimes when psychopaths entertain suicide,

it's because they want to have the final say.

[Sophia babbling]

She made a video on the day of their death.

It's probably not an accident.

The Sleeping Beauty is playing for the kids.

This doesn't bode well.

Sleeping Beauty is the story of a wonderful young woman

who can't wake up

until she's kissed by the handsome prince to come out

of her state of sleep that's induced by the witch.

Consistent with that, once they're dead

she dresses them up and lays them

out so they are little sleeping beauties.

SAHNI: She made a strategic, calculated decision to

videotape her children in their last moments.

She's documenting what a fantastic mother

she was, and yet she drowns them.

Elaine Campione is somebody who is fused with her children.

Her ego,

her internal sense of self, is anchored by the existence

and the narrative of, "I am a perfect mother."

Hi!

She's speaking with positive affect.

She has love in her voice and what

she's saying to them, that mommy loves you.

She's joking with them.

Uh, there's a total disconnect.

♪♪

SAHNI: Ultimately, this was a case of revenge.

This is Elaine Campione's narrative.

Elaine is a perfect mother.

Elaine is the only one who can take care of her children.

Many parents hate each other.

You know, and want to get back at one another,

even use their kids as pawns to get back,

but they don't kill them.

MORGAN: It sounds like it had been a difficult relationship,

but she's used her kids as a weapon in that way to punish

her husband.

The psychopathic part is viewing

the children as the implements.

♪♪

Her tone is less irate in this video.

It's as if she's woken up unexpectedly,

perhaps because she thought she was going to die,

and she is trying to come to terms with this.

When we think of parents who are psychologically fused with

their children, those children

are their anchors for their personality.

I think what we're seeing is the beginnings

of the unraveling, because her anchor is gone.

She's killed them. She's more broken.

This is a lot of fractured, damaged personality structure.

She's two very different people in many ways.

You have this woman who is presenting herself as very

frail and beaten down.

But then on the other hand,

she's clearly very much in control of her decisions.

♪♪

WOMAN: Legal papers were also found advising Campione

to appear in court for a child custody hearing

October 5th, the day after the girls' bodies

were discovered.

Leo Campione was trying to get custody

of the girls at the time they were killed.

TUSSEY: The custody aspect is a key element in this.

So it's possible that she saw this as her only option to

ensure definitively that he would not get to be

with the girls.

And her response to it is "I'll take them,

and you won't ever get them."

That's her power.

This was a note that Elaine took the time to write.

It was directed at her husband, and it says,

"All I wanted was a way out.

"The system failed.

"I was a great mother, and you wouldn't leave me alone.

"I had to protect our girls.

"They will sail away from this and all of you.

I hate you."

Her narrative is that she's actually doing

something that's incredibly altruistic,

and she's making it clear to her husband

that he caused this.

It's not her who drowned them. He pushed her to do this.

♪♪

♪♪

WOMAN: Doctors' notes revealed that Campione was having

trouble seeing herself and children as separate entities.

These pictures were used by the defense as evidence.

Campione apparently told her mother to take it,

saying she loved her kids and was fearful

there would be no memory of her.

Campione's lawyer argues her client is mentally ill,

that she suffered from delusions and paranoia

and didn't feel she or her children were safe.

Once she had a goal in mind, which was to kill them,

to take them away from her husband,

she's very systematic about how she goes about that goal.

That's highly inconsistent with how people who experience

delusions and paranoia behave.

She as a psychopathic as she feels.

She is self-righteous, she feels vindicated.

She did something that no parent had the courage to do.

WOMAN: The jury didn't

but the defense argument that it was mental illness that

made her do it and not

a bitter custody dispute with her ex-husband.

WOMAN: Elaine Campione sobbed uncontrollably as the jury

announced a guilty verdict.

Her tears then turned to anger as she swore before being

handcuffed and hauled out of the courtroom.

There's where you see the self-righteousness,

there's where you see the attitude of, "Why am I being

"hauled out in handcuffs?

I did what was the right thing to do,"

and it was the most protective thing she could do for

her daughters, because she is a perfect mother,

and mommy loves you.

♪♪