A New South Wales woman has avoided jail for killing her elderly and disabled mother by poisoning her soup in her aged care home.
Barbara Eckersley was found guilty of the manslaughter of her 92-year-old mother, renowned botanist Dr Mary White, who was paralysed and non-verbal at the time of her death.
A judge found the crime was motivated by love and despair, ordering Eckersley to undergo treatment for her mental health condition while serving a two-year community corrections order.
Outside Eckersley’s lawyer Adrian McKenna said: “To say that it has been a trying and incredibly tumultuous almost three years for Barbara is quite an understatement.”
Dr White was found dead in her room at a Bundanoon aged care facility in the NSW Southern Highlands in August 2018.
While feeding her mother soup, Eckersley laced it with “green dream”, a drug used to sedate animals.
Mrs White died in her nursing home four hours later but it took three days for her daughter to confess.
