Sitting across from a police detective in a T-shirt that read “Be the change,” Becky Hamber denied she used zip ties on the little boys she and her wife were planning to adopt as she lamented how the children’s aid society had failed to help them when needed.

It was Jan. 17, 2023, and Hamber and her wife, Brandy Cooney, had just been arrested on charges relating to the younger of the two boys. Less than a month earlier, his older brother had been found unresponsive and soaking wet at the age of 12 in his virtually empty bedroom in the couple’s Burlington basement. Within days of the boy’s death, Cooney went looking around for money and gifts; it would be another year until the couple were charged with murder.

The video recording of Hamber’s 2023 police statement was played Thursday at

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