The former wife of a businessman who killed their six-year-old son by leaping with him from an hotel balcony collapsed in tears yesterday as she told a court that her ex-husband’s family history of mental illness and tragedy could never excuse him killing their child.

Natasha Hogan, 35, accused John Hogan of having only “selfish love” for his two children when he grabbed them and leapt 50ft (15m).

The family had travelled to Crete in the hope that Mr and Mrs Hogan could patch up their marriage. Mr Hogan jumped with his children after his wife told him that she had decided to leave him and would live with her mother on their return. Liam died from severe head injuries and his sister, Mia, then aged 2, suffered a broken arm.

Mr Hogan, 33, who believed that he was “taking them by their hand and walking them to Heaven”, suffered a broken arm and leg.

During nearly eight hours of harrowing and emotionally charged evidence, the court in Chania was told that three years earlier Mr Hogan had discovered “flirtatious e-mails” that Mrs Hogan had written to an old schoolfriend while she was pregnant with Mia.

For Mr Hogan, whose two brothers had killed themselves soon after their father died, the breakdown of his marriage was an “emotional earthquake” that triggered a psychotic episode, his defence team argued.

Speaking in a slow, deep and faltering voice, he denied murdering his son and attempting to kill his daughter. “I do not accept the charges that I planned to kill my children – I didn’t plan.” He slumped back down and sobbed as police and his lawyer handed him water and handkerchiefs. At one point he gulped down a handful of pills. Despite standing two feet away from each other when Mrs Hogan was giving evidence, the pair did not exchange a glance. It was only as she walked into court that they looked at each other for a split second as his handcuffs were removed.

As Mr Hogan was led hobbling to court for the day’s proceedings he was asked if he had a message for his daughter. He replied: “Tell Mia I am sorry.” Asked about his wife, he said: “Tell her I love her.”

Mrs Hogan, a nurse who has remarried in the past few months but is using her former name for the hearing, spoke over her exhusband’s head as he sat crying in front of her. Wearing a necklace with a pendant that contained two tiny photographs of her children, she broke down as she recalled the final hours of her son’s life.

She said that Mr Hogan, from Bradley Stoke, Bristol, had become agitated after she told him that upon their return home she would take the children to live with her mother while she thought things through. Recalling one of her final conversations after Liam burst into tears at Petra Mare Hotel during their stay in Ierapetra in August 2006, she said: “He said, ‘You and Daddy are breaking up. Daddy told me. I don’t want you to break up’.”

Mrs Hogan said that the family had returned from the bar to Room 407 on the fourth floor and, because Mr Hogan had said that they would fly home immediately, began to sort out his haphazard attempts to pack. “He stared at me with a crazed look and started shouting, ‘My packing is crap. John’s packing is crap’. I had my back to him then I turned round and no one was there. I heard a woman scream downstairs.”

Ioannis Nestoros, a psychiatrist at the University of Athens who has treated Mr Hogan at the Athens prison where he has tried to kill himself four times, said that the break-up had been an “emotional earthquake” for Mr Hogan, who was emotionally dependent on his wife. Professor Nestoros said that Mr Hogan, who ran a tiling company, suffered from “reactive psychotic depression”, and the last thing his patient recalled was taking the children in his arms to “walk them to Heaven”.

Mrs Hogan, when asked why she thought that her exhusband had tried to kill their children, said: “I do believe that the suicides in his family may have contributed to his desire to commit suicide, but I don’t think he should have taken my children.” She said that he had a “selfish love for them”. Mr Hogan shouted that she had accused his family of being a “family of death” because it had been blighted by tragedy and the ravages of mental illness.

In 1996, soon after the couple met, Mr Hogan’s father, also John, died from multiple sclerosis. The same year, as his mother was trying to come to terms with being a widow at 54, her youngest son, Stephen, killed himself with an overdose. He was 17. His brother Paul, 34, then set fire to the family home while his mother was away. Later that day, in May 2004, he cycled to Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol and leapt to his death.

Mr Hogan had undergone six weeks of counselling, once being given a diagnosis of depression, and on one occasion had visited a psychiatrist. His mother, now 65, and sister, Gariella, 41, said that they were astounded that “a very good father” had done such a terrible thing. Three residents near the hotel said they found the father and his children on the ground. Harilaos Karoulis said he was so appalled by what Mr Hogan had done he would have killed him had no one been near.

Mrs Hogan has married Richard Visser. They live in Newport, Gwent. Mr Hogan is expected to give his first public account tomorrow of how he killed his son and injured his daughter.

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