Shortly after that, a knife was discovered missing in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. It turned out Riggi had it. When she was confronted by staff, she repeated to them: ‘I just want to be with my babies.’
The Californian woman had certainly tried hard enough to make that possible. She had jumped head-first from the second floor of the Edinburgh flat where she and her children had been staying, only to have her fall broken by a neighbour.
She had at least four stab wounds, a collapsed lung, a fractured leg and elbow and cuts to her neck and wrist – and yet the job she had finished with such efficient brutality on her children minutes earlier, she could not finish on herself.
Yesterday, more than three years and many botched suicide attempts later, it seems Riggi’s wretched death wish has finally come true.
On one occasion in Cornton Vale Prison Riggi is said to have set herself ablaze. On another, she tried to hang herself with a rope.
A fellow prisoner there said: ‘She also got in the bath with a hairdryer to try to electrocute herself – and she tried to slit her throat. You can still see the scar.’
In November 2011 a 40-year-old inmate allegedly slashed Riggi across the face. That woman is currently awaiting trial.
At the same prison, another inmate pushed her down a flight of stairs. A 22-year-old was arrested and charged after the incident, but the case was later dropped due to lack of evidence.
There had been no such difficulty when Riggi’s own case had been heard in the High Court in Edinburgh in March that year.
The evidence was overwhelming – and some of the most disturbing to be heard by a Scottish jury in years.
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