A distraught Welsh father made his estranged wife listen on a telephone as he killed their four sons and then himself in a fume-filled car, an inquest heard Wednesday.

She heard him urge one of the boys to say: “Goodbye, I love you.” He then told her as each boy died from carbon monoxide fumes from a gas mower he had taken into the vehicle.

The inquest in Wrexham, north Wales heard that Keith Young, a 38-year-old farm laborer, and his sons Joshua, 7, Thomas, 6, Callum, 5, and Daniel, 3, died near Llangollen.

Young, from Winsford, Cheshire, was separated from his wife Samantha Tolley, who had told him she was pregnant by another man. He was visiting the boys.

On March 27 she telephoned Young after hearing that he had threatened to kill the boys. She could hear the mower running and her children’s voices.

Later, at 1.15 a.m., Young called Tolley.

“Keith called you and you, in your desperation, told him you would get rid of the baby if he came home, and you would then make it work,” the coroner, John Hughes, said, reading from evidence given by Tolley, 28.

“He said: ‘It’s too late, you would have me arrested.’ You said: ‘It’s not too late.’ He said: ‘It is too late. Dan’s dead.’

“You asked to speak to the others and Keith put Josh on the telephone. Just before he handed over the phone he said: ‘Say goodbye to your mum, tell her you love her.’

“And that is exactly what Josh, bless him, did.”

Later the police found the car with father and sons dead.

A Home Office pathologist found that Young and all four boys had died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Recording a verdict of unlawful killing on the four boys and suicide for the father, Hughes said: “It is one of the most harrowing cases I have dealt with.”

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