Dad sought help before wife killed son A WOMAN stood on her toddler's mouth and chest to expel "evil spirits" only a day after the boy's father had unsuccessfully pleaded with an Adelaide hospital's mental health staff to help her, an inquest has heard. On the first day of the inquest into the 2009 death of Duke Zenon Hadley, coroner Mark Johns heard that mother Rachael Cherie Hadley was in an acutely psychotic state when she killed her two-year-old son. "She didn't know she was killing her son," counsel assisting the coroner Amy Cacas said. She believed she was expelling an evil spirit from him and expected him to recover. Duke's father, Jason Hura, told the inquest he wanted Ms Hadley to go to Queen Elizabeth Hospital's mental health unit the night before the death. But Ms Hadley refused to go to the hospital. Mr Hura said he went to the hospital alone and was told to call the Health Department's emergency Assessment and Crisis Intervention Service, which said a health worker would arrive at their home at 10am the next day. "I hoped they would turn up, she would answer the door and they would go," Mr Hura said, adding that he dropped their older child at school and then went to work the morning of the death in November 2009. Instead, he said, the ACIS worker had left a business card in the door of the home to indicate that no one spoke to Ms Hadley. Ms Hadley later refused to let Mr Hura inside the house. He called police, who found Duke's body lying in the cot. Ms Hadley was charged with murder, but was acquitted because she was found to have been mentally incompetent.