MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) – A Canadian woman accused of killing her 8-year-son told police he was in a “nice place” before admitting she’d drowned him in Lake Champlain, according to a police affidavit released Thursday.

Louise Desnoyers, 48, said she held her son Nicholas Desnoyers-Langlois underwater so he wouldn’t have to suffer through the divorce she expected was about to end her marriage to Real Desnoyers, Vermont State Police Detective James Claremont said in the affidavit.

Desnoyers was charged with first-degree murder Thursday, two days after police found her with self-inflicted injuries and the boy about 25 feet from the shore of Isle La Motte.

If convicted, she faces 35 years to life in prison.

According to the affidavit, State Police were called to check on an abandoned car that had blood stains in it.

Police later found Desnoyers in a shed, caught in barbed wire and with multiple bruises. She had tried to commit suicide, according to the affidavit. It was then that police learned her son may have been missing.

Desnoyers, who was in and out of consciousness, was taken to the Northwestern Medical Center in St. Albans and later Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, where she was listed in fair condition Thursday. Police said she may have consumed windshield washer fluid or antifreeze.

When police, a sheriff and hospital staff asked her where the boy was, she said at one point that he was in “a nice place,” the affidavit said.

When police spoke to her husband in Montreal, he confirmed that his younger son was missing, police said. Real Desnoyers told police his wife left home with their son after they had talked about divorcing or separating.

She talked about suicide before she left, Real Desnoyers told police.

Drifting in and out of consciousness as she was questioned by police, “she cupped her right hand and made a motion pushing down,” the affidavit said. “She advised she held his head under water. She said ‘I kill him’ in broken English.

She said her son’s body was still in the water and told police where to find it. When police divers found the boy, his wrist had been tied to a cast-iron radiator that had been used as a mooring, the affidavit said.

AP-ES-08-17-06 1755EDT