A man who murdered his new girlfriend’s toddler and hid her body in a pushchair while out shopping has been jailed for life.
Scott Jeff, 24, will will serve a minimum of 26 years in prison after subjecting two-year-old Isabella Wheildon to a “regime of escalating brutality” before she was found dead in a bathroom on 30 June 2023.
It is believed she died four days earlier and her mother, Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell, also 24, and then-partner Jeff had continued to wheel her body around in a pushchair, with the pair seen joking at the shops while pushing the buggy.
Gleason-Mitchell – who was cleared of murder – received 10 years in prison after admitting causing or allowing the death of a child.
Ipswich Crown Court judge Neil Garnham said Gleason-Mitchell had “stood back and let that abuse and violence happen to your little girl”, describing her as a “weak and spineless person”.
“You felt able to go shopping with Jeff, the two of you pushing Isabella’s body around in a pushchair covered with a blanket, as if you were enjoying a family day out,” he said.
The judge said the two eventually left Isabella’s dead body in a bathroom at a hostel for the homeless and took a train to Bury St Edmunds, where Gleason-Mitchell was seen “sitting happily with a glass of wine in a pub … smiling and laughing”.
They were found and arrested in Bury St Edmunds in the early hours of 1 July.
Gleason-Mitchell appeared to shake as she was sentenced on Friday, while there was no visible reaction from Jeff.
Justice Garnham said Jeff took over potty training of Isabella, who would sometimes wet herself. He said Jeff “couldn’t tolerate such accidents and began punishing her when they occurred”.
The judge said the injuries inflicted by Jeff were concealed with a puffer jacket and sunglasses, with her arms fractured and her pelvis later “in effect shattered”.
He said the pelvic injury was caused when Jeff either stamped on her or “kicked her between her legs with enormous force”, resulting in her death hours later.
During an earlier hearing, Crown prosecutor Sally Howes KC said that a post-mortem examination identified “extensive external traumatic injuries to the soft tissues of the body including head, neck, torso, limbs” and other areas.
She added that the toddler’s cause of death was given as “bone marrow embolism caused by skeletal trauma”.
Ms Howes said Gleason-Mitchell told police investigators that “she didn’t kill her daughter and she thinks it’s the harm Scott Jeff did to her that killed her”.
“[Gleason-Mitchell] said she had no injuries before going away with Scott Jeff,” said Ms Howes. She admitted she should have got help.”
However, the court heard after Isabella’s death, Gleason-Mitchell told a friend she could not go to police as her daughter’s body had brusies and she would “get done for it”.
Gleason-Mitchell sent a series of voice notes, with one saying: “We literally can’t go to the police because she’s covered in bruises.”
In a further message, Gleason-Mitchell told her friend Joanne Gardner: “I feel like we’re just going to bury her and hope for the best.”
Sasha Wass KC, defending Gleason-Mitchell, said she was “possibly not the most intelligent young lady” and a friend described her as “easily manipulated”.
In a victim impact statement read by the prosecutor, Isabella’s father, Thomas Wheildon, described his daughter as an “extension of me” adding: “I miss her every single day.”
“That light inside of me when I’m around Isabella is now gone forever,” he said.