A man who killed his partner’s two-year-old daughter before taking her body in a buggy to the pub and shops has been jailed for life.
Warning: This article contains details readers may find distressing
Scott Jeff, 24, was found guilty last month of Isabella Wheildon’s murder as well as two counts of child cruelty after an eight-week trial at Ipswich Crown Court. He will serve a minimum of 26 years in jail.
Judge Mr Justice Neil Garnham said Jeff subjected Isabella to a “cruel campaign of violence and abuse which ended in her death” on 26 June last year.
Jeff, who was not the toddler’s father, had been in a relationship with her mother, former nursery worker Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell, also 24.
Gleason-Mitchell was cleared of murder but pleaded guilty to causing or allowing the death of a child and two counts of child cruelty. She appeared to shake in the dock as she was jailed for 10 years.
The judge described her as a “weak and spineless person” who “stood back and let that abuse and violence happen to your little girl”.
He said she was “so concerned about her own comfort and pleasures, and about maintaining a relationship with this man, that you would tolerate anything, including these dreadful assaults on your daughter”.
Isabella was found in a buggy in a locked bathroom at a temporary housing unit in Ipswich in June last year.
‘Escalating brutality’
The court heard she had injuries to her head, neck, torso and limbs after suffering “escalating brutality”.
The couple took Isabella on holiday to the Norfolk coast where they first stayed in hotels, then spent four nights in a tent on the beach at Caister, and began seeking council accommodation.
The court heard Jeff would punish Isabella when she wet herself with her injuries concealed with a puffer jacket and sunglasses.
Her arms were fractured and her pelvis was “in effect shattered” when Jeff either stamped on her or “kicked her between her legs with enormous force”, resulting in her death hours later, the judge said.
Prosecutors said Isabella died from “bone marrow embolism caused by skeletal trauma”.
Traces of cocaine and cannabis were also found in the toddler’s system.
Sally Howes KC told jurors the toddler was a “healthy, contented, well-cared for little girl until Scott Jeff came into her young life” towards the end of May 2023.
From then, she suffered “escalating brutality which was callous, cruel and ultimately fatal”, at Jeff’s hands.
A post-mortem found Isabella had “extensive external traumatic injuries to the soft tissues of the body including head, neck, torso, limbs” and other areas, the barrister said, adding that her mother “did nothing and allowed this [the abuse] to happen”.
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Pushed body around in buggy
Jeff and Gleason-Mitchell, both of no fixed address but formerly from Bedfordshire, had been staying at the temporary accommodation for 11 days, when Isabella’s body was discovered on 30 June.
Prosecutors said she died on 26 June after having difficulty breathing. Jeff and Gleason-Mitchell claimed they attempted to perform CPR on her but she died at 11.37pm.
CCTV footage showed the couple went out to the shops 30 minutes later and were shown joking, apparently unaffected by Isabella’s death.
Over the next three days, they pushed the toddler’s body around in a buggy, even taking the bus into town to go shopping and going to the pub.
The judge told Gleason-Mitchell: “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 pair 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”.
The pair were arrested in the early hours of 1 July in Bury St Edmunds, having fled Ipswich after police had found Isabella’s body.