A man has been found guilty of murdering a two-year-old girl who suffered “escalating brutality”, leaving her with injuries to her head, neck, torso, and limbs.
Warning: This article contains content that some readers may find distressing
Isabella Wheildon’s body was found in a buggy in a locked bathroom at a temporary housing unit in Ipswich in June last year.
Scott Jeff, 24, denied her murder and two counts of child cruelty, but was found guilty on Friday after an eight-week trial at Ipswich Crown Court, Suffolk Police said.
Jeff, who was not the toddler’s father, had been in a relationship with her mother, Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell, who was cleared of murder but was convicted of an alternative homicide offence.
Prosecutors said Isabella died from “bone marrow embolism caused by skeletal trauma”, and had fractures to both wrists and a “complex pelvic fracture involving several bones”.
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.
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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”.
Jeff and Gleason-Mitchell, both of no fixed address but formerly from Bedfordshire, had been staying at the address on Sidegate Lane for 11 days, when Isabella’s body was discovered on 30 June.
Prosecutors said she died on 26 June after having difficulty breathing, for which the pair claimed they attempted to perform CPR on her.
Gleason-Mitchell said at the time they realised that she had died, she looked at her watch and it was 11.37pm.
Pair were ‘unaffected’ by her death
CCTV footage showed that 30 minutes later, the couple went out to the shops and were shown joking, apparently unaffected by what had just taken place.
Over the next three days they carried on as ‘normal’, pushing Isabella’s body around in a buggy, even taking the bus into town to go shopping and going to the pub.
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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.
They were charged with murder three days later and further charged with two counts of child cruelty after traces of cocaine and cannabis were found in Isabella’s system.
Gleason-Mitchell, a 24-year-old former nursery worker, previously pleaded guilty to causing or allowing the death of a child, which is a homicide offence, and two counts of child cruelty.
