Man murdered toddler who was slowly beaten to death while mum ‘did nothing’

A man has been found guilty of murdering a two-year-old girl while her nursery worker mum ‘stood back, watched’ and ‘did nothing’.

Isabella Wheildon’s body was found in a pushchair inside a locked bathroom at a temporary accommodation in Ipswich, on June 30 last year.

It’s thought she died four days earlier and CCTV shows her mother and then-partner, Scott Jeff continue to wheel her body around in a buggy.

Jeff, 24, of no fixed address, denied her murder but was found guilty after a seven-week trial at Ipswich Crown Court, Suffolk Police said.

Isabella’s mother Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell, who had been in a relationship with Jeff, was cleared of murder, the force said.

Former nursery worker Gleason-Mitchell, also 24 and of no fixed address, previously pleaded guilty to causing or allowing the death of a child and two counts of child cruelty.

Jeff, who is not the girl’s father, denied two counts of child cruelty but was found guilty, police said.

Prosecutor Sally Howes KC told jurors that Isabella was a ‘healthy, contented, well-cared for little girl until Scott Jeff came into her young life’.

‘Towards the end of May 2023, he entered a relationship with Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell,’ said Ms Howes, as she opened the prosecution case last month.

‘From that time up to her death, Isabella was subjected to a regime of escalating brutality, which was callous, cruel and ultimately fatal.’

She said Isabella’s ‘own mother Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell stood back, watched, did nothing and allowed this to happen’.

Suffolk Police said it was believed that Isabella died on June 26.

The force said that the following day the couple were seen on CCTV going to the shops while ‘shows them joking, apparently unaffected by what had just taken place’.

‘Over the course of the next three days they proceeded to carry on as ‘normal’, pushing Isabella’s body around in a buggy,’ police said.

‘This included getting the bus into town to go shopping and going to the pub.’

The force said it is believed the couple, who were not at the flat when police found Isabella, saw officers and left.

They were found and arrested in Bury St Edmunds in the early hours of July 1, having earlier spent several hours in a pub until closing time.

Barrister Ms Howes said a post-mortem examination identified ‘extensive external traumatic injuries to the soft tissues of the body including head, neck, torso, limbs’ and other areas.

Ms Howes said Isabella sustained fractures to both wrists and a ‘complex pelvic fracture involving several bones’.

She said the toddler’s cause of death was given as “bone marrow embolism caused by skeletal trauma”.

The pair are due to be sentenced on December 13.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.