A man who murdered his new girlfriend’s toddler and hid her body in a pushchair while out shopping and going to the pub 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 in June 2023.
Jeff and Isabella’s mother Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell, also 24, were seen joking at the shops while pushing her body around in a buggy the day after her death, Ipswich Crown Court heard.
Gleason-Mitchell – who was cleared of murder – received 10 years in prison after admitting causing or allowing the death of a child.
The pair were seen pushing Isabella’s body around in a buggy for days after her death, including getting the bus into town and going to the pub, Surrey Police said.
Isabella Wheildon, 2, was found dead after suffering a ‘regime of escalating brutality’ at the hands of Scott Jeff (Suffolk Police /PA Wire)
Crown prosecutor Sally Howes KC 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 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 “she didn’t kill her daughter and she thinks it’s the harm Scott Jeff did to her that killed her”.
Mr Howes said the “violence started when there were problems with potty training”, adding: “If Isabella said she was a mummy’s girl Scott would hit her.”
Scott Jeff, 24, was found guilty for murdering two-year-old Isabella Wheildon (Suffolk Constabulary/PA Wire)
“[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.”
Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell feared she would ‘get done’ if she went to police about her daughter’s death (Suffolk Constabulary/PA Wire)
Ms Howes said cocaine – and a bi-product of it – were identified in Isabella’s blood and the results “demonstrate Isabella had ingested cocaine”.
She said the “concentrations are low” and it was not possible to determine the amount ingested and when, but it was “likely to have been in the previous day or so prior to death”.
The prosecutor said it was not known how it was ingested, but suggested second-hand smoke from a person smoking crack cocaine as a possibility.
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