An evil couple left a two-year-old girl dead in the shower for days after her mum’s boyfriend kicked the toddler to death.
Little Isabella Wheildon was a “healthy, contented, well-cared for little girl” before she suffered harrowing abuse when Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell struck up a relationship with Scott Jeff prosecutor Sally Howes KC said. The little girl tragically died in a temporary housing unit in Ipswich and her body was found on June 30 last year.
Jurors at Ipswich Crown Court during her murder trial heard she was dead for several days before her body was found under blankets in a shower. She had suffered “extensive external traumatic injuries to the soft tissues of the body including head, neck, torso, limbs” and other areas. Injuries to her pelvis were consistent “stomping or kicking” but Gleason-Mitchell “stood back, watched, did nothing and allowed this to happen”.
It is also believed that Isabella’s mother and her then-partner had continued to wheel her body around in a pushchair. The judge told 24-year-old 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 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 July 1.
Yesterday, Jeff was jailed for life for the girl’s murder and was told he will serve a minimum of 26 years in jail. The toddler’s mother was jailed for 10 years for causing or allowing Isabella’s death. Judge Mr Justice Neil Garnham, sentencing the two at Ipswich Crown Court on Friday, said Jeff, also 24, subjected Isabella to a “cruel campaign of violence and abuse which ended in her death on June 26” last year.
The judge described former nursery worker Gleason-Mitchell, who “stood back and let that abuse and violence happen to your little girl”, as a “weak and spineless person”. 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.”
The judge said the two defendants had previously been in a relationship in 2019 which ended. Gleason-Mitchell had a daughter, Isabella, with a man called Thomas Wheildon and after this relationship broke down she contacted Jeff again in May 2023, the judge said.
Gleason-Mitchell and Jeff decided to take Isabella on holiday to the Norfolk coast where they stayed initially in hotels then spent four nights in a tent on the beach at Caister, and began seeking council accommodation. The judge said Jeff took over potty training of Isabella who would sometimes wet herself and Jeff “couldn’t tolerate such accidents and began punishing her when they occurred.”
He said her injuries were concealed with a puffer jacket and sunglasses, with her arms fractured and her pelvis later “in effect shattered”. The judge 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.
Her medical cause of death was recorded as “bone marrow embolism caused by skeletal trauma.” Jeff, of no fixed address, had denied her murder but was found guilty following an earlier trial. He was also found guilty of two counts of child cruelty. Gleason-Mitchell, of no fixed address, had pleaded guilty to causing or allowing the death of a child and two counts of child cruelty at an earlier hearing.
Culled: Mirror.com
