A ‘callous and cruel’ drug-taking thug who derived sick ‘gratification’ from beating a toddler to death was jailed for a minimum of 26 years today.
Scott Jeff, 24, subjected two-year-old Isabella Wheildon to ‘a regime of escalating brutality’, leaving her with multiple fractures and angry bruises over much of her body.
Punishments for wetting herself included giving her cold showers and making her eat until she was sick.
When she finally died from complications caused by her injuries, he and Isabella’s mother, Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell, coldly dumped plastic bags on her corpse as they pushed it around for three days during trips to shops and pubs.
Jeff was convicted of the girl’s murder and two counts of child cruelty last month following a six-week trial at Ipswich Crown Court, where he tried to claim the ‘tragic event’ was the result of ‘natural causes’.
Gleason-Mitchell was cleared of murder but previously admitted causing or allowing the death of a child and two offences of cruelty to a child.
The couple returned to the court today, where prosecutor Sally Howes KC said Jeff had gained ‘gratification’ from ‘repeatedly’ abusing his partner’s daughter.
‘There is a degree of out-and-out cruelty and indoctrination of a child for his own ends,’ she added.
Jeff was led down to the cells after learning the minimum term for his life sentence. Gleason-Mitchell, also 24, was jailed for ten years.
Moments earlier, they had sat in the dock listening to heart-rending victim impact statements from Gleason-Mitchell’s distraught and weeping relatives.
Her mother, Ann Mitchell, revealed she had ‘resorted’ to holding lonely vigils at the crematorium where the toddler’s funeral took place, ‘making her know her nanny is here’.
Recalling the once ‘happy’ child who ‘was always singing and playing’, she added: ‘Sometimes I want to fall asleep and never wake up because when I do I remember she is not here.’
Gleason-Mitchell’s sister, Jade Anglem, said the loss had been ‘excruciatingly painful’ and she was taking anti-depressants to cope.
‘Every day has been hell. I carry around a feeling of emptiness,’ she told the court.
Thomas Wheildon, Isabella’s father, said he had been unable to work ‘as I am always tearful’ and he tried to find ‘comfort’ in referring to her in the present tense.
Reverting to the past tense for his statement, which was read out in court, he said: ‘No parent should outlive their child. Part of me died with her and it pierces my heart every day.’
He described the defendants as ‘two most wicked, sadistic and violent people’, adding: ‘It is difficult to comprehend how the two of you acted towards Isabella. You should have protected her.’
Particularly shocking was an image of Gleason-Mitchell appearing to ‘celebrate’ with a large glass of rose wine in a Wetherspoons pub in Bury St Edmunds after their daughter had died, he said.
Isabella’s body was found under blankets in the shower area of the temporary accommodation the defendants had been given in Ipswich on June 30 last year after police were alerted by a friend Gleason-Mitchell had confided in about the death.
A post-mortem revealed she had fractures to both her wrists and a complex pelvic fracture involving several bones likely to have been caused by ‘kicking or stamping’ that were likened to injuries seen in car crashes.
There were also soft tissue injuries to her head, neck, torso, limbs and back, as well as a torn perineum, while traces of cocaine were in her blood, probably from being close to crack cocaine as it was smoked, and cannabis traces were in her hair.
Isabella’s death on June 26 was caused by an embolism in her lungs after one marrow from her fractures seeped into her blood stream.
There were also traces of cocaine in her blood, probably from being close to crack cocaine as it was smoked, and cannabis traces in her hair.
But the couple kept her death a secret, pushing her body around in the pushchair with the hood pulled up to hide her face.
CCTV showed Jeff pushing the buggy with Gleason-Mitchell ‘smiling at his side’ as they went to a pub on June 28.
The following day, they went to Ipswich town centre on a bus before visiting shops where they bought after shave and X-Box equipment and chargers.
Miss Howes said: ‘They put their purchases in a yellow plastic bag which they put in the pushchair on top of Isabella.’
They were eventually arrested in the early hours of July 1 after they were tracked down to a Wetherspoons pub in Bury St Edmunds.
Gleason-Mitchell, a nursery nurse, told police that Jeff had ‘beaten Isabella constantly, punching and kicking her ‘from head to toe’ and smacking her with a shoe as they moved around hotel rooms and camp sites in East Anglia after leaving Bedfordshire to escape the protective gaze of her family.
The little girl was made to wear sunglasses to hide her black eyes.
Isabella’s other punishments for not learning potty training was cold showers and being force fed to the point of vomiting.
In time, the toddler stopped screaming and instead bore the pain and indignities in silence.
Her mother told police: ‘It’s like all of her pain went away and stopped, like she didn’t know how to cry and didn’t know what pain was anymore.’
Jeff, who had a record of abusive relationships and had ‘Pure Hell’ tattooed on his knuckles, blamed his partner – although the jury saw through this.
Sarah Wass KC, defending Gleason-Mitchell, said she had no previous convictions and was an exemplary mother before rekindling her relationship with ex Jeff.
She described her client as ‘easily bullied and weak and possibly not the most intelligent young lady’.
Chris Paxton KC, for Jeff, accepted there had been ‘psychological torment of Isabella’ and ‘numerous assaults leading up to her murder’.
His client was of previous good character, he added, and a young an immature 22-year-old when his victim died.
Speaking after their convictions, senior investigating officer Detective Chief Inspector Craig Powell, of Suffolk Police, said: ‘The murder of any child is, in my opinion, the worst crime imaginable.
‘When they are killed at the hands of those who were supposed to protect them and care for such a young and innocent life, it is somehow even worse.’