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About a month after walking into the life of “happy” toddler Isabella Jonas-Wheildon, her murderer Scott Jeff was looking at how to bury her dead body and flee the country.
The 24-year-old had only rekindled his relationship with Isabella’s mother Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell, 24, some 36 days before he murdered the two-year-old in Ipswich.
During that time Jeff beat his girlfriend’s daughter, causing her to suffer “psychological torment” and “traumatic injuries” which caused her death on 26 June 2023.
After their arrest and subsequent trial, Jeff was sentenced to a minimum of 26 years in prison for murder while Gleason-Mitchell was acquitted of murder but jailed for 10 years after admitting causing or allowing the death of a child.
High Court judge Mr Justice Neil Garnham described Gleason-Mitchell as a “weak and spineless person and pathetically desperate”.
Over the course of a seven-week trial at Ipswich Crown Court, the jury heard from countless witnesses and examined endless dossiers of evidence.
This included text messages and internet searches found on the couple’s phones following their arrest during the early hours on 1 July in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.
“In the trial Chelsea said Scott had asked her to buy a shovel and that effectively they were readying themselves for disposing of Isabella,” said Det Ch Insp Craig Powell.
“There was evidence in the days after Isabella’s death they were looking at ways to leave the country without passports, and other travel methods, to no doubt flee.”
After Isabella died, with her body in a pushchair, the couple acted as if nothing had happened, travelling on buses and buying an X-Box while showing “no grief or emotion”.
Her body was “treated with disdain” and with a “bag of shopping casually placed” on top of it in the pushchair.
After later leaving Isabella’s body in the flat the couple headed to Ipswich town centre to visit shops, McDonald’s and a pub.
They then caught a train to the Corn Exchange pub, in Bury St Edmunds, where CCTV footage captured them swigging drinks and going about life as “normal”.
It was disgusting. Their actions and their reactions at that time I still struggle with today – there was very little emotion.
Then, during the early hours of 1 July, they were both arrested, with bodycam footage showing Jeff claiming: “I never murdered her.”
But the court heard how the toddler was subjected to sustained violent attacks borne out of Jeff’s “evil temper” and frustration over her struggles with potty training.
Bone pathologist Prof Anthony Freemont told the trial he had never before seen such a severe pelvic injury in a child in his 40-year career.
Jeff would kick and stamp on the toddler and punish her with cold showers, all while her mother “stood by and did nothing”.
I miss her.
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