Man found guilty of murdering toddler who was found dead in locked bathroom

A man has been found guilty of murdering a two-year-old girl who was found dead in a locked bathroom at a temporary housing unit.

Isabella Wheildon’s body was found in a pushchair at the address in Sidegate Lane, Ipswich, on June 30 last year, though it is believed she died four days earlier and her mother and then-partner had continued to wheel her body around in a buggy.

Scott 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 aged 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 on a trip to the shops which “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.