Isabella Wheildon: Scott Jeff jailed for life after killing infant - then taking her around shops in a buggy

Isabella Wheildon’s mother Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell, 24, who was in a relationship with Scott Jeff at the time, was also 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” last year. Jeff was handed a life sentence and must serve at least 26 years in prison before he can be considered for release.

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” who 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”.

Gleason-Mitchell appeared to shake as she was sentenced on Friday, while there was no visible reaction from Jeff.

Isabella’s body was found in a locked bathroom at a temporary housing unit in Sidegate Lane, Ipswich, on June 30 last year. It is believed she died four days earlier and her mother and then-partner had continued to wheel her body around in a pushchair.

The judge told 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.”

Prosecutor Sally Howes KC said at the start of the trial that the two wheeled Isabella’s dead body to shops, the stores visited included ones that “sold products he [Jeff] wanted” such as Xbox games and “even his own favourite aftershave”.

They were found and arrested in Bury St Edmunds in the early hours of July 1. 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.