A mother who admitted killing her baby 27 years ago said her arrest in 2023 was a “relief”, telling detectives: “It’s not easy to live with all that time. I thought this would happen, you don’t get away with anything forever”.
Joanne Sharkey, 55, was employed as a benefits officer for West Lancashire Council in 1998, when she killed her newborn son, and dumped his body in woodland in Warrington.
She had concealed her pregnancy from her husband, friends and work colleagues by wearing baggy clothes and not socialising, Liverpool Crown Court heard on Friday.
The court heard she was only arrested decades later when DNA linked Sharkey’s first child, who had been arrested for an unrelated offence, with that of the baby.
Mr Jonas Hankin KC, for the prosecution, told Sharkey’s sentencing hearing that she had told a friend that she couldn’t go through a second pregnancy, having had a first child with her husband Neil Sharkey over a year earlier. He described her as “an educated woman, who had been in stable employment for most of her adult life”.
The body of the baby boy, later named Callum by police, was found inside two knotted bin bags close to Gulliver’s World theme park in Warrington, Cheshire, on 14 March 1998, by a dog walker who became curious and poked a hole in the bags with a stick.
The baby was discovered with wads of tissue stuffed in his mouth.
The discovery sparked a widespread police investigation, with inquiries made at local hospitals, GP surgeries, and at homes in the surrounding area. Posters were put up and a mail drop was co-ordinated to encourage people to come forward with information.
Some young women were even named by their own families as the potential perpetrator, leading to their arrests and then later elimination by DNA profiling, the court heard.
A breakthrough came in 2023 when a periodic review of the national DNA database discovered the DNA profile of Sharkey’s first child was a likely match for the dead baby’s brother, and Sharkey was then identified as the mother.
Sharkey was arrested in July 2023, and had been due to face trial for murder, before she entered a guilty plea to manslaughter by diminished responsibility.
The court heard that after the birth of her first child Sharkey had found “the combination of a full time job, working five days a week and motherhood challenging”. She has since been diagnosed with suffering from post-natal depression at the time of the baby’s death.
Mr Hankin, for the prosecution, told the court that Sharkey told police she had never spoken to anybody about what had happened, but admitted she had thought about it “a million times”.
Asked why she never told anyone else, Sharkey told police: “I couldn’t actually say the words. It’s not easy to live with all that time. I thought this would happen. You don’t get away with anything forever... You try and push it out, but it creeps back in.”
She described trying to get on with family events like Christmas and Easter “but this is always in your head”.
The court heard Sharkey told the police she was terrified that someone would come knocking on the door, telling them: “You are waiting for it, one day it was going to happen and it did.”
She described what she had done to police as “horrendous, the worst thing ever”, and, speaking about the arrest, said: “It’s been a bit of a relief to be fair. I feel sick to the stomach for what I’ve done. It’s out. It’s come off my chest.”
Sharkey told police she was able to hide the pregnancy from her husband because he was doing shift work at the time. The court heard she likely gave birth alone in the bathroom of her home.
She told police she “covered his nose, his mouth” to get the baby to be quiet. “I knew I just had to, it had to be quiet, then he was quiet”, Mr Hankin described Sharkey as saying.
Sharkey told the police she was not able to account for the head or neck bruising found on Baby Callum, and said she did not touch the baby during the birth.
She admitted she must have cleaned up the scene, and then put the baby in a bag before driving to dispose of the body.
Her husband of 31 years, Neil, told the court in a statement that he admitted he was “not the greatest husband or father”, saying she “raised Matthew [their son] singlehandedly to be one of the nicest people I know.”
He said he taught Matthew how to play sports and had some input into his upbringing, but “Joanne did the rest as I was always working”.
He added: “Since I have found out what has happened, I have been broken and there is a piece of me that has disappeared and will never come back... I blame myself for what has happened.”
He told the court: “I wonder if I was not so difficult could Joanne have come to me for help”. Mr Sharkey said that he had loved Joanne “since the first time I saw her and always will love her”.
Her son Matthew told the court he had had a “great childhood”. “Growing up I was lucky to have my mum as she always looked after me and protected me,” he said.
In a statement read out to court, Matthew said the offences had “come as a shock to us” but “we are supporting mum and standing by her”.
Mr Hankin told the sentencing judge on Friday: “If she had not been suffering from a moderately severe depressive illness, she would not have killed her infant. This does not mean that the defendant was not to blame for what she did, but her culpability was much less than it would have been had she not been ill.”
The court heard two doctors gave the baby's medical cause of death as "unascertained" and could not determine whether he had been alive when the tissue was put in his mouth.
Miss Nina Grahame KC, for the defence, described Sharkey as a “much loved wife and mother, valued colleague and friend”. She told the judge it was “an exceptionally unusual case” and pressed for leniency.
The judge postponed her sentencing remarks so she could properly consider submissions.
