A mother who suffocated her newborn baby and dumped his body in a bin bag in a woodland in a secret she kept for 25 years has avoided jail.
A judge has called for “compassion” for Joanne Sharkey, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter by diminished responsibility over the death of the baby boy, named Callum by police investigating his death in 1998.
His body was found by a dog walker close to Gulliver’s World theme park in Warrington, Cheshire, on 14 March 1998.
The 55-year-old, aged 28 at the time of her newborn’s death, was only traced more than two decades later, through DNA checks after the arrest of her other son.
She was initially arrested for murder but later admitted she killed the baby while suffering from postnatal depression after the birth of her first son in 1996.
A court heard Sharkey kept her pregnancy a secret, even from her husband, and when the baby was born in the bathroom of her house in Croxteth, Liverpool, she heard him starting to make a noise and covered his nose and mouth “to make him quiet”.
The mother described her arrest in 2023 as 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”.
On Friday, Sharkey sat shaking with emotion and wiping away tears as she was given a two-year suspended prison sentence at Liverpool Crown Court. The defendant’s family in the public gallery broke down in tears and exchanged hugs.
Passing sentence, Mrs Justice Eady told Sharkey she accepted her mental state at the time had “substantially impaired your ability to form rational judgments” and since then had been “haunted” by what she had done.
In deciding against an immediate custodial sentence for the defendant, the judge concluded: “I’m clear you suffered a lengthy postnatal depression.
“The events that bring us to this court are both terrible and tragic. Nothing I can do or say can turn the clock back to resolve the tragedy of this case.
“You lived isolated with this terrible and tragic knowledge. You had carried this with you the whole time, thinking about it every day.
“I’m satisfied your offending was not planned or premeditated.
“I’m satisfied that this very sad case calls for compassion. No useful purpose would be achieved by immediate imprisonment.”
Sharkey was given a two-year prison sentence for manslaughter and six months for the offence of concealment of the birth of a child, to run concurrent and both suspended for two years.
Prosecution barrister Jonas Hankin KC told an earlier hearing that psychiatrists agreed Sharkey was “fearful of becoming a mother to another child” and developed a depressive illness that “substantially impaired [her] ability to form rational judgment and exercise self-control”. Sharkey, a housing benefit officer at West Lancashire Council when Callum was born, also found the combination of a full-time job and motherhood challenging.
On 12 March 1998, a man saw a young woman walking quickly out of the woods who looked “upset”. The man walked into the woods near Gulliver’s World and saw a black bin bag lying on the ground to the left of the track but did not touch it.
Two days later a dog walker saw the same bag, was curious about what was inside and punctured it with a stick to find the body of an infant inside.
The baby, who was given the name Callum after the Callands district of Warrington in which his body had been discovered, was taken to Warrington General Hospital, where a pathologist found him to be a “normally developed, full-term infant” with no structural abnormality or natural disease.
He found a number of bruises over the infant’s face, head and neck, and wads of tissue in his mouth.
DNA profiles from the tissue paper and blood staining on the bin bag were taken and stored on a national database.
Police made checks with hospitals, general practice surgeries, midwives and other medical facilities, conducted house-to-house visits and made inquiries at shops, pubs and three local schools.
It was not until 2023, during a periodic review of the national database, that the DNA profile of Matthew Sharkey, Joanne Sharkey’s first child, whose DNA had by that time been uploaded to the national DNA database because he had been arrested for an unrelated offence, was found to be a close match to that of the infant.
The court heard DNA samples were taken from Joanne and Neil Sharkey, who were identified as the biological parents, and Sharkey was arrested for murder in July 2023, telling officers her husband “knows nothing about it”.
While they were in the back of a police car prior to being interviewed, a covert recording was made of a conversation between them during which Sharkey was heard to say ‘I’m not gonna f****** deny nothing, it is what it is, isn’t it. I f****** did it’.”
She later told police she kept her pregnancy a secret by wearing bigger clothes and keeping everyone “at arm’s length”.
Sharkey told officers the labour, which she thought had happened in the bathroom, was “easy and quick” and she was the only person in the house at the time.
She told police: “I sort of reached down. I must have been on the floor at this point. I’ve covered his nose, his mouth. It just couldn’t make that noise, just to be quiet.”
Sharkey replied “no comment” when asked about the wads of tissue and bruising to the baby’s head and neck.
She then drove to Warrington to dispose of the child.
Later she told detectives: “It’s haunting, something you think about every day. You try and push it out but it creeps back in.”
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.
Following the sentencing, Detective Inspector Hannah Friend, said: “I would again like to thank the officers and staff involved throughout this investigation, whether this was back in 1998, or more recently, whose dedication meant someone was brought before the courts to be held accountable for a baby’s untimely death.
“While the sentencing hearing today marks the end of these proceedings, we will continue to remember Callum, as will all those who have been affected by this tragic case.”
