A guilt-racked grandmother has been spared jail after confessing to killing her newborn son by smothering him with a cushion 52 years ago. Melody Casson suffocated 18-day-old Wayne Harper in 1963 when she was a 15 and told police at the time she accidentally rolled on top of her son when she fell asleep on the sofa.
Casson, now 67, finally confessed when police attended her home for an unrelated matter last year that she had smothered him because he would not stop crying.
She told the police officer: “I want to tell you something, to tell you everything. When I was 15 I had a baby, and he cried and he cried and cried and cried incessantly. I put a cushion over his face and smothered him and killed him. I said it was an accident, but it wasn’t. I said I’d fallen asleep with him. I killed him.”
Casson, from Torquay, Devon, was given a two-year prison sentence suspended for two years after admitting manslaughter at Leicester crown court.
High court judge Mrs Justice Thirlwall said: “It’s important it’s understood by everyone that you didn’t intend to kill your baby. No one suggests you intended to do him any serious harm. I accept you’ve felt guilt every day of your life for the past 52 years and I accept in your case there is real, lifelong guilt. You wanted to bring yourself to justice and that is what you have done.
“Were it not for that, it would never have been known and it’s right you brought it before the court and accept public responsibility for what you did. This is a highly unusual case and may well be unique. You were 15, you were a schoolgirl, you were a child and you’ve lived your youth and all your adult life in the shadow of these offences. The punishment inflicted upon you will be lifelong, until the day you die, and nothing I do will alter that.”
The court heard Casson killed Wayne at her home in Braunstone, Leicester, in 1963. A pathologist told an inquest that Wayne died of asphyxia, consistent with the tot being laid on and the coroner recorded a verdict of misadventure. But the court heard Casson actually placed a cushion over Wayne’s face to muffle the sound of him crying. Prosecutor Adrienne Lucking said Casson confessed to a police officer who visited her home in February last year to attend to a domestic incident.
Rachel Brand QC, defending, said: “She’s had 52 years of self-torment and 52 years of self-loathing. There’s not been a day in her life she’s not thought about it. You have to assess this case on the culpability of someone aged 15 who was struggling to cope.”
Casson’s granddaughter, Charlotte Bradshaw, 27, said: “I cant believe my nan was capable of this. She should have been honest from the start instead of keeping it to herself all these years. I wouldn’t have been sorry if the judge had locked her up and thrown away the key. At least little Wayne has some justice when the truth finally came out.”
Her daughter, Dawn Bradshaw, said she overheard her mother confess to killing her brother 40 years ago, but was told to “let sleeping dogs lie”. She also expressed anger, saying Casson let Wayne’s father go to his grave not knowing the truth about his son’s death.
Bradshaw said: “I first found out the truth when I was nearly 13 years old, after my mum had left my dad. I was sat on the stairs and overheard my mum telling the man she was seeing at the time what she had done to Wayne. She was sobbing her heart out and I heard her say, ‘I suffocated him because he wouldn’t stop crying. People in the house were having a go at me about him crying.’ I was told: ‘Let sleeping dogs lie. You must have misheard her.’”
