Mother and boyfriend jailed for life for murder of her two-year-old daughter

A mother and her new boyfriend have been jailed for life for the sadistic murder of her two-year-old toddler who was also sexually assaulted.Isabelle Welsh suffered from weeks of abuse, including suffering 21 broken bones, before she collapsed at her home in Thornaby, Teesside, in September.Alexandra Walker, 26, and her boyfriend Harrison Simpson, 22, were convicted of murder and child cruelty this week following a trial at Teesside Crown Court.He was also convicted of sexually assaulting Isabelle, while her mother was cleared of that charge.Alexandra Walker and Harrison Simpson have been jailed for murdering her two-year-old daughter (Cleveland Police/PA)PA MediaMs Justice Norton jailed the pair for life with minimum terms of 28 years and six months for Simpson and 22 years for Walker, both minus time spent on remand.Read MoreThe nine female jurors who heard the case were in court for the sentencing, as well as family members supporting Isabelle’s father, Josh Welsh.Ms Justice Norton said the murder was the final act in a series of assaults which the pair tried to cover up.Indeed, the judge said the mother delayed ringing 999 because she wrongly thought Isabelle was dead and was trying to work out a plan.The judge said: “I have no doubt whatsoever that your lack of urgency or concern for your child was because you wrongly believed that Isabelle was already dead, and you were working out what to do to save your own skin.”Earlier, Paul Abrahams, prosecuting, told the court: “This was a campaign of quite deliberate extreme violence.”Ms Justice Norton said: “Any death is a tragedy. The death of a very young child at the hands of those who should have cared for, protected, and loved her – as she no doubt loved them – is particularly distressing for all involved.”She said Isabelle sustained an unsurvivable head injury in the 24 hours before she died in hospital.The girl was sexually assaulted around the time the fatal blow was inflicted, the judge said.The defendants inflicted the injuries and then failed to get Isabelle medical help, she said, “even though it was obvious that she needed it”.There were no witnesses to the abuse and CCTV cameras set up in the house did not capture it and the judge said there was a “wall of silence” around what happened.Simpson did not answer police questions or give evidence at the trial and Walker “lied from start to finish”, the judge said, claiming to be more highly educated than she was, pretending she had breast cancer, telling people she did not take drugs when she actually sold them”.The mother claimed she did not drink much, but on the night Isabelle was murdered she downed 10 cans of Stella Artois.She was not just a liar but “a fantasist and an attention-seeker” who self-harmed then claimed to have been attacked, the judge said.Jurors were told that Isabelle had been a happy, healthy child until her mother started dating Simpson last summer.They saw video of Isabelle bouncing on a sofa and looking cheerful before the killers got together on Facebook Dating.Walker searched Simpson on the sex offenders’ register after she grew suspicious about his behaviour, which included bathing Isabelle without her consent.Isabelle’s mother called him a “paedophile”, she later told her own mother, but continued to date him.Eleven days before Isabelle’s fatal injuries were inflicted, Walker took her to hospital with a broken leg which raised medics’ suspicions about her care.Walker had delayed taking Isabelle to be checked out by some two weeks, jurors were told.The judge said “tragically” some medical staff who expressed safeguarding concerns were “over-ruled” by doctors who accepted Walker’s false account.And even when Isabelle collapsed at home, and was dying, Walker again delayed ringing 999.Instead, she was caught on internal CCTV cameras smoking a cigarette in her kitchen.Walker had Googled “why would my toddler be bleeding” rather than alert the emergency services.She only called 999 after her step-father came round and insisted Isabelle needed medical attention.When paramedics arrived they found Isabelle covered in bruises and there was blood in her nappy.The little girl died in hospital the next day and Walker and Simpson were arrested.The judge said both were jointly guilty of murder and child cruelty.The judge considered a whole life tariff for Simpson but could not be sure that the murder was sexually motivated, although it happened around the time of the fatal blow.She could not be sure because the jury cleared Walker of sexual assault, but convicted her of murder.The judge said the injuries the two-year-old suffered were “sadistic” and that she was “obviously in pain and distressed, and in the final week of her life, gravely ill”.She jailed Simpson, saying only he will know the motivation for what happened.And jailing Walker, she said the mother had repeatedly lied to cover up the abuse.She said: “Right to the very end, your interest was not in Isabelle, but in yourself.”The judge commended officers who worked on the case, including Detective Chief Inspector Chatterton, who said: “This has been, without a doubt, one of the worst cases my team and I have dealt with.”In a statement, Isabelle’s family previously said: “Isabelle should have had her whole life ahead of her, but she was taken from us in the most heartbreaking way.“She was so loved and our lives will never be the same without her.”