Liverpool Crown Court heard that Joanne Sharkey had intended to keep her newborn son quiet following a secret birth at her home in Croxteth by covering his nose and mouth
A woman who suffocated her newborn child and left his body in a woodland told her husband “‘I f****** did it” after she was arrested.
Joanne Sharkey has pleaded guilty to manslaughter by diminished resonsibility over the death of the newborn – who was posthumously named Callum by police – more than 25 years ago. Sharkey, 55, buried her son close to the Gulliver’s World theme park in Warrington, Chessington, in 1998. She had been suffering from post-natal depression following the birth of her first son in 1996 when she killed the child, Liverpool Crown Court heard. The mum, of Denham Close in Croxteth, Liverpool, was charged with murdering the newborn when he was minutes old in April 2024, and concealing the birth of a child.
When she was arrested alongside her husband a year earlier, she admitted she “f***ing did it”, telling police she had tried to keep him from stirring by covering his nose and mouth “to make him quiet”.
The Liverpool ECHO reports that the court heard that on March 12 1998, a man saw a young “upset” looking woman walking quickly out of the woods in Warrington, and discovered a black bin bag lying on the ground near the track after walking further inside. Callum’s remains were discovered two days later when a dog walker came upon the same bag and punctured it.
The judge was told the baby was taken to Warrington General Hospital, where the infant was named after the Callands district of Warrington and a pathologist found him to be a “normally developed, full-term infant”. Investigators placed the child’s DNA on a national database after conducting inquiries, but were unable to conclude what had happened to the child until 2023, when a “periodic review” of the cold case by Cheshire Police identified a match with Matthew Sharkey’s DNA profile.
His profile was added to the national database following an “arrest for an unrelated offence”, and led police to arrest him and his wife on July 25 that year. Sharkey had told officers her husband knew “nothing about it” after they were placed in the back of a police car. The court later heard that a covert recording captured her telling her husband: “I’m not f***ing gonna deny nothing.
“It is what it is, isn’t it? I f***ing did it.” During subsequent interviews with police, Sharkey said her state of mind when considering the prospect of a second child was: “I can’t do this again.” Jonas Hankin KC, prosecuting, told the court she had found the prospect of a full-time job and motherhood “challenging”.
Mr Hankin said: “It is apparent that Mrs Sharkey soon found the combination of a full-time job and motherhood challenging. She has since been diagnosed as suffering from post-natal depression. She told her work colleague and friend Amanda Harper that she did not want any more children after Matthew.
“Nevertheless, the defendant became pregnant again in the summer of 1997. She did not tell her husband. She was 28 years old when she gave birth to her second child in secret in March 1998. She had continued to work in the office full-time throughout the second pregnancy, until she went into labour. She returned to work soon after delivering the infant and disposing of his body.”
Mr Hankin said that Sharkey had said she tried to quieten the child when he was born, telling the court: “She said this: ‘The infant was born. I just had to make him quiet. When asked what she could hear, she responded, ‘he’s making a noise, just a little snuffly, starting-to-cry noise. Not massively loud, just a whimpering sort of cry’.
Prosecution barrister Jonas Hankin KC said psychiatrists agreed Sharkey was “fearful of becoming a mother to another child” and developed a depressive illness which “substantially impaired (her) ability to form rational judgment and exercise self-control”. Nina Grahame KC, defending, said Sharkey was remorseful and called for prosecutors to recognise the “devastation” that revealing the child’s death “would bring on the people she loved”.
The prosecutor said: “So, she lived with this. She has remembered what she did every single day. Her remorse is genuine and absolute. We say this cannot be in doubt.” Sharkey was due to be sentenced on Friday afternoon, but High Court judge Mrs Justice Eady said she was “not in a position to go on to pass sentence this afternoon”, and wanted to “make the right decision rather than trying to rush things”.
Sharkey was ultimately not sentenced due to a lack of court time, and sentencing has been moved to either April 3 or 4. The mum was released on conditional bail in the meantime.
