Mother who killed her five-year-old son on New Year’s Eve by poisoning him with anti-depressants is convicted of murder
- Claire Scanlon, 38, was yesterday convicted of murdering her son Dylan, 5
- She poisoned him with anti-depressants and he died on NYE 2021 in Oldham
A mother has been found guilty of murdering her five-year-old son by poisoning him with anti-depressants.
Claire Scanlon, 38, was convicted of killing little Dylan Scanlon yesterday after his lifeless and heavily bruised body was found on a double bed in her home.
Prosecutors told the court the mother had first informed her uncle in a nearby property that her son was ‘not breathing’ or ‘moving’ at 6.15pm on December 31, 2021.
Dylan was sadly pronounced dead three minutes after paramedics arrived at the house, in Oldham, Greater Manchester.
Pathologists found the lad had 64 separate injuries and a large amount of an antidepressant drug in his system, which experts claimed could have been fatal.
Claire Scanlon, 38, was convicted of killing her son Dylan (pictured), five, yesterday after his lifeless and heavily bruised body was found on a double bed in her home in Oldham, Greater Manchester
Prosecutors told the court the mother had first informed her uncle in a nearby property that her son Dylan (pictured) was ‘not breathing’ or ‘moving’ at 6.15pm on December 31, 2021
Scanlon had told paramedics that Dylan fell from the ladder to her attic the day before they arrived, and she had checked on him every 15 minutes before his death.
But after police arrested her, they found a note saying: ‘Don’t let them see us, just cremate us,’ which prosecutors said showed she’d planned to die alongside him.
Jurors reached their guilty verdict at 3.30pm yesterday – two days after they were first sent out by Judge Mrs Justice Yip at Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester.
Prosecutor Lisa Wilding had told the court Scanlon became ‘angry and depressed’ at the breakdown of her relationship with Dylan’s father, Gary Keenan, before the murder.
The couple first met in 2005 and had moved in together, but Mr Keenan had left their home for good following a ‘bitter’ split in 2020, four years after Dylan was born.
She said the mother was ‘obsessed’ with Mr Keenan, and in the two months prior to her son’s death, she’d sent voicemails and messages to him multiple times a day.
On December 15, 2021, she left him a voicemail message that said: ‘I promise you, you won’t see him again. You’ll see. Bye. Go and enjoy your life’.
Then on December 27, she left a message saying: ‘I promise you now, carry on treating me like a k**b h**d, I promise you’re never gonna see my son again’
She added: ‘Treat me like a d**k, I’ll stop you from going near him’.
A few days later on December 30, she sent a final message that said: ‘You’re just showing all you want to do is act like me and Dyl weren’t in your life and crack on, make a new life with your new bird.
‘So you go and do that. I’ll solve it for you. Go and enjoy your new life with her.’
Ms Wilding told the court that Scanlon had picked up a repeat prescription for Mirtazapine, an antidepressant, 11 days before Dylan died.
And a blood sample found Dylan had 9,951 micrograms of the drug, per litre of blood in his system.
Christopher Madden, a forensic toxicologist, who analysed samples of blood said this amount would be consistent with other fatalities from mirtazapine.
Mr Madden told the jury that the deaths of eight adults who overdosed on mirtazapine found they had 1,000 to 4,400 micrograms per litre of blood.
But he couldn’t tell how Dylan had ingested the mirtazapine and if it was taken in one single go or administered across multiple occasions.
Floral tributes left outside a house on Elm Road, Limeside, Oldham, Greater Manchester, where Dylan Scanlon, five, was found dead on 31 December 2021
Scanlon’s sister Susan Scanlon told the court that she had become more reclusive following her break up with her ex-partner.
And during her emotional testimony, she was unable to explain what had led to the death of Dylan, who she said was at the centre of Scanlon’s world.
She said: ‘She was his life, and he was hers. I don’t know what went wrong.
‘She wouldn’t answer her phone. She wouldn’t answer the door.
Describing her sister’s behaviour in the month before Dylan’s death, Susan added: ‘She shut herself off to everybody. Absolutely everybody.’
Scanlon was detained under the mental health act and taken to Edenfield Hospital in Prestwich following her arrest.
And it’s there that support worker Joshua Davidson claims Scanlon had confessed to inflicting fatal injuries on Dylan by dropping him from her attic.
He previously told the court Scanlon said to him: ‘I killed my son’.
Scanlon will be sentenced tomorrow, July 14.
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