Baby Peter: Trio who caused his death

Peter died on 3 August 2007

The mother of 17-month-old Baby Peter has been jailed indefinitely for causing his death.

The woman, who cannot be named, has been told she will serve at least five years in prison.

Her 32-year-old boyfriend, who also cannot be identified, was jailed for 12 years for causing Peter's death. He also received a life sentence for raping a two-year-old girl.

The couple's lodger, Jason Owen, 36, from Bromley, Kent, was also jailed indefinitely for causing Peter's death and will serve at least three years.

THE MOTHER

Peter's mother first came into contact with social services during her own childhood.

The 27-year-old was brought up in Islington, north London, by a mother with drink and drug problems.

As a teenager she was sent to boarding school where she gained GCSEs including English and Information Technology (IT).

Aged 16, she moved in with Peter's father, and the couple later married.

But when Peter was born, the relationship was all but over and by the time he was three months old, his mother had a new boyfriend.

Unknown to social services, this new boyfriend secretly moved into her home in Haringey, north London.

She repeatedly told the authorities there were no men living in the house.

'Human faeces'

The picture painted of her in court was of a woman who was at best uninterested in her child.

Her own father said she spent much of her time lying on the sofa smoking and complaining about how tired she was.

She rarely got out of bed before lunchtime and when Peter was found dead at 1130 GMT, she was still asleep.

When she was awake, she spent much of her time on the internet, gossiping in chat rooms and playing online poker.

Her home was described as disgusting.

When police searched it, they found dog mess and human faeces on the floor and rat holes burrowed into the walls.

The bodies of dead chicks, mice and a dismembered rabbit were strewn around.

She had previously suffered from post-natal depression and according to Sharon Shoesmith, head of Haringey's Local Safeguarding Children Board at the time Peter died, it had seemed they were dealing with a woman who had "poor parenting skills".

'Divorced from reality'

A detective in the case put it much more strongly. She called the woman "a slob, completely divorced from reality [who] put her lover before her child".

The mother admitted causing her child's death, and prosecutors said she "sacrificed" him for her boyfriend.

In May, in a separate court hearing, Peter's mother was cleared of cruelty towards a two-year-old girl, who, like her son, was on Haringey Council's child protection register.

Before sentencing, she wrote to the judge to apologise for the way she treated her son.

"I have lost all I hold dear to me, now every day of my life is full of guilt and trying to come to terms with my failure as a mother," she said.

"I punish myself on a daily basis and there is not a day that goes by where I don't cry at some point."

THE BOYFRIEND

The 32-year-old was an unemployed handyman who could neither read nor write.

He secretly moved into the house of Peter's mother and brought with him his collection of Nazi memorabilia.

Police who searched the property found a number of knives covered with swastikas.

Relatives said that as a child he tortured guinea pigs, once skinning one alive. He also snapped the legs off a frog.

Peter's clothes and cot were covered in blood

Witnesses in court described him as "simple", but one of the investigating detectives went much further.

She described the 6ft 4in man as "sadistic - fascinated with pain".

He spent a lot of time alone with Peter, which is when much of the abuse took place.

He kept a Rottweiler dog at the family home and it was suggested in court that some of Peter's injuries might have been inflicted by the animal.

He was also said to have shaken and punched the little boy, swinging him around by his legs and spinning him round on a chair until he fell off.

If he was ever confronted about his treatment of the baby, he claimed he was trying to "toughen him up".

He even tried to train the boy like his dog.

When he clicked his fingers, Peter would touch his forehead to the floor for fear of being punished.

On the day the boy died, paramedics said they found the boyfriend standing in the hallway of the house, apparently unconcerned.

Kevin Mansfield, from the London Ambulance Service, told the BBC it was "as if he was just waiting for a bus".

In May, the boyfriend was convicted of raping a two-year-old girl. The crime came to light following his arrest over Peter's death.

The girl, who cannot be identified, used a doll and a teddy bear to recreate what happened in a recorded police interview shown to an Old Bailey jury.

JASON OWEN, 36

Jason Owen, from Bromley, Kent, was the woman's lodger.

He had changed his surname some years ago and tried to change it again while on bail for the killing.

The 36-year-old also tried to deny he had ever lived at the Haringey house, but in fact he moved in six weeks before Peter died.

Owen had split with his wife and gone on the run with his 15-year-old girlfriend, moving her into the house as well.

He was said to have dug a hole in the garden to hide the girl if the police came.

Jason Owen had split from his wife and run off with a 15-year-old girl

Prosecutors said Owen both failed to protect Peter from harm and even joined in his mistreatment.

For his part, he blamed the mother's boyfriend entirely for the abuse.

He claimed he sometimes went to check on Peter after hearing him cry and found the boyfriend in the room denying anything was wrong.

Immediately after the toddler's death, Owen and the boyfriend went to a cemetery near the house where their movements were recorded on CCTV.

They were carrying a black plastic bin bag. Inside it, say police, were Peter's blood-spattered clothes and bedding.

The area was searched, but the bag and its contents have never been found.