A mother who suffocated her newborn baby and left his body in woodland has avoided jail today after finally being brought to justice nearly three decades later.

Joanne Sharkey, 55, had pleaded guilty in March to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and endeavouring to conceal the birth of a child – following her arrest 25 years after the body of her son was found inside two knotted bin bags.

But Sharkey, a 28-year-old council worker at the time of baby Callum’s death, was today given only a two-year suspended prison sentence at Liverpool Crown Court.

Judge Mrs Justice Eady told Sharkey: ‘The real question is whether appropriate punishment can only be achieved by a term of immediate custody. Having carefully considered this issue, I am satisfied that this very sad case calls for compassion.’

The baby, later named as Callum, was discovered by a dog walker near Gulliver’s World theme park in Warrington on March 14, 1998 – but his identity remained a mystery until Sharkey was traced more than two decades later through DNA checks.

This followed the arrest of her other son – and Sharkey later admitted that she killed the baby while suffering from postnatal depression after her first son’s birth in 1996.

Detectives named the infant Callum after the Callands district of the Cheshire town where he was found dead, because his true identity could not be confirmed. 

A funeral service was arranged by local people for the boy – believed to have been born at full term – and he was buried in Warrington Cemetery a few months later.

The headstone, paid for with money raised by locals, said: ‘Baby Callum, precious child of God. Laid to rest July 27, 1998. With love, from the people of Warrington.’

Joanne Sharkey was initially charged with murder and concealing the birth of a baby

The funeral procession for baby Callum at St Elphin’s Church in Warrington on July 27, 1998

Judge Mrs Justice Eady told Sharkey at Liverpool Crown Court today that she accepted her mental state at the time had ‘substantially impaired your ability to form rational judgments’

Passing sentence at Liverpool Crown Court, Mrs Justice Eady told Sharkey she accepted her mental state at the time had ‘substantially impaired your ability to form rational judgments’ and since then had been ‘haunted’ by what she had done.

Sharkey, from West Derby, Liverpool, sat shaking with emotion and wiping away tears as the judge said she would pass a suspended sentence.

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The defendant’s family in the public gallery broke down in tears and exchanged hugs.

Mrs Justice Eady said: ‘I’m clear you suffered a lengthy postnatal depression. The events that bring us to this court are both terrible and tragic.

‘Nothing I can do or say can turn the clock back to resolve the tragedy of this case. You lived isolated with this terrible and tragic knowledge.

‘You had carried this with you the whole time, thinking about it every day. I’m satisfied your offending was not planned or premeditated.

‘I’m satisfied that this very sad case calls for compassion. No useful purpose would be achieved by immediate imprisonment.’

Sharkey was given a two-year prison sentence for manslaughter and six months for the offence of concealment of the birth of a child, to run concurrent and both suspended for two years.

It came nearly 10,000 days since the morning of March 14, 1998, when Callum’s body was found at 10.45am by a local man out walking his dog with his young son in a wooded area off Camp Road, near Gulliver’s World. 

Joanne Sharkey pleaded guilty to one count of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and endeavouring to conceal the birth of a child

Details about the case were given at an earlier hearing. 

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’.

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She told police she kept her pregnancy a secret and when the baby was born in the bathroom of her house in Croxteth, Liverpool, she heard him starting to make a noise and covered his nose and mouth ‘to make him quiet’.

The court heard Sharkey was a married 28-year-old housing benefit officer at West Lancashire Council when Callum was born.

But Sharkey soon found the combination of a full-time job and motherhood challenging, and she has since been diagnosed as suffering from postnatal depression during that period.

When she became pregnant again in the summer of 1997, she did not tell her husband.

On March 12 1998, a man saw a young woman walking quickly out of the woods who looked ‘upset’.

The man walked into the woods near Gulliver’s World and saw a black bin bag lying on the ground to the left of the track but did not touch it.

The coffin of Callum during his funeral at St Elphin’s Church in Warrington on July 27, 1998

Two days later a dog walker saw the same bag, was curious about what was inside and punctured it with a stick to find the body of an infant inside.

Upon the discovery, he sought help from the theme park and a paediatrician happened to be present, who confirmed the body was that of a baby boy. 

Callum was pronounced dead at 11.25am on March 14.

The body was taken to Warrington General Hospital, where a pathologist found the baby had been a ‘normally developed, full-term infant’ with no structural abnormality or natural disease.

He found a number of bruises over the infant’s face, head and neck, and wads of tissue in his mouth.

Due to findings from a post-mortem, Cheshire Constabulary launched a murder investigation – and a full DNA sample was taken from the baby, as well as from blood found on the bin bags.

This identified the DNA profile of the mother of the baby, but there was no match on the police database for her. 

The approach road to Gulliver’s World theme park in Warrington where baby Callum was found

A partial DNA profile for the father was obtained, but there was again no match.

Police said DNA swabs were taken from a large number of people living locally at the time, but none provided a match.

Officers carried out house-to-house enquiries with hundreds of people interviewed, and spoke to local hospitals, midwife services, GPs, other medical services and schools, to identify any women or girls who may had given birth recently.

But despite all the force’s efforts and anniversary media appeals in the following years, nothing led to the identification of Callum’s parents.

The case stayed on a list of ‘cold’ cases and was regular reviewed including searches of the police DNA database and further DNA analysis as advances in science were made.

Then, the current investigation that led to the parents being identified began in January 2022.

During a periodic review of the national database, the DNA profile of Matthew Sharkey, Joanne Sharkey’s first child, whose DNA had by that time been uploaded to the national DNA database because he had been arrested for an unrelated offence, was found to be a close match to that of the infant.

The court heard DNA samples were taken from Joanne and Neil Sharkey, who were identified as the biological parents, and Sharkey was arrested for murder in July 2023, telling officers her husband ‘knows nothing about it’.

A court artist’s sketch of Joanne Sharkey at Warrington Magistrates’ Court on April 16, 2024

While they were in the back of a police car prior to being interviewed, a covert recording was made of a conversation between them during which Mrs Sharkey was heard to say ‘I’m not gonna f****** deny nothing, it is what it is, isn’t it. I f****** did it’.’

She later told police she kept her pregnancy a secret by wearing bigger clothes and keeping everyone ‘at arm’s length’.

Sharkey told officers the labour, which she thought had happened in the bathroom, was ‘easy and quick’ and she was the only person in the house at the time.

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She told police: ‘I sort of reached down. I must have been on the floor at this point. I’ve covered his nose, his mouth. It just couldn’t make that noise, just to be quiet.’

Sharkey replied ‘no comment’ when asked about the wads of tissue and bruising to the baby’s head and neck.

She then drove to Warrington to dispose of the child.

Later she told detectives: ‘It’s haunting, something you think about every day. You try and push it out but it creeps back in. You carry on with your life, you go to work and you do Christmas and you do Easter but this is always in your head.’

The court heard two doctors gave the baby’s medical cause of death as ‘unascertained’ and could not determine whether he had been alive when the tissue was put in his mouth.

Nina Grahame KC, defending Sharkey, said: ‘Were it not for her mental illness it is inconceivable a woman such as Mrs Sharkey would have failed to care for her newborn child.’

On March 6, Sharkey pleaded guilty to one count of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and concealing the birth of a child.

Callum was discovered close to Gulliver’s World theme park in Warrington in March 1998.

The Crown Prosecution Service said medical evidence concluded that Sharkey had an ‘abnormality of mental functioning’ at the time of the offence ‘arising out of a medical condition’ and this ‘substantially impaired her ability to form a rational judgement and to exercise self-control’.

It was added that this ’caused or was a significant contributory factor in causing her to kill her newborn child’.

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Following the sentencing, Cheshire Constabulary Detective Inspector Hannah Friend said: ‘The case of Baby Callum has stayed with the local community for 27 years; he has never been forgotten, and his memory has lived on in the area ever since.

‘But our efforts to locate who cut his innocent life short have never wavered over the years, and the case was subject to regular reviews and refreshed searches of the national DNA database.

‘It was thanks to this that a familial DNA match was identified, and following a thorough investigation, Sharkey was identified, arrested and later charged.

‘I would again like to thank the officers and staff involved throughout this investigation, whether this was back in 1998, or more recently, whose dedication meant someone was brought before the courts to be held accountable for a baby’s untimely death.

‘While the sentencing hearing today marks the end of these proceedings, we will continue to remember Callum, as will all those who have been affected by this tragic case.’