Mom Admits to Murdering Newborn Son and Hiding It from Friends, Family for 25 Years: Report

A British mother has admitted to authorities that she quietly gave birth and then killed her son in 1998, all while keeping the pregnancy and murder secret from her family.

The trial of Joanne Sharkey, a 55-year-old mother from Liverpool, began last week roughly 26 years after the woman reportedly admits she gave birth to her second son in the bathroom of her family’s home in Croxteth before allegedly suffocating him and discarding his body in the woods. 

BBC reported that Sharkey admitted to killing her son, known as “Baby Callum” after the woodland area the newborn was eventually discovered in, and that she is asking a court for leniency because of an alleged bout with severe postnatal depression she says led to the murder.

Sharkey’s husband allegedly knew nothing about her second pregnancy, which BBC reports she kept quiet from family and friends by wearing baggy clothes. She and her husband, Neil Sharkey, told the court they worked opposite hours in 1997 during her pregnancy, allowing her to more easily conceal herself and the secret from her husband at the time, according to BBC.

Sharkey’s husband and adult son Matthew, now 28, testified in defense of the accused mother. Neil told the Liverpool Crown Court that his wife “single-handedly raised” their firstborn son Matthew and that she was “an amazing mother” to him, admitting he put most of the parenting responsibility on his wife when they were younger. 

The defense team for Sharkey argued that the pressures of parenting, coupled with postnatal depression led her to make irrational decisions during the couple’s second unwanted pregnancy.

“She took none of the steps that an intelligent woman would be expected to do, she took no steps to protect herself from the tragic horror of what happened thereafter,” Sharkey’s defense attorney, Nina Grahame, told the courtroom last week, according to BBC. “She gave birth alone, panicked, terrified, and in pain.”

Grahame reportedly asked the court: “How much more punishment does Joanne Sharkey require?”

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PEOPLE reported last April that Sharkey was arrested and charged with murder.

Sharkey’s deceased son was discovered in the wooded Callands area of Warrington and was buried in a nearby cemetery a few months later, The Guardian previously reported. The outlet reported that the baby’s headstone was paid for by local residents, who named the then-unidentified child “Baby Callum.”

BBC reports that Sharkey’s sentencing will take place at a later time, following last week’s testimony.