{"id":640099,"date":"2026-06-15T15:59:06","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T15:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/640099\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T15:59:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T15:59:06","slug":"uk-court-finds-man-guilty-of-sexual-abuse-and-murder-of-adopted-baby-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/640099\/","title":{"rendered":"UK court finds man guilty of sexual abuse and murder of adopted baby | Crime"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">A schoolteacher described as a \u201cserial manipulator and a serial liar\u201d has been found guilty of sexually abusing and murdering a baby he adopted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Jamie Varley, 37, of Staining, Lancashire, had denied the murder of 13-month-old Preston Davey and 25 other offences but was found guilty after an eight-week trial.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Preston Davey sitting on a mat in a house\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/614.jpg\" width=\"445\" height=\"355.85504885993487\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"dcr-evn1e9\"\/>Preston Davey died as a result of acute upper airways obstruction. Photograph: X\/Lancashire police<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The head of year at a secondary school had adopted Preston with his partner, John McGowan-Fazakerley, a financial sales manager, who was found guilty of allowing the death of a child. The baby died as a result of acute upper airways obstruction by either smothering or an object or objects being inserted into his mouth.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Jamie Varley.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/577.jpg\" width=\"120\" height=\"120\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"dcr-evn1e9\"\/>Jamie Varley. Photograph: Lancashire police<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">His death came at the end of four months during which he was \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2026\/apr\/20\/baby-sexually-abused-killed-by-man-adopting-him-preston-court\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">routinely ill-treated, sexually abused and physically assaulted<\/a>\u201d, the prosecutor Peter Wright KC had told a trial at Preston crown court.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">DCI Andy Fellows of Lancashire police, the senior investigating officer, said Varley had shown himself to be \u201ca serial manipulator and a serial liar\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">More details soon \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A schoolteacher described as a \u201cserial manipulator and a serial liar\u201d has been found guilty of sexually abusing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640100,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-640099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}