A 55-year-old woman who killed her newborn son 27 years ago while suffering from severe postnatal depression has been given a suspended prison sentence. Joanne Sharkey admitted manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility after the body of her days-old baby, known as Baby Callum, was found wrapped in bin bags in woodland in 1998.
The case remained unsolved until a routine cold case review in 2023 matched DNA from the baby to Sharkey's firstborn son, Matthew, whose DNA was on the national database from an earlier arrest. Sharkey, a former council officer from Liverpool, had kept the pregnancy and birth secret from everyone, including her family.
Sentencing Sharkey at Liverpool Crown Court, Judge Eady said the case was 'both terrible and tragic' but called for compassion, noting that no useful purpose would be served by immediate imprisonment. The judge highlighted that Sharkey's judgment was 'significantly impaired' by undiagnosed postnatal depression following the birth of her first son in 1996.
Sharkey suffocated the newborn by stuffing tissue paper in his mouth and disposed of the body near Gulliver's World theme park in Cheshire. In police interviews, she expressed relief at being arrested, saying she had thought about confessing 'a million times' but could not bring herself to do so. Her husband and son described her as an 'amazing mother' who was remorseful.
The court heard that without the mental illness, Sharkey would have faced a life sentence with a minimum term of 17 to 20 years. Instead, she received a two-year prison sentence, suspended for two years. The judge accepted that Sharkey's mental state substantially impaired her ability to form rational judgment and that she had lived 'isolated with this terrible and tragic knowledge for a quarter of a century.'
