‘I killed our 7mth boy’: Mum jailed for daughter’s death admits second horror

Husband who stuck by wife after ‘wrongful conviction’ left devastated by truth.

Victim ... Harley with dad Wayne and monster mum Dunford, inset

 A HUSBAND who stuck by his wife after she was jailed for the death of their little girl was devastated last night after she admitted murdering their baby son.

 

Victim ... Lucy was aged three

Wayne Dunford, 57, believed wife Lesley, 37, was wrongly convicted of three-year-old Lucy’s manslaughter. But she has now pleaded guilty to the killing six months earlier of seven-month-old Harley, who Wayne believed had died from cot death.

Kids' graves ... devastated Wayne at cemetary in East Sussex

 He spent almost a decade living with Lesley and believing she played no part in his children’s deaths.

And he vowed to stand by her when she was jailed for seven years in 2012 over Lucy’s 2004 death.
 But before she was due to face trial on Friday for Harley’s murder at home in Camber, East Sussex, in 2003, she pleaded guilty.

Wayne, now of Exeter, Devon, said: “She had convinced me for so long she had not harmed our kids. “I was convincing people that Lesley had not done anything.


“She was just a good liar and kept up the lie for over ten years. I never want to see her again.” After initially being quizzed by police over Lucy’s death, she was not prosecuted because of conflicting pathologist reports. One said she died from suffocation and another she had an infection and choked on vomit.

But a coroner later asked police to re-examine the case. Lucy had died on the day Wayne had returned to work after 19 months of unemployment. Dunford said she had been nervous about being left to look after her alone but denied being depressed.

But the tot had bruising and a cut above an eyebrow, which could have been caused by hitting a hard surface, the jury was told. Her sentencing for Harvey’s death was adjourned at Lewes crown court to March 18 for psychiatric reports.