Paris Mayo guilty of murdering son hours after birth

Paris Mayo has been found guilty of murdering her infant son at her family home in Herefordshire

A 19-year-old has been found guilty of murdering her baby son hours after she delivered him at home alone.

Paris Mayo was 15 when she gave birth to the boy, Stanley, in 2019, after concealing her pregnancy from her family.

A trial at Worcester Crown Court heard Mayo suffocated him by stuffing cotton wool into his mouth and throat.

Mayo, of Ruardean in Gloucestershire, was remanded in custody and will be sentenced on Monday.

Jurors were also able to consider a charge of infanticide but took eight hours and 38 minutes to convict her of murder.

Warning - this article contains distressing content.

Mayo gave birth to Stanley at her family home in Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire in March 2019.

The court heard how his remains were discovered by her mother the following morning in a bin bag which Mayo had left on the doorstep before going to bed.

Her mother Coralie Mayo immediately called 999 after she made the discovery and later in hospital the teenager said she had not told her mother what had happened because "she's got a lot going on".

• The aspiring midwife who killed her newborn son

Mayo had claimed she did not know she was pregnant and said Stanley was not moving and did not make a noise when he was born.

However medical experts said it was likely he had been alive for a couple of hours, had taken breaths and may also have cried.

During her trial, Mayo told jurors she had loved her son and often thinks about "what he could have been"

She said she had used the cotton wool found in the infant's mouth and throat to clean up blood and claimed his fractured skull had been caused by him falling on the floor during birth.

However the prosecution said medical evidence showed that was not an adequate explanation and that such injuries were normally found after major trauma, such as a car crash.

The court heard how Mayo had a difficult family life and her father, who was terminally ill at the time Stanley was born and died shortly after, made her feel "worthless".

He had been upstairs receiving dialysis with help from Mayo's mother, Coralie, while the baby was murdered below.

'Devastating case'

In her testimony, Mayo described how she started having sex at 13 and used it as a way to get people to like her because she was "insecure" due to her family situation.

Experts disagreed about her state of mind, with one of the opinion she had "created a false memory" while another said she was "remarkably well intact".

Mayo cried in the dock after the jury, made up of five men and seven women, returned a majority guilty verdict for murder.

The jurors were thanked by judge Mr Justice Garnham, who said it had been a "difficult and stressful case" for them to deal with.

Following the verdict, Det Insp Julie Taylor from West Mercia Police said it was "a devastating case".

"The death of a new-born baby is utterly heart-breaking, even more so when the person who is responsible is the baby's own mother," she said.

Mayo had concealed her pregnancy from people who "could have, and would have, supported her," she said.

A spokesperson for the Crown Prosecution Service said Stanley's "short life was filled with pain and suffering when he should have been nurtured and loved".

"[Mayo] chose to hide her pregnancy, give birth alone and kill her baby, then hide his body despite accepting that she had a family who would have supported her."

Mayo was remanded in custody and is set to return to Worcester Crown Court on Monday to be sentenced.

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