Paris Mayo: The aspiring midwife who killed her newborn son

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

Paris Mayo is facing jail for murdering her newborn son shortly after she gave birth to him alone at her family home when she was just 15. How did a teenager who dreamed of being a midwife become a killer?

Warning: This article contains distressing content.

It is hard to imagine Coralie Mayo's horror as she saw the remains of her baby grandson in a bin bag on her front doorstep in March 2019.

Her daughter "thought he had died so she hid it", she told call handlers as she immediately called 999.

But a jury has now decided that 19-year-old Paris Mayo, then 15, hid her baby because she had killed him.

For weeks, jurors have heard harrowing details of the night he died and have convicted her of her baby son Stanley's murder.

Mayo first started having sex at the age of 13 so people would like her, she told the court.

Her home life was difficult. Jurors heard her father, who was terminally ill and has since died, was a bully who made her feel "worthless".

"He told me I wasn't smart enough, I wouldn't get a good enough job," Mayo told a jury at Worcester Crown Court.

"He said, 'you'll have six kids by the time you're 20.'"

It appeared that having sex helped her feel less insecure. But when she fell pregnant, she insisted that she did not know - or at least, did not want to admit it.

Despite the morning sickness, the weight gain and the pain, she continued going to school, taking part in PE lessons and living the life of an ordinary teenage girl.

Mayo said she used sex to feel better about herself because of her difficult home life

At John Kyrle High School, a few hundred metres away from her family home in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, she was studying childcare.

Described by her teacher as an attentive student, Mayo studied the signs of pregnancy and stages of labour, and even had hopes of one day becoming a midwife or nurse.

"I had convinced myself so much that I wasn't [pregnant]," she said. "I guess I was scared, I didn't want it to be true."

But it was true, and she did know, prosecutors said. Jurors agreed.

"She 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," said the Crown Prosecution Service.

Those decisions led to her mother, frantic and in tears, telling emergency services: "He's just cold. He's cold. He's cold... I've wrapped him up."

At the same time she could be heard asking her daughter: "Why didn't you tell me?"

She didn't want her parents to be ashamed of her, Mayo would later say in court.

Jurors were asked to consider if Mayo's mind was disturbed after she gave birth

Stanley Mayo is believed to have lived for just under two hours. He was a properly grown, healthy baby who had been full-term when he was born.

Mayo had no support and delivered him alone. Astonishingly, her parents were just upstairs for Mr Mayo's dialysis treatment.

The court heard how she stopped her younger brother from coming into the living room where she had given birth, telling him she had a heavy period and had bled on the floor.

Without arousing suspicion, she killed the baby before quietly bagging up his body and going to bed.

In her account, she picked him up and "cuddled him goodbye", kissing him on the forehead and leaving him in a bin bag on the doorstep.

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

But Stanley's injuries were so severe they were more akin to what you might expect as a result of a car crash.

Devastating, tragic and complex

It's possible that Mayo's state of mind was disturbed when she killed her son. One expert said she had created a false memory in order to repress her actions, to "block out the bad bits, the bits that are hard to live with".

"As a 15-year-old girl giving birth, she went into a state of shock, of panic and distress, with very high anxiety and emotional trauma," Dr John Sandford said.

"Such events could lead to a disturbance of the balance of her mind."

Another expert told the jury it was his opinion that she did not meet the criteria for any form of mental disorder.

Later in her trial, jurors were given the option to consider an alternative verdict of infanticide rather than murder if they believed she killed Stanley whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed.

They decided it was not and that Mayo's actions had been deliberate.

• Accused mum denies killing son to hide pregnancy

• Baby's injuries 'like those seen in car crash'

• Murder-accused mother 'kissed son goodbye'

This case has been described as devastating, tragic and complex by those who investigated what happened that night in her family's living room.

Mayo's version of the story is that of a troubled teenager, a victim herself, who feared her parents' disappointment and acted in panic.

The prosecution, and the jury, see Mayo as a lesser victim than the baby whose life she extinguished.

Her actions, they decided, were deliberate, cruel and criminal.

Judge Mr Justice Garnham will decide Mayo's sentence on Monday.

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