Laura Castle has been jailed for life for the murder of one-year-old Leiland-James Corkill
(Picture: PA)A former care worker has been jailed for a minimum of 18 years for the murder of a one-year-old boy she was hoping to adopt.
Laura Castle, 38, and her husband Scott, 35, were given baby Leiland-James Corkill by authorities in Cumbria with the couple planning to become his foster parents.
Five months later he died in her care from catastrophic head injuries.
The tot was a “looked-after child” who was taken into care at birth before he was approved to live with his prospective adoptive parents in Barrow-in-Furness from August 2020.
Ms Castle rang for an ambulance on the morning of January 6 last year and reported Leiland-James had fallen off the sofa, injured his head and was struggling to breathe.
Paramedics found Leiland-James “unresponsive and floppy” and rushed him to hospital.
The little boy died the following day as hospital medics raised concerns over the defendant’s account.
Ms Castle maintained the death was a tragic accident until the day the jury was sworn in last month for her trial at Preston Crown Court.
She entered a plea of guilty to manslaughter.
Ms Castle then said she had shaken Leiland-James because he would not stop crying and his head hit the armrest of the sofa before he fell off her knee on to the floor.
However, medical experts told the court the degree of force required to cause his injuries would have been “severe” and likely to be a combination of shaking and an impact with a solid surface.
Prosecutor Michael Brady QC said it was the Crown’s case that Castle killed the boy as she lost her temper and suggested she smashed the back of his head against a piece of furniture.
Jurors convicted her of murder and a separate offence of child cruelty.
Scott Castle was acquitted of allowing Leiland-James’s death and child cruelty.
When detectives examined the defendants’ mobile phones following their arrest, they found text messages which were derogatory towards Leiland-James.
Laura Castle wrote the youngster was a “proper nob head”, “s**t bag” and “top t**t”, while her husband said he was a “d*** baby” and a “t*** bag”.
The Castles had been selected by an adoption panel following an application process overseen by Cumbria Children’s Services Department, the court heard.
In November 2020, concerns were raised that Laura Castle had said during a home visit that she did not love Leiland-James and was struggling to bond with him.
The possibility of removing the youngster from their care was later canvassed but Laura Castle said her extended family loved him so he was “not going anywhere”.
Sentencing her to life imprisonment, Mr Justice Baker said it was “nothing less than a tragedy” that she did not return Leiland-James to the local authority when those discussions took place.
He told Castle: “Precisely what took place on the morning of 6 January 2021 may never be known, as even now I do not consider that you told the jury the full circumstances leading to the death of Leiland-James.
“I consider that your account significantly underplays the extent and degree of violence which you inflicted upon Leiland-James that morning, which of necessity must have involved either very severe or considerable impact and oscillation forces to have caused the internal injuries, whilst some of the external injuries were consistent with slapping, pinching and prodding.”
He said she had committed a “significant abuse of trust” as a carer for a looked after child and had caused “dreadful emotional upset” to the child’s birth mother and his previous foster parents.
The boy’s biological mother Laura Corkill branded Castle a “monster” in a letter to the judge while his previous foster mother Charlotte Day said she was “heartbroken” at learning of the abuse Leiland-James suffered.
David McLachlan QC, defending, said Castle was in the dock “alone and broken” and with “no support whatsoever”.
He said: “Her relationship with Scott Castle is likely to come to an end.
“She is isolated and ostracised in prison due to the verdict of the jury who found she had in fact murdered Leiland-James. Now she must pay the price of that act – an act which resulted in the death of a young baby who will remain an innocent party in these proceedings.”
An independent review into the adoption process is due to report back in July.
