Logan Mwangi’s mother drastically changed her appearance in a desperate bid not to be recognised by fellow prison inmates after murdering him.
Angharad Williamson, 31, has been jailed alongside her boyfriend John Cole, 40, and his stepson Craig Mulligan, 14, for the murder of her five-year-old son in July last year.
Logan was found dumped in the River Ogmore near his home in Bridgend, south Wales, after suffering catastrophic injuries similar to those seen in car crash victims.
In body-worn camera footage released by police, Williamson can be seen with bright pink hair as she screams and sobs, telling police “I haven’t done anything wrong” after they arrive at her home to arrest her on suspicion of murder.
But images from ITV documentary The Murder of Logan Mwangi show the mother with dark brown hair just weeks later.
During the murder trial at Cardiff Crown Court, jurors heard evidence from Joanne Brooks, a prisoner at HMP Eastwood Park in Gloucestershire, about Williamson’s dramatic transformation after arriving there.
Brooks, who was on the same cleaning team as Williamson, said the mother had changed her name to “Angie” and told her she had been offered an “identity change”, Wales Online reported.
She told the court: “She asked me if she knew who she was, had I heard of her. I hadn’t heard of her, I didn’t know her name or anything about her and she basically told me why I should know who she was…
“She said: ‘Have you heard of the Bridgend baby, the boy who was murdered and thrown in the river? I was his mother’... It was like she was telling me what she had bought from the shops.
“She said she was in there for her own protection… She said she had been offered an identity change, dying her hair, changing her name, going from glasses to wearing contact lenses.”
During her own evidence, Williamson also described being taken to the prison after she was charged with perverting the course of justice.
She told the court: “I turned up, I got bombarded with abuse from the other girls. ‘Child murderer, kill yourself before we kill you, wrong’un, n****’.”
Williamson was placed on the prison’s medical ward and was on 24-hour watch for a month.
Describing what the prison authorities allegedly told her, Williamson added: “They can’t protect you from everything, they isolated me off from everybody.
“They changed my name from Angharad to Angie and where I had bright pink hair, they said ‘Dye your hair, here are some glasses, change your image, we’ll try to blend you in as much as we can’.”
Williamson was told by a judge at Cardiff Crown court that she will spend at least 28 years behind bars, while Cole will serve a minimum of 29 years’ custody.
Mulligan was sentenced to a minimum of 15 years’ detention.