A woman has been found guilty of murdering her newborn baby when she was 15 to prevent her family discovering she had been pregnant.
Paris Mayo, now 19, gave birth to her son, Stanley, alone and in silence in the living room of her home in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, while her parents and brother slept upstairs.
She then assaulted the baby so violently that he suffered fractures to his skull and brain damage, and when he later showed signs of life Mayo stuffed cotton wool balls into his mouth to suffocate him before putting his body into a bin bag.
During a five-week trial at Worcester crown court, Mayo claimed she did not know she was pregnant until minutes before her child was born on the evening of 23 March 2019.
She said she did not call for help despite suffering terrible labour pain because she was worried her mother would be disappointed and her father angry.
Mayo denied killing Stanley, who was born at full term weighing almost 8lbs (3.6kg), claiming the skull fractures must have been caused when he “fell out” of her as she gave birth standing up.
She said she put the cotton wool down the baby’s throat not to harm him but to clean fluid coming out of his mouth and also said the umbilical cord had been wrapped around the baby’s neck.
But the prosecution alleged Mayo must have known she was pregnant but chose to deliberately conceal it because she was always planning to kill the baby.
The jury found her guilty of murder by a majority of 10 to two. She will be sentenced on Monday and was remanded in custody.
On the morning after she killed Stanley, Mayo asked her brother, George, to put the bag containing his body into the bin because it was full of sick. Noticing the bag was heavy and blood-streaked, her mother, Coralie Mayo, looked inside and saw Stanley’s body.
When Coralie was on the phone to the emergency services, she could be heard telling her daughter: “You could have told me darling, you could have told me. Poor baby. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Mayo, who appeared in court on Friday wearing a black T-shirt, a black-and-white patterned skirt and white Converse trainers, cried in the dock as the jury of five men and seven women returned its verdict.
The trial judge, Mr Justice Garnham, told the jurors it had been a “difficult and stressful case” for them to deal with and said they could return to see Mayo sentenced on Monday if they wished.
The senior investigating officer for the case, DI Julie Taylor, said: “Paris Mayo, who was 15 years old at the time, claimed Stanley was born cold, did not make any noise and hit his head on the floor when he was born.
“She did not alert anyone to the birth of Stanley, or the fact he had died. She claimed she did not know she was pregnant at the time.
“A jury found Mayo was in fact responsible for his death and attempted to conceal her pregnancy from those who could have, and would have, supported her.
“The death of a newborn baby is utterly heartbreaking, even more so when the person who is responsible is the baby’s own mother.”
The jurors had been told they could also consider a charge of infanticide, but took eight hours and 38 minutes to convict Mayo of murder.
