Foster Mom Had ‘Gut Feeling’ Something Was Wrong With Baby’s Adoptive Parents Accused of His Murder

A trial has begun in England for two men accused of sexually assaulting and killing the little boy they had adopted. Preston Davey was born in 2022 and placed into foster care nearly a week after his birth. For the first 10 months of his life he lived with Sandra Cooper and her husband. But then the couple got the news that they needed to begin preparing for him to be adopted. Things went well, and the couple who were adopting him seemed wonderful. Everyone knew it was going to be wonderful, but it wasn’t. About four months after he was adopted, the boy was dead.

The foster mom had plenty of experience.

Lancashire Police

Sandra Cooper fostered 43 children over a span of 27 years, Daily Mail reported. When she first met Jamie Varley and his partner, John McGowan-Fazakerley, she had no doubt they would be wonderful parents for Preston.

Things changed, however, days after the boy went to live with them. According to Cooper, the couple canceled two of the three scheduled follow up meetings.

“I called the social worker and said, ‘I feel like something is wrong,’” she testified in court, per Daily Mail.

“I had a gut feeling. I said, ‘I feel like they are hiding him from me.’ When we started to get different reasons (for why they couldn’t attend) I started to get worried.”

She recalled the last time she saw Preston alive.

Lancashire Police

“It was made difficult for us but I would’ve walked to the ends of the earth for that visit,” Cooper said, per ITV. “He just looked a bit stiff, a bit blank, but we had not seen him for a while. I was just really glad to see him.”

A week after the visit, the couple lodged a complaint against Cooper, according to Daily Mail.

“I took that as the day I would never see Preston again,” she shared. “The complaint wasn’t justified but I thought it was a reason for them to say, ‘We’ve fallen out with her,’ and I would never see him again – it was like a day of mourning for me. I was devastated, I cried all day.”

The complaint was never acted upon.

Four months later, the boy was dead.

David J Harris Jr./Facebook

Preston died on July 27, 2023, ITV reported. Varley was home alone with Davey on the day he died and had taken video of him with his phone. 

In the video, the 13-month-old looked like he had just collapsed, and his lips had a blueish hue. Prosecutors told the jury that Varley was silent in the clip and made no effort to help the baby. 

Nearly two hours later when McGowan-Fazakerley came home from work, they took the baby to Blackpool Victoria Hospital. At that point, Preston was already unconscious and in cardiac arrest. Medics were unable to save him.

Varley claimed he had put the boy in a baby chair in the tub and then left for about four minutes. When he came back, the boy was allegedly drowning. The baby, however, was dry, had dry hair and didn’t seem to have swallowed any water, ITV reported.

A postmortem examination showed he had suffered from multiple non-accidental, internal and external injuries. The internal injuries were caused shortly before his death. His official cause of death was acute upper airways obstruction. Either he was smothered with a hand or soft fabric, or something was put in his mouth, according to ITV.

Varley pleaded not guilty to murder, manslaughter, two counts of assault by penetration, five counts of cruelty to a child, grievous bodily harm, sexual assault of a child, 13 counts of taking indecent photos or videos of a child, one of distributing an indecent photo of a child to his co-accused, and one of making an indecent photo, the BBC reported.

McGowan-Fazakerley pleaded not guilty to allowing the death of a child, three counts of child cruelty, and one count of the sexual assault of a child, per the BBC. The trial is ongoing.

If you suspect child abuse, you can call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453 (1-800-4-A-Child) or go to Childhelp.org. The hotline is available 24/7.