Peter Connelly

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Peter Connelly's last day alive, he was failed by even the police who had tried to protect him. On August 2, the police told his mother that no further action would be taken against her due to the suspicions of her abusing Peter. That day, Peter would receive one final blow that would knock out one of his teeth and cause him to stop breathing. The tooth would be found later, in his stomach. Peter Connelly was found dead in his cot the next morning. Peter's mother was arrested as well as her boyfriend. Police went to her house to do a search and found that the mother who had claimed to be a "damned good mum", was far from. Having been raised by a drug addicted mother, she knew all about social workers and how to manipulate them.

 

Peter was tortured and left with 50 injuries including a broken back. Barker even set his Rottweiler on him. Sometime after 19 July, Peter suffered injuries to the fingers of his right hand including loss of soft tissue to his right middle finger. Months, before his death he suffered a fractured tibia. Up to two weeks before his death he also suffered s rib fractures. The pathologist found seven fractures to Peter’s front of the third to ninth left ribs. Considerable force would have been needed to inflict these injuries because a child’s rib is very pliable and they were inflicted as they result of very forceful squeezing of Peter’s chest. About three or four days before Peter’s death he suffered a broken spinal cord. This was an inflicted injury and the most serious and significant suffered by Peter before his death. It was caused when his back was forcefully held over a knee, banister or side of the cot. It required a large amount of force which had been uniformly applied to the spine, equivalent to that sustained in a car crash. On August 2 Peter sustained a forceful knocking of a tooth into his mouth which was ingested. The forceful knocking could have caused the upper spine injury to re-bleed and in turn could have affected respiratory and cardiac functions. It could have been the immediate cause of Peter’s death.

 

Post mortem further revealed, ten injuries to the head, face and ears including a torn frenulum indicating another forceful inflicted injury, a raw injury to the gum and an area where the skin of the left ear had been split and pulled away from its base, consistent with the action of gripping the lobe and pulling. Five injuries to the back and chest. Three injuries to Peter’s hands including the removal of a fingernail. Four injuries to legs and feet including the apparently deliberate removal of the nail of the right big toe and significant weight loss

 

Tracey Connelly is expected to walk out of jail after being granted parole. She was jailed indefinitely and ordered to serve a minimum of five years in May 2009 for causing or allowing her son Peter’s death, but the Parole Board believes she is no longer a danger to the public. Connelly had admitted doing nothing while Peter was tortured to death by her boyfriend Steven Barker and his pedophile brother Jason Owen. Owen was freed on license in 2011 but returned to jail in April this year after breaching parole conditions. Barker was given an indefinite sentence with a tariff of ten years. Barker is now serving a life sentence for raping a two year old girl.