Mum now accepts husband killed son
The mother of a 5-year-old autistic boy who died after suffering horrific head injuries “accepts” that her husband killed him.
Leon Jayet-Cole was rushed to hospital after suffering a serious head injury at his Christchurch home on May
27, 2015, and died in hospital the following day.
A post-mortem examination revealed he’d suffered 44 injuries, including severe blunt force head trauma, a broken jaw, spinal bleeding and retinal haemorrhaging.
Stepfather James Stedman Roberts was charged with his murder. The trial was set down to begin on October
31, 2016, but he died in July that year. The boy’s mother Emma Roberts,
40, originally stood by her husband, telling her midwife, while her son was still fighting for his life, that there was “no way [ James] could’ve done it”.
But after Roberts was charged with murder, and she had an independent pathologist explain to her the full autopsy report, she changed her mind. “I now accept that James killed Leon,” she told an inquest into Leon’s death in Christchurch yesterday.
“It took me some time to come to that conclusion, as I trusted him and I loved him.”
Child, Youth and Family said it had worked with the family but investigations “did not establish evidence of physical abuse”.
Coroner Brigitte Windley is presiding over an inquest into Leon’s death.
Detective sergeant Chris Power, who was second-in-charge on Operation Lambeth, the investigation looking into Leon’s death, said Roberts was a regular user of drugs, including heroin and cannabis.
He considered it “likely” that he was affected by drug-taking when Leon was in his care the day he suffered his fatal injuries.
Of Leon’s 44 injuries identified in the post-mortem examination, police were not able to say if all the injuries occurred on the same day. The inquest has been adjourned. A second hearing could be held at a later date.