DAD FEARS HE’LL L NEVER GET OVER HIS GIRL’S MURDER
My Macey would be three now but she was killed by her own mother. Nothing can help when you lose a child like that
Clutching one of his daughter’s favourite teddies, Paul Hogan feels a fleeting moment of comfort. Smiling as he thinks of little Macey, he recalls her love of the outdoors and infectiously happy nature.
But that comfort is quickly replaced by an overwhelming feeling of grief, injustice and hatred.
Because Paul will never see Macey ride her bike, run around the local playground or smile up at him again.
The two-year-old was killed by her mother in her home, in a sickening revenge attack after Paul ended their turbulent three-year relationship.
In the hours before the murder, Cody Anne Jackson sent Paul, 24, a photo of Macey with the sickening message: “Sorry, just thought you deserved one last picture and memory of her.”
Now, Paul’s memories of his daughter are haunted by thoughts of her final moments. “I haven’t fully recovered, some days it hits me really hard,” he says.
“Macey would have been three now, four in March. She would have been going to school soon.
“Sometimes I think about what she would be like now, but I try to push it to the back of my mind as much as I can. Nothing can help. When you lose a child like that, nothing can help you.”
He adds: “I go through it all constantly. I’m learning to live with it better, but it’s always going to be there in the back of my mind.”
Paul, of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs, is finding ways to cope. He has signed up at a local job agency and moved on with a new girlfriend. He even hopes to have children with her one day.
But it’s taken time to get to this point. Recalling the worst day of his life, when he learned Jackson had gone through with her abhorrent threat, he says: “I was at work and the police came and arrested me, that’s how I found out.
“They suspected me as well, they had me in the cells for eight hours. It was the worst eight hours of my life.”
Paul says he had his suspicions Jackson was responsible for Macey’s death, but struggled to come to terms with the reality of it. The police released him without charge and dropped him off at his mum’s house, where he stayed for months on end, paralysed with shock.
“I stayed in my room for a couple of months, just drinking,” he says. “I didn’t really leave my bed.”
Paul left his warehouse job because he could not cope with the memories of working there while his daughter was still alive.
He has struggled to hold down a job since, having to take days off and leaving early due to his overwhelming stress and grief.
“It’s gone through my head over and over again,” he explains. “I’ve blamed myself and thought about why she would have done it. It’s horrible.”
Jackson, 20, suffocated Macey just days after Paul moved out.
“We’d been arguing quite a bit and I thought it was just best if Macey didn’t see us arguing all the time,” he says.
“We agreed I would just see Macey at the weekends.” He saw his little girl on the Friday, but by Monday she was gone.
The police arrested me, that’s how I found out... they suspected me as well
Recalling his final days with her, Paul says: “She was so happy, just wanted to play all time.
“She loved yoghurts. Sometimes it was hard to get her to eat any normal food because she loved yoghurts so much.
“She loved the outdoors. She was always asking if we could walk to the shop or go to the park.”
Jackson banned Paul from seeing Macey that Saturday and Sunday.
She bombarded him with abusive and resentful messages in the lead up to Macey’s death. One vile text said: “Savour the last ever picture... Possibly see you in court.” Paul says that rather
than pressuring Jackson and enraging her more, he thought he “would leave it a few days, to cool down”. He adds: “When she sent that picture of Macey, I thought she was just angry at the time and we’d be able to sort it out a day or two later.” But Jackson did not cool down. On Monday, October 10, 2016, paradics discovered little Macey’s unresponnsive body after Jackson made a sham 999 call, saying her daughter had stopped breathing. The trial, at Stafford crown court, heard she wrote a suicide note before the murder, saying: “I do not want to leave her behind but I can’t go on either. There’s nothing for me or Macey, life’s sh**.” She attempted to kill herself after the suicide note, as Macey lay dead in a bedroom. Police smashed their way into her home after she made the call to emergency services.
Jackson was jailed after dramatically changing her plea to guilty on the fifth day of her trial.
Sentencing Jackson in July last year to life with a minimum term of 16 years, Judge Michael Chambers said: “For a mother to kill her very young child who depends on her for protection above all others is a wicked and appalling act.”
Jackson did not acknowledge Paul’s presence in court.
He says: “I was there for the day of the sentencing, she didn’t look over once.”
Although Paul was aware the pair had problems, he says there were never any
It’s nothing, she’ll be out before she’s 40 years old – it’s not even half a life, is it?
signs during their relationship that Jackson was capable of murder.
“I never would have left Macey with her if I ever thought something like that could have happened,” he says.
Talking about first meeting her at a friend’s house party in 2013, Paul remembers the pair’s happy early days.
“It was only a couple of months in when she got pregnant,” he says. “We were really thrilled, both of us were. I got a job and everything was fine.
“We had a few arguments and stuff. We’d had a couple of break-ups and then got back together, that’s just what relawriting tionships are like sometimes.” Paul has not seen Jackson since sentencing.
He is struggling to know whether he will ever gain closure and with what he could say to Jackson, were he to see her again.
“I’d just ask her why she did it,” he says. “Why? Why would you do that to a sweet little innocent girl?” He adds her sentence provides no justice for his daughter.
“It’s nothing, she’ll be out before she’s 40 years old,” he says. “It’s not even half a life, is it?”
Paul was offered counselling for his trauma, but says having his family around him is “what’s got me through”.