LOGAN’S FINAL TORMENT KEPT SECRET BY HIS EVIL KILLERS
WHEN the jury delivered their guilty verdicts in the trial for the murder of little Logan Mwangi justice was seen to be done. But even though his mother Angharad Williamson and stepdad John Cole were found guilty of his murder on Thursday we still don’t really know what happened in those final days of Logan’s life. And perhaps we, and most cruelly Logan’s father Benjamin Mwangi, never will.
The murder of an innocent child with his whole life ahead of him is shocking enough let alone one which involves the level of brutality demonstrated by Williamson and Cole and a third defendant, who cannot be named for legal reasons due to his age, who was also found guilty.
Twisting the truth and changing stories all the way through the trial, none of the three killers had the decency to come clean or show the tiniest shred of dignity to allow Logan’s name to rest in peace. Instead the evil mother and stepfather turned on each other in court.
Logan was a beautiful, bright and innocent five-year-old little boy. How did he end up dumped in a Bridgend river with more than 50 injuries?
Everybody who knew him agreed Logan was a good child: cheerful, polite and vibrant. Relatives and friends describe a zest for life, sense of fun and affectionate nature. His final months must have been a terrifying, painful ordeal – his final days even more so.
On July 21, just over a week before he died, Logan tested positive for Covid. The isolation rules imposed by 40-year-old Cole and Williamson, 31, at her home in Lower Llansantffraid, Sarn, Bridgend, were cruel. Logan was forced to stay in his room, curtains closed and face the wall when meals were brought to him. A stairgate set up outside his door meant he couldn’t escape. Logan became anxious and self-harmed by pinching or biting himself, which he also did when he was frequently placed on the naughty step. Tragically his isolation period ended the day his body was found in the River Ogmore on July 31.
Despite the hours of conflicting evidence heard in court it all pointed to how on Thursday, July 29, something catastrophic happened and set in chain a series of events from which Logan would never recover. It was a trivial matter – seemingly a row over a damaged stereo which Logan was blamed for. Indeed it appeared so trivial, in fact, that it took four police interviews before callous Williamson mentioned it. She eventually claimed Cole punched Logan in the stomach and the youth used a martial arts move to sweep him off his feet, causing him to hit his head on the floor.
The events are described differently by the two adults.
Cole admitted he “shook Logan by his arms” after he had “wiped a booger on the stereo and banged the keys on the laptop”. But he denied hitting Logan that day and said he did not see anyone else hurt the boy.
Williamson said her partner had punched the little boy twice in the stomach.
She said: “I didn’t think it was that hard... The injury Logan sustained on the Thursday were not the ones that killed him. He would have been in pain throughout the Friday and we would have seen that.”
She admitted that when she checked on her son later that evening she noticed “a little red mark on his belly”. She said she gave Logan “a drink, a cuddle and some Calpol” before telling him everything was going to be OK.
On that same Thursday the youth’s social worker Debbie Williams made an unscheduled visit to Williamson’s flat. She was not let in on the pretext that Logan was in isolation. No-one apart from the three killers know exactly what condition Logan was in at that moment. And it’s only those same three who know what happened on the night of Friday, July 30, and early hours of Saturday, July 31.
The fact their stories seemed to change on a whim, with Williamson suddenly changing tack through the trial saying she’d had enough of the lies and wanted to tell the truth, makes it even harder to believe what each is saying. Her account was all part of an elaborate strategy where the “endgame” was to protect herself, the prosecution said.
Asked why she didn’t call for help for her son in the three days between July 29 and 31, Williamson said: “Because I didn’t think it was the punch which killed him... I’m not saying what I did was right but I didn’t think those were the hits which killed.”
She insisted it was Cole who killed her son while she was sleeping on the night of July 30. But the prosecution said she knew how he died because she was awake and was there at the time – as proven by CCTV footage showing his bedroom light being turned on and off repeatedly. There was also CCTV footage of Cole and the youth carrying Logan’s body away to dump it like rubbish.
Williamson told the court: “I never wanted my child dead, I never wanted....” before appealing to Cole across the court, saying: “Just tell the truth, Jay.”
Pathologist Dr John Williams performed a post-mortem examination on Logan. He told the jury he’d found 56 external injuries on Logan’s body in total as well as internal injuries more normally associated with a fall from height or a car crash. The court heard there was evidence of severe blunt force injury to the abdomen including tearing to the liver and bowel and stripping of the duodenum from anatomical attachments.
Dr Williams later added: “The court heard there were features indicating a period of survival following injuries being sustained which may have been up to several hours.....The findings do not indicate death occurred immediately after injuries were sustained.”
The prosecution, led by Caroline Rees QC, said Logan had been subjected to a “brutal and sustained assault” prior to his death.
In her closing speech, Ms Rees said: “Life in the months, weeks and days leading to his death must have been a real struggle for Logan who, even on his own biological mother’s own evidence, sunk to the bottom of the pecking order of that family in that small flat.
“In the 10 days before Logan’s body was discovered he had been kept like a prisoner in his small bedroom in the flat you saw, a room likened by Williamson as a dungeon, curtains closed and a barred child gate to stop him from exiting and moving about. The little boy was made to face the wall as food was delivered to him... What must he have thought about the way life was in those 10 days?”
She said it “beggared belief ” that not one of the defendants were aware of how badly injured Logan was at the time of his death.
For all her words during the trial about having “nothing in my life” and the “only thing” left being to “get justice” for her son, whom she frequently referred to by the nickname “Loges”, Williamson did nothing to fill in the gaps about how he actually died.
Her actions, along with Cole’s and the youth’s, and their attempts to cover up the crime in the hours following Logan’s death and the subsequent web of lies and deceit that followed are only an indication of their callousness and lack of remorse.
Cole, of Maesglas, Ynysawdre, Bridgend, said he woke during the night to hear Williamson screaming that Logan was dead but he did not ask how it had happened and, he claimed, simply carried the body out to the river.
After putting little Logan into a Nike bag he left the house at 2.43am to dispose of his stepson’s body after Williamson allegedly told him: “Just get him out of here.”
The youth said he accompanied Cole to the river believing he was fly-tipping rubbish.
For her part Williamson said she slept the night through and woke to find that Logan was missing and had no idea how he died. It wasn’t until her fifth police interview she claimed Cole and the youth had attacked Logan.
The jury found that all three stories were lies and that all three defendants had killed Logan and tried to cover up their dreadful crime.
Speaking just minutes after the verdict, Logan’s father Benjamin Mwangi called the world a “colder and darker place” without his son.