I thought that you deserved one last picture of our girl
Mum’s message to ex before ‘killing toddler’
A JILTED mother sent the father of her daughter a final picture of the two-year-old before smothering her, a court heard.
Cody-Anne Jackson included a message saying she ‘thought you deserved one last picture and memory of her’ before killing Macey Hogan then trying to take her own life, it is alleged.
Jackson, 20, is accused of murdering Macey a week after the toddler’s father, Paul Hogan, had moved out of the family home.
Prosecutor Jonas Hankin QC told a jury that before suffocating Macey, Jackson had also written a note expressing her intention to take the child’s life and then her own but ‘failed to follow through’ with the suicide.
Mr Hankin said ‘socially isolated’ Jackson’s relationship with Mr Hogan, 23, reached a ‘tipping point’ on the weekend of October 7-9 last year, days after he moved out of their home in Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent.
The barrister said Jackson had sent Mr Hogan a string of messages in which she was angry and resentful towards him.
On Saturday October 8 she sent Mr Hogan a picture of Macey with a message: ‘ Sorry, just thought you deserved one last picture and memory of her’. Mr Hankin added: ‘ A similar patternwith Cody ensued calling the him next repeat- day edly and him not picking up.
‘In Cody’s mind the relationship had reached a tipping point. Any prospect of reconciliation, it seems, had evaporated.’
He said Jackson, then 19, spent Sunday alone with her daughter before dialling 999 on the Monday morning to report she was not breathing. Police found Macey’stheir way bodyinto the after house. smashing
Jackson had superficial knife wounds. A note found nearby read: ‘I do not want to leave her behind but I can’t go on either. There is nothing for me or Macey.’ Stafford Crown Court heard pathologists found Macey had suffered widespread brain damage caused by the interruption of oxygenated blood supply to the brain. Mr Hankin said: ‘The prosecution case is that Macey’s death came as a result of a deliberate smothering by her mother.’ In her defence statement Jackson claimed to have taken Macey into her own bed on the Sunday evening after she failed to settle in her cot. Jackson fell asleep beside her, having taken some prescribed medication. She said she woke later and rolled over to find Macey next to her in between two pillows, her own partially covering the ‘cold’ and lifeless child’s face.
Jackson said she then went downstairs, grabbed two kitchen knives and began stabbing herself in the bedroom because she could not live without her daughter.
She attempted to take an overdose of migraine tablets then wrote the suicide note. She tried again to kill herself before falling asleep as a result of the trauma and medication and woke in the morning and rang 999.
A recording of the call was played to the court in which Jackson told the operator: ‘My daughter is not breathing.’
After being told to start CPR Jackson let out howls of pain, telling the operator: ‘I’m bleeding from my chest, I don’t know what’s happened. It looks like I’ve been stabbed.’
When the operator asked her to focus on her daughter Jackson snapped back: ‘I’m trying, but I’ve got a stab wound!’
Mr Hogan told jurors he and Jackson had been together since she was 15 but decided to separate after growing apart.
He went to see his daughter on October 7 but after a while Jackson asked him to leave. He said he took her messages about not seeing Macey again to refer to access arrangements.
Jackson, of Fenton, denies murder. The trial continues.