Set to be freed after 7 years, the mum who killed her son and hid him in a suitcase
SHE is one of Scotland’s most notorious child killers – the ‘demon’ mother who battered her three-year-old son to death and hid his body in a suitcase.
But Rosdeep Adekoya, 40, could walk free from jail in two months after spending only seven years behind bars.
The mother of five has served just two-thirds of the 11-year sentence handed down in August 2014.
She had been charged with the murder of Mikaeel Kular but pleaded guilty at the High Court in Edinburgh to a reduced charge of culpable homicide.
Now Scottish Prison Service insiders have confirmed her earliest date of liberation is scheduled for May.
News of the imminent release was met with anger from those who joined in the huge community effort to search for the missing child seven years ago – after Adekoya spun a web of lies about his disappearance.
Former neighbour Shazia Chaudry, 40, said: ‘Seven years seems nothing to me for what happened to that child.’
Hundreds of volunteers from around Adekoya’s home in Drylaw, Edinburgh, joined police in a desperate search for the boy in January 2014 after he was reported missing by his mother. But the search was halted two days later when
‘A shorter sentence than 11 years just feels so soon’
police found the youngster’s body inside a suitcase, buried in woods 25 miles away in Kirkcaldy, Fife, close to Adekoya’s aunt’s house.
After she pleaded guilty to culpable homicide, thousands signed a petition calling for the beauty therapist to face a murder charge.
After she was sentenced, Mikaeel’s devastated father Zahid Saaed said she should have faced life in prison and branded her a ‘demon’ and a ‘monster’.
Over the past two years she has been spotted on shopping trips and visiting the library in Stirling town centre, not far from the independent living unit linked to HMP Cornton Vale, where she has been housed in preparation for her release.
She even dyed her hair and lost weight in an effort to conceal her identity but was forced to move from the ‘halfway house’ back to the main prison after her comfortable lifestyle was exposed.
Last night, Mrs Chaudry, whose son, Zohaib, was 20 months old at the time of the killing, said she was still haunted by the cruelty Adekoya inflicted on Mikaeel.
Seven years on, Zohaib is nine, studying in Primary 5 and ‘thriving’. Mrs Chaudry added: ‘To think about everything that my son has achieved and that has been taken away from Mikaeel, it breaks my heart. Perhaps her behaviour has been exemplary but I’m thinking from a mother’s and the community’s point of view.
‘A shorter sentence than 11 years just feels so soon.
‘My son is thriving, he loves to swim, he loves his football, he enjoys the Xbox and he’s got lots of friends. To see him developing over the years, it saddens me to know that got taken away from that boy because of his mother.’
Police found that Adekoya, the daughter of a GP, had carried out internet searches before the killing, including ‘I find it hard to love my son’, ‘I love all of my children except one’ and ‘get rid of bruises’. She also looked for an answer to the question, ‘why am I so aggressive with my son?’.
When she reported him missing, Adekoya told police that Mikaeel, who had a twin sister, must have climbed on a stool to unlock the front door of their flat.
But in a later interview she broke down and said: ‘It was an accident and I panicked. I am going to go to the jail.’
She later led police to the spot where she had buried her son.
When she was jailed, Scotland operated an automatic release policy for prisoners serving four years or more, meaning that after two-thirds of a sentence they could be eligible to be freed early.
Her liberation in May comes after fears in 2019 that she was about to be released even earlier.
It followed the discovery that she was among eight women guilty of murder, wilful fireraising, assault to severe injury and misuse of drugs who were being housed in units outside the prison.
An investigation by The Scottish Mail on Sunday found the prisoners had their own keys and travelled into the community without a chaperone or electronic tag.
Reports prepared ahead of Adekoya’s case found that she suffered from depression, particularly before Mikaeel’s death, as she was ‘overwhelmed’. She was also described as party-mad and allegedly left her children alone to go to nightclubs and take cocaine.
At the time of her sentencing, Mikaeel’s father, a chef from Fife, said that his former partner should ‘suffer every day’ for her actions.
Social services were also criticised after it emerged that Mikaeel was twice taken into care but handed back to his abusive mother.
A Scottish Prison Service spokesman said: ‘We do not comment on individual prisoners.’