‘Ex-partner murdered my baby by using him as a club to beat me’

EVERY night Samantha George falls asleep with a baby’s cardigan underneath her pillow. She takes it out, kisses it gently and replaces it carefully where she found it before lying down in bed – but sleep never comes easily.

The cardigan belonged to her baby son Bradley, who died hours after an unimaginably brutal attack at the hands of his father nearly 20 years ago.

One night in November 1999, 22-year-old Samantha was at home in Merthyr looking after Bradley, her older five-year-old and her 10-year-old cousin when her estranged, abusive partner broke into her home.

Christopher Rees savagely beat Samantha and the three children in a wild, drunken and jealous rage.

Samantha later told police that Rees had grabbed eight-week-old Bradley by the legs and used him “as a club” to strike her as she tried to get to her feet.

Rees also hit the infant’s head against walls in a bedroom in the house, struck the five-year-old boy with an iron, and punched and bit Samantha on the face.

Bradley died of his injuries just a few hours after the attack. Samantha and her son were badly hurt, but survived.

Rees, then 24, of Blanche Street, was given a life sentence for murder in 2000.

Samantha, now 42, said she has recently been told Rees, who would now be 43 years old, has been given short periods of release on temporary licence and has been moved to an open prison in England.

She and her mother Marilyn George, 59, said they are now living in fear Rees may return to the area, and are angry he may soon be granted his freedom.

“I just don’t understand how he can live with himself, day in, day out, knowing what he has done,” Samantha said.

“I couldn’t. I’m not evil like that. If I had ever hurt a child I would never be able to forgive myself. I wouldn’t want to live if I ever hurt a child like that.

“He’s only 40-odd. He could meet someone and they could end up having a baby or whatever and that poor person would know nothing about him.

“My understanding is that if a person is put on a register for child abuse, that means the public have the right to know.

“He killed my child and wherever he is placed the public have a right to know.

“I had a letter from probation saying ‘he’s made good progress’. I was shocked by this. If you have done something like that, how could you change?”

Samantha met Rees towards the end of 1998. She said their relationship only lasted about four weeks, but he quickly became violent with her and she later found out she was pregnant with his child.

“He’s absolutely crazy, he would walk up to me and butt me in the head with no regret whatsoever.

“He is a very jealous person. He once swung a hammer at me because I was talking to my other son’s father to make arrangements for him to see him. He was jealous of everyone. He was mental.”

Samantha went to a women’s refuge because she was so afraid of Rees. Once baby Bradley was born, she had settled into a home of her own.

But Rees continued to pursue her, turning up suddenly outside places she would visit with her son and bombarding her with telephone calls.

Five days before the attack, a recommendation was made to install a police alarm at her house.

On that night in November 1999, Samantha was at her home alone on the Gurnos estate, Merthyr, looking after Bradley, her older son and cousin.

“The children were in bed,” Samantha said. “As I picked the baby up out of the Moses basket to go upstairs, I got to the front door. It knocked and he [Rees] poked his head through the letterbox, demanding to come in.

“He was saying ‘Let me in’, and I said go away from here.”

Rees began trying to smash the glass window of the door down to let himself inside.

Samantha took Bradley upstairs and into the bedroom where the other two children were sleeping. She placed the baby on the bed and sat against the door, hoping to barricade them inside, and called the police.

But Rees managed to break the glass in the door to climb through and came up the stairs to the bedroom.