Joanne Sharkey, 55, who killed her newborn baby in 1998 has been spared jail after court hearings confirmed that her thinking had been “impaired” by mental illness.
Joanne was handed a two-year prison sentence, suspended for two years, after admitting manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility over the death of her days-old son, whose body was found wrapped in bin bags in woodland in 1998.
In 2023, detectives made a breakthrough when a routine cold case review found that the DNA of Sharkey’s first-born son, Matthew, was a close match to that of the baby boy found 25 years earlier.
Matthew’s DNA was uploaded to the national database after his arrest for an unrelated case years earlier which helped provide police with a valuable link to the 1998 case.Matthew’s mother,
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Joanne, a former council worker was later tracked down by police and arrested on suspicion of murder in 2023 after DNA samples proved she was the mother of the baby.
Sharkey who had been living with the secret for 25 years before being caught was suffering from undiagnosed postnatal depression at the time, after the birth of her first son in July 1996, the court was told.
She had kept her second pregnancy a secret from everyone including her husband, with whom she rarely spent time because of their work patterns.
Sharkey was sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for two years, and told she must undergo mental health treatment.
Judge Justice Eady, passing sentence told Joanne; “You had returned to full time work after maternity leave and seemed to be coping, but that was a façade.
“You were in fact suffering from post-natal depression.
“This was not a case of the baby blues but a far more sustained period of depression which impacted on you physically and mentally.”
