Twisted mum jailed for life after murdering daughter, 2, who was sexually abused by killer stepdad in torture campaign
A MUM has been jailed for life over the murder of her two-year-old daughter who was sexually abused by her killer stepdad in a torture campaign.
Little Isabelle Rose Welsh, two, suffered a catastrophic brain injury at the hands of Alexandra Walker and her boyfriend Harrison Simpson.
The toddler was left with 21 broken bones before her death on 14 September last year and had also been sexually assaulted.
Walker and Simpson have now been jailed for life with a minimum of 22 years and 28 years respectively after being convicted of murder.
Simpson was also found guilty of sexual abuse of a child, while both were convicted of child cruelty.
Teesside Crown Court was told Simpson and Walker began a relationship in the summer of 2025.
Mr Wright said the relationship was “unhealthy” and “characterised by drink on the part of Walker and drugs on the part of Simpson”.
The court heard this led to a “decline over time in the care that was being given to Isabelle”, which then “built into her being subjected to regular violence at home by these two defendants”.
Isabelle’s grandmother Claire Walker had become “seriously worried” about the youngster’s deteriorating health during the final days of her life and described her as looking “white as a sheet”.
When she messaged Walker asking whether she could pick up supplies for Isabelle from Asda, Walker replied: “Ten cans of Stella for my stress and nappies.”
The court also heard how Claire told police the toddler was chatty and intelligent and had generally been in good health up to her sustaining a broken leg for which she received hospital treatment.
After Walker and Isabelle were allowed home, the grandmother visited them and spotted a bruise on Isabelle’s back.
She told detectives she said “what the hell” when she saw it but Walker claimed Isabelle had bumped her head on the settee.
Hearbreaking footage showed the tot before she was murdered running around the garden clutching a red witch’s hat.
Just days later, Isabelle was found collapsed at the foot of the stairs covered in bruises, with “no pulse and plainly gravely ill”.
Jurors heard she had been violently shaken and slammed against a “hard, unyielding” surface on September 13 last year before passing away in hospital in the early hours of the following morning.
Richard Wright, KC, prosecuting, said: “This was no accident. It was the deliberate infliction of injury on that little girl.
”It was, say the prosecution, murder.
“Neither was the assault on Isabelle an isolated act of violence towards her.”
On the day of her daughter’s death, Walker only called 999 after being told to do so by her stepfather “long after she must have known her daughter was critically ill”, it was said.
A post mortem revealed Isabelle had suffered a catalogue of injuries – including 21 broken bones and 97 soft-tissue injuries.
She had internal tears from violent sexual assaults and there was evidence from a pathologist to say she appeared to have been swung by a limb, the court heard.
Mr Wright said: “Her death was caused by the deliberate infliction of a devastating head injury that required the application of significant force.
“Any person who violently shakes a two-year-old child before hitting their head off a hard and unyielding surface so that their skull is fractured and their heart stops beating can only intend to cause that child really serious injury or to kill her. This was an act of murder.
“But it was murder that came at the conclusion of a campaign of violence against her not over hours, or days but over weeks.
“She was beaten, her bones were broken and she was in obvious and severe pain for weeks.
“It was absolutely plain that she was being seriously abused we suggest and the only people who had access to her so as to have inflicted those injuries over that period of time were Harrison Simpson and Alexandra Walker.”
Both Walker and Simpson denied murder, allowing the death of a child, sexual assault and child cruelty.
