• You must be logged in to see or use the Shoutbox. Besides, if you haven't registered, you really should. It's quick and it will make your life a little better. Trust me. So just register and make yourself at home with like-minded individuals who share either your morbid curiousity or sense of gallows humor.

Sugar Cookie

Veteran Member
Bold Member!
A newborn baby found dead in a small patch of woodland could have been alive when she was rolled down a steep rock face into bushes, police have said.

Officers said today they believe the abandoned infant may be the product of rape or incest.

Baby Pearl was discovered covered in bite marks from foxes and dogs just after 7am on April 4 in a small tract of land known locally as Bluebell Forest.

The child was found just 500 yards from a housing estate in Heywood near Rochdale, Greater Manchester.

Detectives named the poor child Pearl, meaning precious, because they felt it was important for her to have an identity after such a short, harsh life.

Speaking to press, Detective Chief Inspector Lewis Hughes said: 'I can only hope [Pearl] wasn't alive at the point she was left here. The alternative doesn't really bear thinking about.'

'We believe the mother may be somebody in distress,' he added.

'Whoever left Pearl here was someone with no emotional attachment for that baby. There was not a scrap of clothing on her.

His team now believe the tiny tot was carried up a hill in the Roch Valley Woods then rolled down a steep rock face into bushes. Police were forced to abseil down to retrieve the newborn's body.

A relative of the woman whose dog found the body said the woman 'has not stopped crying since.'

'It was an horrific sight. Something nobody should ever have to see,' they added.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5670881/Baby-Pearl-ALIVE-body-rolled-rock-face.html
 
Bluebell Forest sounds like it should be an enchanted place with sweet little fairies flitting about the flowers, not a place to find an abused, neglected, murdered baby chewed on by foxes.

I hope your death was peaceful, Baby Pearl, but I'm sure it was not.
 
The mum of a baby girl found dead in woodland previously faced police probes over the deaths of other children, it emerged at an inquest today.

Four of Leah Howarth's eight children have died, including baby Pearl, who was named by detectives and discovered in Bluebell Woods in Heywood, Greater Manchester, by two female dog walkers on April 4.

During the hearing in Heywood, it was heard that three of the fatalities, including Pearl, had been subject to police investigations.

The inquest heard that an inquiry involving Ms Howarth was launched into the sudden and unexpected death of a child in 2001.

The body of a newborn baby boy was found in a plastic bag on a shelf in the bathroom of Ms Howarth's then home in Fleetwood, Lancashire, in September 2015.
 
It's Waneta Hoyt for the 21st century. How they were not arrested after #3 is a mystery to me. One can be an accident, two can be coincidence, three - unless there's some kind of serious genetic problem - is pretty much sure to be intentional.
 
One’s an accident, two is just carelessness

Wait, wait— neither parent has been charged?! The Brits have a wimpy judicial system. We would have found a way to get one of them behind bars.
 
Last edited:
Prosecutors say there was not enough evidence to bring criminal charges against the parents of a baby girl whose body was placed in remote woodland.

The body of Baby Pearl, as she was named by police, was found by dog walkers in the Bluebell Woods, in Heywood, on April 4, 2018.

What followed was a three-month long investigation by police who were determined to find out how the tiny child had come to such a tragic end.
Almost a year after her body was discovered, the little girl was officially named as Pearl Howarth Hutchinson.

However the circumstances of her death, and how she ended up in in the woods, remain a mystery.
Her parents, Leah Howarth, 33, and Shane Hutchinson, 48, were arrested on suspicion of murder, concealing a birth and preventing a lawful burial in July last year.

Both were later released with no further action taken.

Greater Manchester Police presented a file of evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service but the chief crown prosecutor found ‘insufficient evidence’ to pursue a prosecution.
Due to the passage of time, it is still not known how Pearl died, or if she was stillborn.
In 2015, Ms Howarth was voluntarily interviewed by police after the body of a newborn baby boy was found in a plastic bag on a shelf in the bathroom of her then home in Fleetwood.

She told detectives she was unaware of her pregnancy and had fallen "in and out of consciousness" while in the bathroom and woke to find a deceased child between her legs.

No criminal proceedings were brought in the case and the cause of death was unascertained - but there was some evidence of a prenatal infection which may have caused some issues for the mother and child, the inquest heard.
The coroner read a narrative conclusion into the record, officially naming the previously unidentified baby as ‘Pearl Howarth Hutchinson’.


She suggested that the baby should now be buried with her deceased half siblings - which will be a matter for her parents to decide.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top