Oliver Mailey, 26, confessed to violently shaking his eight-week-old son, Abel-Jax, resulting in the infant’s death. He claims to have acted out of a sudden fit of madness when the baby was crying.
At the beginning of their relationship, Mailey was skeptical when his girlfriend Mollie Gorton became pregnant after only five months. Despite his doubts, he was stunned to discover that the baby was indeed his. As a result, the couple had to face financial difficulties, so they decided to cut back on cannabis use and Mailey got a job as a laborer to make ends meet.
Mailey, from Burnley, reported enduring dental discomfort for several years, which prevented him from sleeping. Unable to acquire treatment from the NHS, he relied on high-potency codeine to mitigate his symptoms.
When Abel-Jax was born in October 2021, Mailey expressed that being a father was more stressful than he anticipated. On November 27, 2021, Mailey decided to take on the care of Abel-Jax in the evenings so his partner could get some rest for the following day. During the night, he would feed, change, and burp the baby roughly two or three times a night.
Mailey later confessed that he had violently shaken the infant back and forth approximately five times, resulting in broken ribs.
Mailey said immediately after shaking him, Abel went limp, stopped breathing and turned grey. He called Mollie at work, and when she didn’t answer the phone, called Mollie’s cousin, who was a mum, to ask for advice. He managed to speak to both women and showed them Abel on a video call. Both told him to call an ambulance.
Mailey recounted that upon shaking Abel, the baby went limp, ceased breathing, and turned a deathly grey. He then contacted Mollie, who was at work. When she didn’t pick up the phone, he contacted her cousin who was a mother in order to seek advice. He connected with the two women via video call and showed them Abel. Both of them advised that he call an ambulance.
Gorton hurriedly ran home from work, despite the harsh winter conditions, while Mailey tried to perform CPR on baby Abel. Nonetheless, he never mentioned to anyone that he had shaken Abel. In court, he shared that he was convinced that CPR would bring him back to life.
Abel was taken to Royal Blackburn Hospital where the medical staff conducted examinations to determine the reason behind Abel’s collapse. They administered tests for meningitis and sepsis, yet when Ms. Gorton questioned her partner if he had shaken their son, Mailey denied his involvement.
He consistently denied any involvement when his parents were arrested on charges of causing grievous bodily harm, and when they were later accused of murder after Abel’s passing on November 30.
He only confessed to killing Abel in December 2020, and insisted he had not shaken him until the first day of his trial at Preston Crown Court. ‘I was just really scared’, he expressed in court. ‘I didn’t intend to hurt Abel. I know it’s really bad. It eats away at me every day.’