Jamie Varley, 37, who is due to be sentenced on Thursday for the murder of 13-month-old Preston Davey, will face a hellish time behind bars, a former prisoner has said
Jamie Varley will be sentenced on Thursday(Image: Lancashire Police/PA Wire)
The killer of little Preston Davey will “get got” in prison as he is the “worst” type of inmate, a former prisoner has warned.
Jamie Varley, 37, was found guilty on Monday of murdering and sexually abusing the 13-month-old baby he adopted with his partner, 32-year-old John McGowan-Fazakerley. Varley, a high school teacher, put his hands to his face in shock as the guilty verdicts were read at Preston Crown Court before collapsing to his knees, retching and vomiting.
Preston died at Blackpool Victoria Hospital in July 2023 after suffering 40 external and internal traumatic injuries over a four-month period while in the couple’s care at their home in Blackpool.
Alongside murder, Varley was found guilty of two counts of assault by penetration, five counts of cruelty to a child, grievous bodily harm, sexual assault of a child, 13 counts of taking indecent photos or videos of a child, one of distributing an indecent photo of a child, to his co-accused, and one of making an indecent photo.
McGowan-Fazakerley was found guilty of allowing the death of a child, two counts of child cruelty and one count of the sexual assault of a child.
With both defendants due to be sentenced on Thursday by Mr Justice Turner, an ex-prisoner spoke to the Express about what Varley can expect in jail.
Rich Jones, a former British Army veteran who served seven years for conspiracy to supply cocaine, said the nature of Varley’s offences would make him a target in prison. “These are the worst,” he said. “The lowest of ones. Like Ian Watkins, the one from Lost Prophets, he’s on that kind of level.”
Mr Jones said Varley would likely be sent to a high-security Category A prison, speculating that it might be somewhere like HMP Wakefield, often referred to as “Monster Mansion” due to the large number of gruesome killers, terrorists and high-profile sex offenders housed there.
He added: “He will need to be under protection because he will be got to. And as you see, they get got to anyway, look at Huntley. Ian Watkins was slashed in the throat a while ago, so they can be found.”
Despite likely being placed on a vulnerable prisoner wing, Mr Jones said he would still be at risk.
“With his level of offence, even if he is in segregation, there will be others in there, still really moody offences, but they will still be looking for a bit of kudos to get him because of the severity of what he has done,” Mr Jones, who is now the published author of his Long Lost Soldier series, said.
“There is even a hierarchy within the sex offenders – and he is at the very bottom of that. So yeah, he will get done.”
He added: “Another way people will access him is if somebody on the wing has a debt of some kind, and they want a vendetta, the person they owe money to might say: ‘Well look, I will wind your debt off if you go and do him in your cell.’ So there’s loads of things that could potentially happen, and none of them are going to be good.”
Following the verdicts, Karen Tonge of the Crown Prosecution Service said it was one of the “most shocking and horrific cases” she had dealt with in her career.
She said: “Jamie Varley and John McGowan-Fazakerley had a responsibility to care for and protect baby Preston. They violated that responsibility and 13-month-old Preston was abused with sickening ease.
“It is difficult to comprehend how the very people who should have loved him could inflict such awful physical and sexual harm on an innocent child. No child should have to go through what Preston went through in the last four months of his short life and I cannot begin to imagine the toll this has taken on those that loved Preston. My thoughts remain with them all.”
