A mum who murdered her baby son before going on to kill her young daughter has been sentenced to life behind bars

Lesley Dunford, 37, murdered her baby son Harley on August 27, 2003, and was charged with the murder in October last year.

Seven-month-old Harley was found dead in his cot at the family’s former seaside home in Camber, near Hastings, East Sussex.


In June 2012, Dunford was jailed for seven years for the manslaughter of daughter Lucy who died from asphyxia.

The court heard she wrote a confession to Harley’s murder while in prison, in which she said ‘something clicked in her’ causing her to ‘push his face into the mattress until he stopped breathing’. 

The court was told that Dunford’s husband Wayne, who is in the process of divorcing her, had forgiven her and ‘wishes her well in the future’.

Speaking after the sentencing, Mr Dunford, 58, said his ‘gullible’ wife should be in a hospital and not a prison where she might be ‘bullied and taken advantage of’.

The crimes took place at the family home in Camber, East Sussex. Pic: Google Maps

Harley’s death was not treated as suspicious until Dunford admitted the killing to prison staff in 2014 while serving seven years for the manslaughter of her daughter, the Old Bailey heard. 

Sentencing, Mr Justice Baker said: ‘The reality is, had you not confessed to killing Harley whilst in custody, it is highly likely there would not have been a police investigation into his death and you would not have faced prosecution for murder.’

Sussex Police investigated the case

Prosecutor Philippa McAtasney QC said she was only charged after making a series of confessions to staff at Drake Hall women’s prison in Staffordshire in June 2014, claiming she had been suffering post-natal depression.

Before then, Harley’s death had been put down to staphylococcal pneumonia and no action was taken.

When Lucy died in ‘very similar circumstances’ in February 2004, the defendant turned to her local vicar and said: ‘It’s happened again, it’s happened again.’

At the time of both killings, Mr Dunford, 58, had been out of the house at work, the court heard. 

It was while she was serving her manslaughter sentence that she admitted involvement in both deaths to prison staff, saying she was ‘riddled with guilt’.

She told officers that she had been having ‘flashbacks and nightmares’ about what she had done.