Father who got custody of daughter to boost benefits then beat her to death is jailed for life

A father who won custody of his daughter to boost his benefits only to beat her to death in a ‘relentless and sadistic’ attack has been jailed for life.

Carl Wheatley, 31, had boasted to a work colleague that he would get a two-bedroom home and £1,700 in benefits if he won custody of his daughter, Alexa-Marie Quinn, a court heard.

But the father-of-four beat his four-year-old daughter over a ten-day period before she finally succumbed to her injuries at the home in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, on 12 March 2014.

And a judge called the ‘final and fatal’ attack on the young girl ‘relentless and sadistic to a horrifying degree’ as he jailed Wheatley for a minimum of 21 years.

                    

                          Alexa-Marie Quinn died on 12 March 2014 (Picture: SWNS)

‘You were very aware of what you were doing to that little girl,’ said Andrew Bright QC.

‘You kept her indoors and out of sight, so others didn’t see the injuries you had caused.

‘Your repeated assaults on her were to such an extent that they can only be described as acts of sadistic violence by the end of that period.’

The court heard that Wheatley Googled ‘what glue can I use to put teeth back in’ and ‘how to reduce swelling’.

                                    

          Experts could not agree on whether Wheatley was on the autistic spectrum (Picture: SWNS)

Wheatley claimed he had called emergency services two minutes after his daughter stopped breathing. The court heard, however, that the girl may have been dead for hours.

Professor Rupert Risdon, who carried out the post-mortem, said he had never seen such injuries to a child that young.

There were 65 bruises on her body, he said. The 66th caused her death.

The trial heard that Wheatley suffers with ADHD, but experts could not agree if he was on the autistic spectrum.

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