Mum who murdered son, 5, by 'poisoning him with anti-depressants' is jailed for life

A woman who murdered her five-year-old son with anti-depressants has been jailed for life.

On Friday, Claire Scanlon, 38, was given the minimum term of 18 years for killing Dylan Scanlon, whose badly bruised body was found on her bed in Oldham.

Prosecutors told the court the mum had first informed her uncle in a nearby property her son was "not breathing” or “moving" at 6.15pm on 31 December 2021.

Dylan was pronounced dead three minutes after paramedics arrived at the house.

Pathologists found the boy had 64 separate injuries and a large amount of antidepressant drug Mirtazapine in his system, which experts claimed could have been fatal.

Scanlon had told paramedics her son fell from the ladder to her attic the day before they arrived, and she had checked on him every 15 minutes before his death.

But after police arrested her, they found a note saying “Don’t let them see us, just cremate us,” which prosecutors said showed she'd planned to die alongside him.

Manchester Minshull Court also heard that Scanlon had inherited Huntington’s disease from her mother, which she had called a “death sentence”.

Prosecutor Lisa Wilding had also told the court Scanlon became “angry and depressed” at the breakdown of her relationship with Dylan’s dad, Gary Keenan, in 2020.

She said the mum was “obsessed” with Gary, and in the two months before her son’s death, she'd sent voicemails and messages to him multiple times a day.

On 30 December, she sent a final message that said: “You’re just showing all you want to do is act like me and Dyl weren’t in your life and crack on, make a new life with your new bird.

"So you go and do that. I’ll solve it for you. Go and enjoy your new life with her.”

Ms Wilding told the court Scanlon had picked up a repeat prescription for Mirtazapine, an antidepressant, 11 days before Dylan died.

A blood sample found that Dylan had 9,951 micrograms of the drug per litre of blood in his system, which would be consistent with other fatalities from the drug.

Christopher Madden, a forensic toxicologist, couldn't tell how Dylan had ingested the mirtazapine and whether it was taken in one go or administered on multiple occasions.

Mr Keenan provided a statement to the court during the hearing, revealing his grief at never being able to see his son again.

He said: “There will always be a massive hole in our hearts at the loss of Dylan, and we miss him every day.”

Judge Mrs Justice Yip told Scanlon - who refused to attend the court - that while her condition may have affected her behaviour, it was no excuse for murdering her son.