Mother jailed over cot killing

A mother who left her baby's body in a cot for two weeks after her crack cocaine addict boyfriend beat the child to death was today jailed for three-and-a-half years.

Emma Back, 22, of Bexhill, East Sussex, was convicted at Lewes Crown Court of cruelty and conspiring to prevent the burial of her son Sam.

Today she was sentenced to three years for the neglect and to six months for conspiring to prevent his burial. The sentences to run consecutively.

Aaron Goodman, 27, the son of a City bank administrator, formerly of St Leonards, East Sussex, was jailed for life at an earlier hearing after he was found guilty of murdering Sam at the couple's flat in December 2000.

Goodman, who was not the child's father, had pleaded guilty to conspiring to prevent the lawful burial of Sam, who was killed days before his second birthday. The little boy's body was found in his cot, wrapped in a grubby white duvet. Above him on the wall was a Winnie-the-Pooh poster spattered with the child's blood. Hidden nearby was the crack cocaine pipe his mother had shared with Goodman.

When Sam's body was discovered the traces of cocaine in it led a forensic scientist to conclude that he had been engulfed by a "high and very unpleasant concentration of smoke" in his final moments.