Behind the facade of Jamie Varley, the ‘wicked, arrogant liar’ who abused and murdered his baby son

‘T hey were an ordinary couple,” said one neighbour. Their baby “was happy, he was smiley, he was beautiful,” said a friend. There were nobig concerns about the teacher and the sales manager who were doing what thousands do every year – adopting a child. In reality, Jamie Varley and his partner, John McGowan-Fazakerley, were child abusers and Varley murdered the baby boy they adopted, Preston Davey, when he was 13 months old. Preston’s start in life was difficult. His mother was Sarah Davey who, it can now be reported, was jailed as a child for murdering a 71-year-old woman. He was placed with foster carers when he was just five days old and at the age of nine months he began living with Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley. Over four months he was “routinely ill-treated, sexually abused and physically assaulted,” the prosecutor Peter Wright KC told a trial at Preston crown court. On 27 July 2023 the baby was taken to hospital after Varley said there was an accident in the bath. He died soon after. No evidence was found to support Varley’s account but a postmortem did find 40 external and internal trauma injuries to Preston consistent with “forcible penetration” and sexual abuse. Varley, described by one police officer as an “arrogant, self-centred liar”, had a sexual interest in the baby, using Preston for his own gratification which led to murder, a jury decided. …