‘Wicked’ stepmother and ‘pitiless’ father jailed for killing six-year-old Arthur

A “wicked” stepmother has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 29 years for cruelly abusing, poisoning and murdering her partner’s six-year-old son.

Arthur Labinjo-Hughes was left with an unsurvivable brain injury while in the sole care of “evil” Emma Tustin.

Tustin was unanimously convicted of Arthur’s murder after an eight-week trial at Coventry Crown Court, with the boy’s “pitiless” father, Thomas Hughes, found guilty of his manslaughter, after encouraging the killing.

The 29-year-old was jailed for 21 years, at the pair’s sentencing hearing on Friday.

In her victim impact statement, which she read in court ahead of the sentencing, Ms Hughes said Arthur, as a “happy, contented, thriving seven-year-old”, would “be alive today” had her son not met Tustin.

The secondary school teacher added: “It is also clear that Arthur was failed by the very authorities that we, as a society, are led to believe are there to ensure the safety of everyone.”

As the hearing began, Mr Justice Mark Wall QC said Tustin had been taken to court for her sentencing but had “refused to come up” to the dock.

Jailing the pair, he said: “This cruel and inhuman treatment of Arthur was a deliberate decision by you to brush off his cries for help as naughtiness.”

Addressing Tustin, who he said had made a “calculated” decision to kill, he said: “You are a manipulative woman who will tell any lie, and shift the blame on to anyone, to save your own skin.”

He added: “You wanted Thomas Hughes so he could provide for you and your own children but did not want to be troubled by Arthur any longer.”

The judge called Hughes’ “encouragement” of his girlfriend’s actions “chilling”.

He added: “You were Arthur’s father, in a position of trust, and bore primary responsibility for protecting him.

“He was extremely vulnerable and you lied to his school in last days of Arthur’s life to protect both you and Ms Tustin.”