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

Varley presented himself in court as a doting dad to Preston Davey but prosecution said he used adopted boy as a sexual ‘plaything’

‘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.

Wright suggested to Varley he had used Preston as a “plaything” and routinely abused him “for your own amusement and gratification”.

Jurors at the eight-week trial heard and viewed horrific, distressing evidence of the two men’s crimes, which raise wider questions about local authority adoption processes across the UK.

Varley, 37, was a teacher at South Shore academy in Blackpool. He started as a technician in the design and technology department and by 2023 he was a qualified teacher, promoted to head of year.

McGowan-Fazakerley, 32, was northern sales manager for an asset finance company who regularly commuted to Manchester. “I lived on the M6,” he said. They lived in a semi-detached house in Staining, a village just outside Blackpool.

Varley told the court he had dreamed of having children. From a young age he wanted to be “a teacher, a daddy with a Jeep who lived on a farm”.

As a gay man he “just never thought it was a possibility”. He told jurors: “I never thought I would find someone to be in a relationship with that would be stable enough to have kids.”

That changed when he met McGowan-Fazakerley who pretty much moved in with Varley from day one of their relationship, the court heard. “My whole life just changed when I met John,” Varley said.

They earned similar salaries, the trial heard, but because McGowan-Fazakerley could get bonuses, friends were told it made more sense for Varley to take a year off work to bring up any baby they adopted.

Varley was described in court as outgoing, sassy, theatrical and something of a “drama queen”. McGowan-Fazakerley was more quiet and reserved.

The couple began the adoption process during the Covid pandemic in December 2021 and completed the first stage in March 2022. Because Varley was a teacher and there were GCSEs coming up, the couple delayed the second stage by six months.

Stage two began in September 2022 and they were approved by an adoption panel in January 2023.

The baby allocated to the couple was Preston, who had been fostered from the age of five days by Sandra and Paul Cooper who had fostered many newborn babies over the course of 24 years.

They had Preston for nine months and he was, Sandra Cooper said, “a very happy baby”.

McGowan-Fazakerley had no experience of babies but Varley babysat nieces, nephews and the children of friends many times. “I felt it was going to be a breeze,” he told the court. “But it wasn’t.”

Preston was not a good sleeper. “ Sometimes he would be up 10 times in a night,” Sandra Cooper said. But all he needed was “soothing by having his head stroked”.

There was a gradual familiarisation with the adoptive parents before Preston moved into Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley’s home on 3 April 2023.

From the start, the couple struggled. The trial saw details of dozens of messages to and from Varley. Many were the message of any new parent: “exhausting”; “not having a decent night’s sleep”; “we’ve just been cleaning up projectile vomit”.

Others were more worrying: “we are struggling”; “we are questioning every choice”; “he’s just annoying”; “he’s very needy, screams all the time like he’s being killed”.

On 6 April, Varley texted his sister, a baby sleep trainer: “He’s dead meat today. Didn’t sleep last night after 11.30. Up every one and a half hours.”

Varley, by his own admission, was prolific in taking photographs and videos of Preston.

Many were innocuous, like one of Preston in his baby bouncer listening to Wheels on the Bus on the TV.

But others were disturbing and used as evidence that Varley must have been physically, psychologically and sexually abusing his child.

They included photographs showing Preston with his head and arms over the top horizontal bar of his cot and his neck resting on the bar. His lips were blue and he had liquid in his mouth. It was “unsafe” and “dangerous”, the court heard. Rather than help, Varley took pictures for more than three minutes.

Another showed an obviously tired Preston being kept awake, deliberately, with music from Moana blaring in the background. A video showed Preston being spun too hard in spinning cups.

The court heard that Preston was “no stranger” to Blackpool Victoria hospital, having been taken there three times before his death.

The first was on 25 May when he was diagnosed with a chest infection. The second was on 30 June with a fever. On 10 July Preston was back with a fractured elbow – an apparent accident for which Varley took the blame.

Varley’s friend and colleague Janet Gee recalled him arriving very flustered at her house with the baby who had a blue plaster cast on his arm.

She told the jury: “He told me how he was having harmful thoughts towards the baby in terms of drowning or suffocation.

“He was very quick to say this was something he was not going to act upon.

“I believed him, I have children of my own and sometimes your thoughts go to dark places.”

The direct neighbours of the couple said they heard the baby crying more than was usual, with McGowan-Fazakerley coming round to apologise on one occasion.

Jasmine Nuttall said the walls were thin and she remembered thinking: “Why is the baby crying so much?”

A central part of the trial was about precisely how Preston died.

Varley told his friend Gee that he had put the baby in the bath while he had a shower then realised he did not have a towel.

“So he went out and when he came back in the baby had fallen out of the bath seat and was face down in the water,” Gee said.

She remembered Varley was distressed and crying and said straight away: “I promise you, I didn’t do anything.”

The jury heard that at the hospital the child was dry, had dry hair and did not appear to have swallowed any water.

The medical evidence showed that Preston’s death had nothing to do with an accident in a bath but during police interviews, a strained, dishevelled Varley stuck to his lies.