What killer Jamie Varley now has in common with Lucy Letby, Wayne Couzens, Myra Hindley and Harold Shipman
Paedophile and killer Jamie Varley has joined a list of some of the country’s most infamous criminals after he was given a whole-life order for the murder and sexual abuse of his adopted 13-month old baby he treated as a “plaything”.
He now has something in common with a list of notorious criminals.
Jamie Varley, 37, a former head of year at a Lancashire high school who latterly lives in Grimsargh, Preston, and his partner, ex-public schoolboy and sales manager John McGowan-Fazakerley, 32, sexually assaulted and physically abused Preston Davey after adopting him aged nine months, before his murder following a sex assault by Varley four months later at their former Blackpool home.
McGowan-Fazakerley was also jailed for 25 years for allowing Preston’s death, on April 27 2023, after both were convicted by a jury on Monday following an eight-week trial at Preston Crown Court.
Varley’s is the third whole-life order given this year, after double murderer Shaine March was told he would spend the rest of his life in prison for the murder of his girlfriend while on life licence for a previous killing.
Sharaz Ali was also given a whole life order earlier in March for killing his ex-partner’s sister, nieces and nephew by setting fire to their home in Bradford in 2024.
Triple killer Kyle Clifford was handed a whole-life order in March last year for the murders of his ex-partner Louise Hunt, 25, her sister Hannah Hunt, 28, and their mother Carol Hunt, 61.
The same order was also handed down in January to double murderer Steve Sansom, for the “bloodthirsty” killing of Sarah Mayhew, when he was out of prison on life licence for another murder.
Other criminals who have been sentenced to whole-life orders in recent years include child serial killer Lucy Letby, Sarah Everard’s killer Wayne Couzens, necrophiliac David Fuller, and Ali Harbi Ali, who murdered MP Sir David Amess.
Around 70 criminals are serving a whole-life order, some in secure hospitals.
They will never be considered for release unless there are exceptional compassionate grounds.
Only four women have faced such a punishment: Letby; Myra Hindley, who died in 2002 and was the girlfriend of Moors murderer Ian Brady; and serial killers Rose West and Joanna Dennehy.
Letby was jailed in August 2023 for what a judge described as a “cruel, calculated and cynical campaign” of baby murder in the hospital where she worked as a nurse.
Gun fanatic Louis De Zoysa was handed a whole-life order in July 2023 after shooting Metropolitan Police custody sergeant Matt Ratana while handcuffed in a police cell in 2020.
In December 2022, Damien Bendall began a whole-life order for murdering his partner Terri Harris, 35, her daughter Lacey Bennett, 11, her son John Paul Bennett, 13, and Lacey’s friend Connie Gent, also 11, who was staying for a sleepover.
A year earlier, Fuller was handed the same sentence for the murders of Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce in 1987, and the sexual abuse of more than 100 dead women and girls in hospital mortuaries.
Milly Dowler’s killer, Levi Bellfield, is serving two whole-life orders – for her murder, the killings of Marsha McDonnell and Amelie Delagrange, and the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy.
Other notorious criminals serving whole-life orders include Michael Adebolajo, one of the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby; Mark Bridger, who murdered five-year-old April Jones in Wales; neo-Nazi Thomas Mair, who killed MP Jo Cox; serial killer Stephen Port; and Reading terror attacker Khairi Saadallah, who murdered three men in a park.
In the past, home secretaries could issue whole-life tariffs, as they were previously known, but these are now determined by judges.
Before they died, Brady, Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe and doctor Harold Shipman – thought to be one of Britain’s most prolific serial killers – were also handed such a punishment.
Under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, which became law in 2023, the government expanded the use of whole-life orders for the premeditated murder of a child. The reforms also allow judges to hand down the maximum sentence to 18 to 20-year-olds in exceptional cases, such as for acts of terrorism leading to mass loss of life.
Manchester Arena bomb plotter Hashem Abedi, who was convicted of conspiring with his suicide-bomber brother Salman Abedi over the 2017 atrocity, avoided a whole-life order because he was 21 at the time.
Southport killer Axel Rudakubana could not be sentenced to a whole-life order by law because he carried out the murders of three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class nine days before his 18th birthday.
After turning 18 he was jailed for a minimum of 52 years in January last year – one of the highest minimum custody terms on record, and thought to be the longest imposed on a killer of his age.