A WEALTHY couple who killed their adopted three-year-old son by poisoning him with salt were jailed for five years yesterday after a judge called them cold-blooded and selfish.

Christian Blewitt died six weeks after being put into the care of Ian and Angela Gay, who lived in an exclusive gated community. The boy died of brain damage with the equivalent of four teaspoons of salt in his bloodstream, the highest level doctors had seen. A week after Christian arrived into their care, Ian Gay, 37, had described the boy as brainless, a vegetable and a zombie.

The couple held hands as they listened to Mr Justice Pitchers at Worcester Crown Court. They were cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter. They plan to appeal.

After the trial, Detective Chief Inspector Steve Cullen, from West Mercia Police, said: “We are pleased that justice has been done for Christian.

“It is difficult to conceive how a little boy would voluntarily eat several teaspoons of salt, and this has been backed up by experts who say a child would reject even a small quantity.”

Christian’s natural grandfather, Jim Burke, of West Bromwich, said that the Gays should have been jailed for twice as long. “You go and nick £1,000 out of a bank and you get ten years,” he said. “These people force-fed Christian with salt. I felt like throwing a brick through the telly.”

Angela Gay had known that she was infertile from the age of 16. The lack of children destroyed their eight-year marriage; her husband wanted a family, she did not. But they agreed to adopt, and remarried in 2002. By now, she was a £200,000-a-year insurance actuary. “I have always dreamed,” she told the jury, “of a child calling me Mummy.” After being given a girl to foster, the Gays were allowed to adopt a family — Christian, his two-year-old brother Nathan, and Chlöe, five months.

The children were placed with the Gays at their home in Bromsgrove on November 1, 2002. Their new life was one of a luxury they had never experienced. But Christian, suffering the consequences of neglect in his early life, failed to meet the couple’s expectations.

Ian Gay sobbed as he told of his guilt at telephoning social services a week after the children arrived to complain that the boy was a vegetable.

After ten days his wife returned to work, flouting an assurance given to the adoption panel that she would take three months off. Mr Gay had given up his job as a service engineer but he had so little experience of children that he had been sent to a nursery to learn basic childcare and was left alone in charge of the children. When his wife returned home at 7pm, Christian would refuse to accept a glass of milk from her. Gay believed his wife wanted to send the children back and their rows led them to sleep in separate beds.

On the morning of December 7, Angela Gay was upset when Christian butted, kicked and bit her. Ian Gay held him in front of her and told him to apologise but he refused. The next day Christian smeared gravy over his face, knocked the plate over and stood on his chair, laughing. Gay carried him upstairs where his wife said she found him unconscious. The boy died four days later.

The judge said the couple had decided to punish Christian by making him eat salt”. This was not done “by the sort of inadequate and unintelligent people who sadly often are sitting where you are but intelligent people who had made a deliberate choice in cold blood”.

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