A couple who were jailed for killing a boy with salt cleared their names yesterday as their lawyer urged prosecutors to stop bringing cases that hinge on expert medical evidence.

Ian and Angela Gay endured 15 months in prison as hated child-killers, but they were acquitted of manslaughter and cruelty to Christian Blewitt, 3, after a retrial.

Their four-year battle to prove their innocence ended when a fresh expert emerged to say that the boy might have been suffering from a rare intolerance to salt, as reported in The Times last April.

The couple hugged in the dock after being acquitted. “Finally justice has been done,” Mrs Gay said outside Nottingham Crown Court.

Bill Bache, their solicitor, said that they had been through the most appalling nightmare and urged prosecutors to rethink the handling of mysterious child deaths. “There has been a succession of cases brought on the basis of medical evidence which is not clear-cut because very often it’s on the edge of medical science and we still don’t know all the answers,” he said “I don’t think these kinds of cases should come to court. They are so equivocal in terms of science that I think people should leave them alone right at the beginning rather than to put people through all this trauma.”

He said of the couple: “Their experience has been absolutely terrible, having spent some time in prison, where they were subjected to appalling threats and abuse. Thank goodness it’s all over for them.” He said that the Gays now just wanted to “get away and fall apart a bit”.

Prosecution sources responded by pointing out that their case against the Gays was that the couple had physically put the high level of sodium into the child. It was the defence that had brought expert evidence into the courtroom to provide a medical explanation.

The Gays were a wealthy childless couple in their thirties from Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, who were given Christian to adopt by social services. A month into a probationary period, Mr Gay rushed the unconscious boy to hospital, where he was found to have the equivalent of four teaspoons of salt in his system. He died on his natural mother’s lap in December 2002.

The Gays were arrested while Christian was still alive after a doctor heard Mr Gay call the dying boy “a liability”. A postmortem examination showed that the child had 11 small bruises to his scalp and a cut on his mouth.

A jury at Worcester Crown Court originally convicted the couple of manslaughter after accepting that they must have fed him salt for being naughty. The jury was not told that he had a history of adverse reactions to salt. His grandmother said: “It causes something in his body to react and makes him go funny.”

The Gays’ relatives scoured the internet for clues. An expert emerged with an understanding of the condition of “salt diabetes”, which has featured only three times in medical history. The Court of Appeal ordered a retrial. Dr Glyn Walters told the new jury that the boy’s osmostat, the part of the brain regulating the amount of naturally produced salt in the body, could have reset, making Christian retain more salt. “People can live normal lives because they adjust to the new level the sodium resides at. They carry on until something goes wrong.”

Sodium poisoning trials

Marianne Williams was cleared by a jury of poisoning her sickly 15-month-old son with the equivalent of three teaspoonfuls of salt because she was unable to cope

Petrina Stocker was convicted of manslaughter after spiking her 9-year-old son’s hospital drip with salt as doctors struggled to find the cause of his abdominal pain and lethargy

Susan Hamilton was convicted of using salt to poison an 8-year-old girl who survived but suffered permanent brain damage. Hamilton intends to appeal using fresh medical evidence

Source: The Times

e-mail Dominic Kennedy at: dkennedy@thetimes.co.uk

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