Preston Davey’s short, tragic life was bookmarked by murder. Ended at the hands of Jamie Varley, the Daily Mail can today reveal that it had begun 13 months earlier in the arms of a woman of similarly flawed character.

The boy’s mother is convicted murderer Sarah Davey, one of the most notorious killers of recent times.

In 1998, aged just 14, she and 15-year-old Lisa Healey befriended a pensioner and then callously ended her life. Their youth and the nature of the crime shocked the nation.

The pair tortured 71-year-old Lily Lilley by squirting shampoo in her eyes, cutting her with a knife and tying a gag around her mouth so tightly that her dentures were forced down her throat, suffocating her.

They then crammed her body into a bin half-full of rubbish before walking it through the streets of Failsworth, a town near Manchester.

Mrs Lilley’s corpse was dumped into the rat-infested waters of the Rochdale Canal.

After the killing, Davey and Healey made hundreds of calls from her phone and used her pension money to buy crisps and chocolate.

A year later Davey was convicted of murder and handed an indeterminate sentence by a judge who described the killing as ‘unspeakably wicked’.

‘You have not shown the slightest trace of remorse or regret,’ the judge told the teenagers. ‘You are both hard young women who have committed a terrible crime which almost defies belief by right-thinking people.’

Preston Davey’s short, tragic life was bookmarked by murder, by his mother and then his adopted parents

No remorse: Sarah Davey was handed an indeterminate sentence by a judge who described the killing as ‘unspeakably wicked’

Convicts: Sarah Davey with Gary Nolan at the murder trial

Finally released from prison in 2024, Davey – whose bad girl reputation saw her nicknamed Scary Sarah by fellow inmates – has spent the past seven weeks back in court, where the 42-year-old watched much of the harrowing evidence of her son’s final months via video in an annexe away from the main courtroom at Preston Crown Court and sobbed as the verdicts were returned.

She had given up her baby boy at five days old after bringing him into this world at 7.03pm on June 16, 2022.

Delivered at Manchester’s Wythenshawe Hospital, Davey had been transported there from Styal Prison in Cheshire. That she was still locked up nearly a quarter of a century after being jailed was down to her own personal failings.

She had first been released from prison in March 2013.

But within months she was back behind bars after testing positive for cocaine, breaching the terms of her licence.

She would be recalled seven times for breaches, but during the brief periods when she was out of jail, she twice fell pregnant. Davey’s first child was born in 2019 and adopted by her mother, Debbie. She then conceived Preston in late 2021.

His father is Gary Nolan, 43, who attended the court proceedings with Davey. Also in jail at the time Preston was born, he has a record of seven racially aggravated offences and six assaults on emergency workers. He was jailed for 12 months in 2022 for a racist attack on a tram security worker. Nolan declined to comment outside court.

Why Davey was recalled to prison is unclear, but her battle with drugs was a continuing problem. While expecting Preston, the court heard she was prescribed Subutex, a medication primarily used to treat opioid addictions.

Preston was born prematurely, at 36 weeks, weighing 5lbs 7oz and his newborn checks included a blood test to determine if he had been born with a Subutex dependency, from which he would then have to be weaned off. Fortunately, he seemed unaffected. When his mother was returned to prison, Preston was taken into care by Oldham council, who then placed him with experienced foster parents Sandra and Paul Cooper.

He would remain with them for nine months until he was handed over to Varley and McGowan-Fazakerley.

According to Debbie, 66, she and her daughter were opposed to this placement – and she claims it happened despite her offering to care for the boy alongside his older sibling.

But, she says, that was ruled out because she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

Debbie told the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview: ‘We wanted social services to allow Preston to stay with foster parents until I was better but they wouldn’t allow it.

‘If the council would have kept Preston in foster care, he could have been with his sister when I recovered. It would have only been for a few extra months. If I hadn’t been ill, he would have been here with me.

‘I wrote letters to him saying how much I loved him. I said that I was sorry and I would fight for him. He was loved and he was wanted… he would have been alive [had he stayed with foster carers].’

Lonely widow: Lily Lilley’s body was dumped in a canal after she was tortured and killed by Davey

Preston Davey died aged just 13 months after being suffocated and sexually assaulted

Preston Davey with his mother Sarah Davey, who carried out a horrific crime as a teenager 

The Daily Mail understands that the council has no formal record of a request being made for the adoption process to be put on hold while Debbie recovered. ‘Preston was loved,’ she insists. ‘I was there at the birth, and I have loved him from that moment, I don’t want people to think he was just put into care. I wanted to look after him. I look after his sister and I wanted them to live together.

‘I wouldn’t have her anywhere else and I certainly wouldn’t have had him anywhere else if I was well enough to have him.

‘I didn’t know that I was going to live because it was touch and go.’

She explained: ‘When he was born … I was feeling OK because I’d not yet started the treatment. But I knew I was starting chemo the following week.’ Sure enough, Debbie says the effects of chemotherapy left her feeling ‘very poorly’. As well as losing her hair she also had to have a mastectomy, or surgery to remove a breast. She has since made a good recovery.

By all accounts, the months Preston had with the Coopers were good ones.

‘He was beautiful, he was happy, he laughed, he smiled really early,’ Mrs Cooper told the court. ‘He was just having a really nice life.’

While Sarah was allowed to visit Preston when he was in foster care, all the time social workers were looking for a permanent placement for him.

Debbie says that neither she nor her daughter supported the plans.

‘Sarah spoke to the social worker telling her that she didn’t want Preston adopted,’ she said. ‘She begged the foster mother to keep Preston but was told she could not because she was only a foster mother.’ She added: ‘Sarah just had a feeling something wasn’t right. A mother’s intuition. She told me, the social worker and the foster mother.’

Of course, the sad truth is that the question of who would care for Preston only arose because Sarah was not in a position to look after him herself. Inmates with babies can be held in mother-and-baby units, but only for a few months.

Given that Davey was serving an indeterminate sentence there was theoretically no limit to how long she could have remained inside. On top of which was her history of drug-taking. And while memories may have dulled, the callous murder of Lily Lilley prompted national soul-searching about how two teenage girls could act with such cruelty.

An eccentric widow, Mrs Lilley lived in Failsworth with just her cats for company. In her loneliness she would invite children into her house, giving them sweets and pocket money. But older children started to exploit her vulnerability, demanding cash for cigarettes and threatening to smash her windows if she refused.

Davey grew up nearby, raised by Debbie and bricklayer Paul Davey. A ‘quiet’ girl, when her parents separated her behaviour deteriorated. Secondary school records show she was in trouble 68 times for bullying, truancy and causing disruption in class.

When Lisa Healey and her family moved to Failsworth in 1998 the pair became firm friends.

Varley, left, and McGowan-Fazakerley, right, were convicted after a trial of over seven weeks

Healey’s troubling behaviour had begun aged 11 after her mother witnessed an armed robbery and gave evidence for the prosecution, leading to the family becoming the victims of a vicious hate campaign. Her mother was beaten and her father bludgeoned with a baseball bat in front of her.

From that moment on, it was said, she was out of control, running away from home, sniffing petrol, smoking cannabis and acquiring criminal convictions.

Davey later told police that she found it ‘exciting’ staying out all night with her new friend.

‘Sarah was never any real trouble until she started hanging around with Lisa,’ a neighbour recalled at the time.

After running away from home, the pair called on Mrs Lilley in the early hours and she invited them in. Each girl would blame the other for killing the grandmother. Bruises to her head and body were consistent with being punched and kicked and there were numerous knife injuries.

She eventually died when a bandage was wound so tightly around her head that it forced her dentures down her throat, choking her. After dumping Mrs Lilley’s body, the girls spent four days living in her house, frittering away their victim’s money.

It was Debbie who informed the police Mrs Lilley was dead after her daughter confessed. But she stood by Sarah, who told her: ‘I swear to you mum, I only moved the body.’

At the time of their conviction neither girl was identified because of their age. But following a failed appeal in 2001, an appeal court judge ruled they would serve at least eight years – and allowed their names to be made public.

Healey was back in the headlines in 2009 when it emerged that she had become pregnant while on day release. She is now believed to be living under a new identity.

As for Davey, in 2011 photographs emerged of her in prison. They showed her tanned, tattooed, heavily made-up and dripping with cheap jewellery. At the time, the 27-year-old was being held in Askham Grange open prison, being prepared for release with nights out and shopping trips.

Outraged inmates told the Daily Mail she was allowed to visit tanning salons and had her nails done fortnightly. They also claimed that she revelled in her notoriety.

In 2013, she was released from jail and moved back to Manchester.

As we know, she didn’t stay out for long. Finally released from jail in 2024, parole board documents revealed the ‘progress’ she was said to have made in managing her emotions and developing ‘healthy relationships’.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said she would be subject to close supervision for the rest of her life and can still be recalled to prison if she breaches the strict conditions of her release.

Described as having been left ‘broken’ by her son’s death, before the trial began Davey paid tribute to him. ‘I never ever wanted to let you go,’ she said. ‘I love you so much, I still do and always will. We will get justice for you I promise – my gorgeous baby boy Preston.’

A child dealt the hardest start in life – and the most terrible of endings.