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Baby killer pleads guilty to bashing mum

Mervyn Kenneth Douglas Bell

The man labelled one of WA’s most evil killers, after he snatched, raped, tortured and murdered his partner’s baby son, has been handed another long jail term for the savage beating he inflicted on her in the moments before he disappeared with the infant.

Late last year, Mervyn Kenneth Douglas Bell was jailed for life, with a minimum of 27 years behind bars, for his horrific treatment of 10-month-old Charlie Mullaley which was described by Justice John McKechnie as WA’s worst crime in a decade.

Today, he was again handed a significant custodial sentence, after pleading guilty to causing grievous bodily harm to Charlie’s mother Tamica.

Bell was given a four-year-and-10-month jail term for the assault. But he will have to serve no extra time, as the jail term for the assault will run concurrently to the sentence for the murder.

The assault on Ms Mullaley happened in March 2013 on the Broome street where the couple lived, after an argument about alleged infidelities.

WA’s Supreme Court heard how Bell followed Ms Mullaley up the street before savagely beating her on the verge outside a neighbour’s house.

During the attack he stripped Ms Mullaley naked, leaving her cowering and bloodied until the neighbour came to her aid.

She suffered severe bruising to her face, back and stomach, a laceration to her kidney and a badly bruised spleen.

It was as Ms Mullaley was being treated by paramedics, and spoken to by police, that Bell persuaded another neighbour to hand over Charlie to him.

Bell denied sexually assaulting and murdering the baby during the next 15-hours, which ended when he sped into the Fortescue River Road House with the dead boy in his arms.

But Justice McKechnie rejected his story that the baby had fallen out the car, and convicted him of murder.

Today, District Court judge Patrick O'Neal said the attack on Ms Mullaley was "prolonged" and "persistent", but had also been overshadowed by the horror of Bell's subsequent murder of Charlie.

It was also revealed that reports conducted about Bell had revealed a disturbingly high risk of him reoffending.