Sex killer who suffocated boy sentenced to life – Leslie Bailey
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Times, The (London, England)-June 15, 1991
Author: Michael Horsnell

LESLIE Bailey, a paedophile convicted of killing the teenage runaway Jason Swift, was sentenced to life imprisonment yesterday for the homosexual murder of Barry Lewis, aged six.

Bailey, aged 37, admitted the murder of the boy, who was snatched from the street and taken to a council flat where he was sexually abused by up to eight men. Bailey suffocated the boy with a blanket when he stirred as he was driven from London to the countryside for burial in a shallow grave near Waltham Abbey, Essex.

Sentencing him at the Central Criminal Court, Judge Denison said: “Anyone who has listened to what you and others did to this six-year-old child can have only one reaction, a combination of sickness, horror and indeed despair that any human beings can sink to those depths.”

Bailey is already serving 15 years for his part in the death of Jason Swift, who was killed after a homosexual session at the same flat where Barry was later to suffer. Jason, aged 14, disappeared from his sister’s home in 1985. His body was found within a week of Barry’s and in the same area of Essex. He too had been drugged, stripped and buried in a shallow grave.

Barry’s mother Venetta broke down in the public gallery as John Nutting outlined the details of his death in 1985. His body was found by a farmer.

Pathologists discovered sedatives in his body. One drug, commonly used by homosexuals as a muscle relaxant, was in doses so large that they would have induced unconsciousness.

Police enquiries brought forward witnesses who remembered seeing the boy with a man near Waltham Abbey. The man’s car had run out of petrol and he was seen with a petrol can carrying Barry along the road. A schools inspector who gave him a lift expressed concern but Bailey said the boy was not well and had taken some medicine.

In June 1987, a man with a history of indecency with boys made certain admissions about his involvement in Jason’s death. From him, police enquiries led to Bailey, who admitted his part in the homosexual abuse of Jason at a flat on the Kingsmead Estate in Hackney and then helping to dispose of his body.

He and three other men were convicted of involvement in Jason’s death in May 1989 and Bailey was jailed for 15 years for manslaughter and conspiracy to commit buggery. Bailey had in 1987 denied involvement in Barry’s death but when police again interviewed him in prison last year he admitted what had happened at the flat.

The court was told that Bailey, who lived on the Frampton Park Estate in Homerton, east London, had convictions for buggery and theft.