‘Wicked’ stepmother and ‘pitiless’ father jailed for killing six-year-old Arthur

A “wicked” stepmother has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 29 years for cruelly abusing, poisoning and murdering her partner’s six-year-old son.

Arthur Labinjo-Hughes was left with an unsurvivable brain injury while in the sole care of “evil” Emma Tustin.

Tustin was unanimously convicted of Arthur’s murder after an eight-week trial, with the boy’s “pitiless” father, Thomas Hughes found guilty of his manslaughter, after encouraging the killing.

Jailing the pair, Mr Justice Mark Wall QC said the trial had been “without doubt one of the most distressing and disturbing cases I have had to deal with”.