Jason Owen, now 42, was convicted in 2009 of one of Britain’s most sickening crimes of recent years — the brutal torture of an adorable little boy named Peter Connelly, who was just 17-months-old when he died after suffering more than 50 serious injuries in his brief time on Earth.
The child, better known in Britain as “Baby P,” suffered his horrifying wounds at the hands of his own mother, Tracey Connelly, who pleaded guilty to causing Peter’s death, as well as her boyfriend, Steven Barker, who was also convicted of “causing or allowing” the death of Peter Connelly — as well as, in a separate trial, of raping a 2-year-old girl .
Convicted along with the pair was Barker’s older brother, Jason Owen, a member of England’s neo-Nazi National Front, drug addict, and convicted arsonist.
But now, according to a report in Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper this week, Owen is a free man living under an assumed name who has fashioned a new life for himself as a fitness expert, personal trainer, and “life coach,” with a beautiful, blonde girlfriend by his side.
Police found little Peter dead in his crib on August 2, 2007. He had turned blue and was covered in blood. According to the boy’s autopsy, he had been punched in the face, knocking out a tooth, which he then swallowed. His fingernails were pulled out with pliers, and he endured a broken back and eight broken ribs.
The case horrified Britain both for the child’s unimaginable suffering inflicted by his monstrous caretakers, but by the fact that social service agencies and even doctors repeatedly missed signs of the violence the boy was enduring and never removed him from the house of horrors in London’s lower-income Tottenham neighborhood.
A similar case of extreme child abuse resulting in the death of a 1-year-old surfaced in Indiana just last week.
But according to the reports in the British media — which have not publicized Owen’s new name — the convict who reportedly brutalized his younger brother as they were growing up and their 82-year-old grandmother when the pair moved in with her as adults, has adopted a new outlook on life since being released from prison
The Daily Mail reported that Owen’s now-deleted Facebook page contained numerous upbeat sayings, such as, “People were created to be loved. Things were created to be used. The reason why the world is in chaos, is things are being loved and people are being used.”
Another Facebook status update on the page of “Baby P” convict Jason Owen read, “I just want to be happy, surrounded by good people who love me for who I am.”
[Images: London Metropolitan Police, Wikimedia Commons, YouTube]