Chilling moment Alfie Steele’s killer parents threaten to burn down neighbours’ house after locals report them to cops
THIS is the chilling moment Alfie Steele’s evil parents threatened to burn down their neighbours’ house after locals reported them to the cops.
Monster mum Carla Scott, 35, and her fiancé Dirk Howell, 41, were this week jailed for a total of 59 years for the killing of the young lad.
After a six week trial at Coventry Crown Court, the pair were found guilty subjecting Alfie to a campaign of abuse at his home in Droitwich, Worcestershire, during lockdown.
In acts described as “sinister” punishments, Alfie’s beatings spanned over a period of 18-months.
And the fatal attack saw him held under cold bath water.
Concerned neighbours had reported the couple to the police several times before his tragic death.
CCTV from August 2020 shows Scott approaching the home of one worried local to had made one of the complaints.
The footage, captured on a Ring Doorbell, show Scott being instructed by Howell to tell the neighbours to “Mind your own f***ing business”.
She is seen knocking on the door but there is no answer.
As she leaves Howell can be heard saying: “Little d***heads yeah, see what happens now (inaudible) burn your house.”
Just days later a neighbour told police: “It sounds like my neighbours are being bad to their kid in the bath, like they are really hurting them.”
Alfie was ultimately found lifeless in a dark and “dirty” room on February 18, 2021.
The defenceless schoolboy died after his lifeless body was pulled from a bath having suffered more than 50 injuries.
The court heard how the cruel pair thought it was acceptable to hit Alfie with “belts, or a slider, like a heavy-duty flip flop, and use other more sinister forms of punishment.”
The brutal discipline techniques included Alfie being “dunked” in cold baths.
He was also made to stand outside at night and have water thrown over him.
Among his wounds, some abrasions on the left side of his face were allegedly caused by “direct pressure”, with jurors told they would “hear evidence about him being held under water”.
In July 2019, Scott started dating Howell and within six months they became engaged, though they had made no plans for a wedding.
The relationship was “not a happy one” for Alfie, added Michelle Heeley KC, with family and neighbours raising with authorities “concerns within a short period of time of these two getting together”.
Ms Heeley said Alfie died after being “beaten and deliberately put in a cold bath” and he had been “made to endure a life that no child should lead”.
She added: “Alfie had not simply fallen asleep in a comfortable bath. “He had been deliberately and repeatedly assaulted, beaten, and put into and held under a cold bath as a punishment.
“That unlawful course of conduct, that unnecessary punishment, was carried out jointly by Carla Scott and Dirk Howell.
“It was their actions that led to his death”.
Ms Heeley added: “Dirk Howell believed in discipline, on the face of it not a bad thing when bringing up young children, but whereas you might think of discipline as being the naughty step, or having set bedtimes, for Dirk Howell discipline was far more physical and psychological.”