Life imprisonment for student who murdered and concealed newborn

Jia Xin Teo, 22, has been given a life sentence with a minimum prison term of 17 years after being convicted of murdering her newborn baby. Teo was found guilty last week of the murder, which took place at her student flat in Coventry on March 6. When delivering the sentence, Mrs Justice Tipples stated her conviction that the student had planned to kill the infant after giving birth in private. The judge also specified that she “did not accept” Teo’s testimony during the trial, in which Teo claimed to have heard voices instructing her to kill or harm the baby. During the trial proceedings, the court was informed that Teo had traveled from Malaysia to study at Coventry University in early 2024 while pregnant. On March 4, Teo gave birth to her full-term baby at the flat on Raglan Street. She then placed the infant into a cereal box, subsequently inside a sealable plastic bag, and finally concealed it within a suitcase. In her sentencing remarks at Warwick Crown Court on Friday, the judge declared: “You knew that, by sealing that plastic bag, your baby would certainly die and you thought that, by hiding her body in a cereal packet in your luggage, no one would ever find her body.” She further asserted, “I am sure that your baby was alive for over four hours before you killed her.” Justice Tipples highlighted that Teo consistently denied having given birth when seeking medical assistance, but later admitted to police that she had hidden the body following an intimate examination. The judge continued, stating, “I am sure you decided to give birth all on your own as you were determined that no one should know you were pregnant, and no one should know you had had a baby,” adding, “This was because you had decided that you were going to get rid of your baby as soon as she was born, and then no one would ever know you had had a baby.”