Karl McCluney was ‘fed up’ at having to babysit on his 15th birthday – this beautiful little girl paid the ultimate price

McCluney murdered two-year-old Demi Leigh Mahon in 2008. He’s now been freed from jail

A babysitter who battered a two-year-old girl to death on his 15th birthday has been freed from prison.

Karl McCluney kicked, punched and bit Demi Leigh Mahon at a house in Eccles, Salford, in July 2008, leaving her with 68 injuries and suffering brain damage. She spent two days on life support before the machine was switched off with her parents at her bedside.

McCluney was found guilty of murder at Liverpool Crown Court in July 2009 and jailed for 15 years. Judge Mr Justice Sweeney described the attack as ‘savage’.

He said: “You were extremely fed up with having to babysit because it was your birthday, nobody had planned anything for you and you did not think that was fair. At the flat, Demi Leigh was crying and you became angry with her. Unsurprisingly, given your anger, she cried more.

“You got angrier and angrier until you lost your temper altogether. You then, over a period, according to you, of about 10 minutes, you hit her many times. You were large and powerful, she was only a small child and stood no chance against your onslaught.”

Karl McCluney

The judge then told McCluney he would not be released ‘until such time as it is decided you no longer pose a danger’, adding: “When that might be is, at present, impossible to tell.”

Demi Leigh’s mother Ann Marie McDonald left the toddler with McCluney while she went to cash her child benefit. The teenager took her to the park before carrying out the attack at his home in Liverpool Road.

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He didn’t explain his actions, the court heard, apart from alluding to the fact that Demi Leigh’s behaviour was annoying him.

Now the killer, whose sentence expired in April 2024, has been freed from jail following a two-day parole hearing which heard evidence from two psychologists, a psychiatrist, two social workers and McCluney himself. In its decision summary the Parole Board said the now 31-year-old, ‘held extreme shame and daily remorse for the devastating impact his actions continued to have on family members’.

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The hearing was told that at the time of the murder he had a ‘propensity to use violence’ when he ‘experienced difficulties in managing extremes of emotion’. It also heard that during the early part of his sentence his behaviour was ‘problematic’ and that he had also spent time in a ‘secure hospital setting’.

But since 2017, the panel said, he had ‘coped better’ and there had been ‘no evidence of violence against others’ for the past 11 years. McCluney had ‘engaged well’ with psychologists and had ‘made progress in the areas of communication, problem solving, dealing with stress and learning about behavioural boundaries’.

Ruling McCluney could be released, the panel said it was ‘satisfied that imprisonment was no longer necessary for the protection of the public’. He will be subject to a number of licence conditions, including having to live at a ‘designated address’, a curfew and an exclusion zone to prevent contact with Demi Leigh’s family,