10 January 1997 Evil child batterer Ruth Neave was the mother from hell A junkie, emotional cripple and “inadequate psychopath,” who terrorised her three children beyond belief has been jailed Last night she was finally behind bars after admitting cruelty but being cleared of killing her strangled six-year-old son, Rikki. Murder hunt chief Detective Keith Chamberlain said: “It would be improper for me to comment on the verdict other than to say that if any new evidence is presented, it will be thoroughly investigated.” In an almost unparallelled litany of systematic cruelty to Rikki and his two older sisters, Neave: BATTERED her children nearly senseless. SQUIRTED washing-up liquid down Rikki’s throat after forcing his head back. As the youngster tried to spit out the liquid, he said pathetically: “Mummy, I love you.” BURNED him on the neck with a cigarette, and kicked him black and blue about the head. BRANDED his forehead with the word IDIOT written in green felt ink – and ordered him not to rub it off. FORCED him to stand with his nose touching a wall while she repeatedly tapped him on the head. PICKED her eldest daughter up off her feet by the throat. BURNED one of the girls on the hand with a lighted cigarette to teach her not to play with matches. LOCKED a daughter up in urine-soaked rooms for hours as a punishment. The outside door handle was either tied to a banister or the inside handle removed. BRUSHED one of the girl’s hair so hard she screamed, then hit her on the head so violently the brush broke in two. LET one daughter stand naked in the window of an upstairs bedroom screaming for attention. She ‘wrote ‘IDIOT’ on his forehead, dangled him off bridge, and kicked him Rikki was found strangled 500 yards from his home on Peterborough’s rundown Welland esate in November, 1994. His naked body was laid out in a star position which suggested links to the occult. Yesterday his 28-year-old mother wept with relief in the dock at Northampton Crown Court as a jury unanimously cleared her of either his murder or manslaughter. But soon afterwards she was admitting two cruelty charges relating to Rikki, two to one daughter and one to the other girl. The girls cannot be identified. Neave also admitted supplying amphetamine and burglary. Caging her for seven years, Judge Mr Justice Popplewell told her: “You are plainly an inadequate person and wholly unfit to be a mother. “I have to say I’ve rarely come across a case of such systematic cruelty to children. This is not a case of sudden loss of temper. Not a baby- bashing case in the ordinary sense. “The harm done to all these children is infinitely worse. It is incalculable. It will have a scarring effect on them. “The court has to do its best to protect children. If we don’t, no one else will. The sentence I pass has to reflect the public abhorrence.” Neave’s savage behaviour lay buried in her crippled past. Her father, Alex, was disabled. Her mother, Ann, was anorexic. Her brother, Mark, was born blind. Later, her parents died in a suicide pact. At four, Neave was taken into care to grow up in a succession of council homes. She would abscond and stay out all night on drink and drug binges, and was constantly in trouble with police for shoplifting and assault. Leaving care, she married Rikki’s natural father – builder Trevor Harvey, now 35 – and moved close to his parents in March, Cambridgeshire. The couple then moved to Peterborough’s sink Welland estate, notorious as a deprived area for families on the bottom rung of life – and rife with vice. Trevor left shortly after Rikki was born and Neave went on to wed Dean Neave. But Dean was rarely at home. Ruth Neave claimed her son hated him and blamed the youngster for her husband’s constant absences. Soon, Rikki’s hell began. Neave, who was fascinated by black magic and wrote her own murder “novel”, let the blue-eyed lad roam the streets when he was as young as three. She spent up to pounds 40 a week of her pounds 90 state benefit to buy “speed,” and sent Rikki out in his skimpy T-shirt to collect the drugs – or “sherbet” as she called them. Rikki was scared of the dark. But, like his sisters, he was even more scared of a walloping. The prosecution said yesterday: “The children were terrified of her. But at the same time they tried to please her.” As Neave’s forever downward spiral continued, she took Rikki on shoplifting expeditions. The goods were sold to buy yet more pills. Neave, who kept pictures of Rikki on her cell wall while on remand, would inject the diluted amphetamines in her kitchen with the children running round the house. At any time of day or night, ragged Rikki could be seen roaming the maze of streets on the decrepit estate. One neighbour poignantly called him a “sad, little messenger of misery.” And all the time he was battered back and blue. The prosecution said: “He was like a toy. Neave could do what she wanted to him.” After receiving a beating, Rikki would curl up baby-fashion, and whimper: “Mummy, I love you.” He was last seen alive chatting to workmen. One asked him: “What’s up with you today?” Rikki’s eyes flooded with tears, and he ran away. Defending Nigel Rumfitt, QC, said it was inevitable Neave had to be jailed. He said she was not mentally ill, but had a personality disorder. Mr Rumfitt said: “The treatment of her children is fundamentally inexcusable.” A fourth child is already in care. The other two are now up for adoption. Unsolved murder Northampton Crown Court heard heard how Rikki’s mother called police on 28 November 1994 when the child failed to come home from Welland Primary School and still hadn’t returned home by 6pm that night. The court heard how the youngster was found strangled and stripped naked in woodland near his home at around midday the next day by PC Thomas Graham. Rikki’s clothes, including his grey school trousers, white shirt and jacket, were found in a bin just 150 yards from his body.
Initially charged with Rikki’s murder, plus five counts of child cruelty between 1986 and 1994, and a further drugs charge, Neave denied them all at first. She later changed her plea to admit all the charges bar that of murder. Prosecutors told the jury that Rikki was killed in a sacrifice by his mother, who had an interest in the occult and black magic. James Hunt QC told the court the child’s body was found in a pose mirrored in books found in her home. It was also alleged that Neave had a fascination with murderers and their minds, and told neighbours on the Welland estate that she was a high priestess of the occult who dabbled in black magic. Jurors heard that she had pleaded with social workers to take her son into care, saying he was in danger if he stayed at home, and one social worker reported witnessing her threatening to ‘hang her son from the ceiling’. Another social worker said Neave threatened to kill her son the day before he was reported missing, and a witness reported seeing her walk ‘hurriedly’ towards the spot where his body was found on the day he went missing. Lawyers for the defence said a sex attacker who had not been found could have been responsible for Rikki’s death.  They told the court that another child was attacked and tied to a tree five months before Rikki died, and said that a 10-year-old girl said she had seen the boy alive after he had been reported missing. Neave was cleared of murdering her son, but jailed for seven years for cruelty to Rikki, her daughter Rebecca, and one other child.