Stephen Waterson, the adopted son of a former government minister, has admitted killing Alfie Lamb, the son of his girlfriend, by crushing him beneath a car seat
The ‘arrogant’ son of an ex-government minister has admitted crushing a three-year-old boy to death with his car seat.
Stephen Waterson, 26, squashed little Alfie Lamb in the footwell of his Audi convertible while Alfie’s mother Adrian Hoare looked on.
Afterwards, Waterson, adopted son of former Tory minister Nigel Waterson, orchestrated a cover-up to avoid being implicated in the death.
Following an Old Bailey trial, Hoare, 24, from Gravesend in Kent, was found guilty of child cruelty and jailed for two years and nine months.
Waterson, from Croydon, denied Alfie’s manslaughter and had been ordered to face a retrial after a jury failed to reach a verdict.
This afternoon, ahead of his fresh trial, Waterson changed his plea and admitted Alfie’s manslaughter by gross negligence.
Both Waterson and Hoare had admitted conspiring to pervert the course of justice by lying to police. Waterson was convicted of intimidating a witness and Hoare of assaulting another witness.
Scotland Yard’s detective chief inspector Simon Harding branded Waterson ‘arrogant, selfish and deeply unpleasant’ and said justice had been served for Alfie.
Hairdresser Adrian Hoare (left) had put son Alfie Lamb (right) between her legs in the back of an Audi A4 before Waterson sharply pushed his seat back, crushing the little boy
At a young age, Stephen Waterson was taken in by Tory MP Nigel Waterson – but it failed to deter him from a life of crime and violence
Jurors in the earlier trial were shown CCTV of Alfie running to keep up with his mother moments before he was put in the car for the journey back to Croydon, south London.
The court had heard how nightclub worker Waterson became annoyed at Alfie’s crying and moved his front passenger seat into him as he sat at his mother’s feet.
When Alfie continued to moan, Waterson reversed again saying: ‘I won’t be told what to do by a three-year-old,’ Hoare told jurors.
The maximum space in the foot well was 30cm, and, at the touch of a button, that could be reduced to just 9.5cm.
By the time they arrived at Waterson’s home in Croydon, the boy had collapsed and stopped breathing. As medics desperately tried to revive him, Waterson fled the scene and Hoare spun a web of lies to protect her boyfriend, claiming she had been in a taxi.
Alfie, nicknamed ‘Little Tarzan’ by the defendants, died from crush asphyxia three days later.
The pair were pictured on CCTV before the incident. Alfie was seen struggling to keep up
As police closed in, Waterson gave officers a false name and false statement, and sold the Audi.
He threatened to make Hoare and the other witnesses ‘disappear’ if they did not stick with their fake stories.
Hoare eventually broke her silence and told her half sister Ashleigh Jeffrey what happened in a taped conversation handed to police.
Jurors in the first trial were told Waterson was a controlling womaniser who also had a violent temper with three previous convictions for attacking an ex-girlfriend and his sister’s husband.
Giving evidence earlier this year, he denied he would hurt a child and said he moved his seat back once by up to an inch.
As part of his basis for entering a guilty plea to manslaughter, Waterson maintained he only pushed the seat back one time.
Waterson wracked up a series of convictions for attacks, including one of an ex-girlfriend, before he lashed out at the three-year-old son of his on-off partner, Adrian Hoare, in a fit of rage last February
Judge Mark Lucraft QC remanded Waterson into custody to be sentenced on Monday September 9.
At the conclusion of the case, Mr Harding said Alfie died as the result of a ‘selfish and cruel act’.
He said: ‘It’s hard to imagine what sort of pain anyone would go through when you are being crushed in that way. For a three-and-a-half-year-old to be crushed by something so strong and no one helping, it’s a shocking way to die.
‘Stephen Waterson has come across as a selfish, abhorrent individual who killed a three-and-a-half-year-old child and has never stood up and said what has happened and taken responsibility for the actions he performed on that day.’
The conviction had finally ‘given Alfie a voice’, he said, adding: ‘He was a vulnerable three-and-a-half-year-old who had his life in front of him. He had no-one to care for him on that day. Hopefully Alfie’s voice has now spoken to say justice has been served.’
The court was told social services had been involved with Alfie before his death.
‘I hated him from the moment I met him’: Alfie Lamb’s grandmother slams his ‘wannabe gangster’ killer as she reveals her daughter lost interest in the toddler after getting with him
Alfie Lamb’s grandmother Janis Templeton-Hoare, with a picture of the three year old on her living room wall
Alfie Lamb’s grandmother has described how her daughter’s life spiralled out of control after meeting ‘wannabe gangster’ Stephen Waterson.
Janis Templeton-Hoare, 53, looked after Alfie as she watched her daughter Adrian Hoare gradually lose interest in her toddler son after entering into a relationship with Waterson.
Speaking at her home in Chatham as the case concluded, she wished the three-year-old’s killer was lying in a grave instead of him – and says she’ll kill her daughter if she ever sees her again.
She highlighted that her daughter was more interested in messaging friends on Facebook than looking after her little son and spent all her child benefits cash on herself.
Ms Templeton-Hoare said she got on well with her daughter’s former partner, Alfie’s father Richard, but Adrian changed once she met Waterson.
Speaking through tears, she said: ‘Stephen is one nasty, nasty boy. I hated him from the moment I met him. He’s a wannabe gangster.
‘He should be put in a grave the same as my grandson. If it wasn’t for him, I’d still have Alfie. I lived for Alfie. When he died, I wanted to end my own life.
Ms Templeton-Hoare said she once ordered Waterson out of her home, but he slapped her, knocking her to the floor.
She said: ‘We had an argument and I wanted him out. I told him to get out and he hit me, full-whack, in the face.’
Hoare, 23, put Alfie in the footwell and did nothing to help him as he screamed out
Following Alfie’s death, Ms Templeton-Hoare says she never wants to see her daughter again
Hoare said in contact with her mother, partly it seems so she could borrow money off of her for nappies and other items for Alfie.
But following Alfie’s death, Ms Templeton-Hoare says she never wants to see her daughter again.
She said: ‘If she turns up at this front door, I’ll kill her. I can’t have her back here and I will not go to see her in prison.
‘If she loved her son as much as she said she did, he would still be alive today.
‘I can’t forgive her for having him in the footwell of the car. He should never have been there in the first place.’
She said Alfie had a love for toy tools and hammers, and would walk around the house pretending to fix things.
He would ‘always want to help Nanny’ around the house and had a love for cars.
Hoare is said to have put her loyalty to her boyfriend ahead of concerns over her son’s safety
Hoare’s only letter to her mother from prison was actually a begging letter, asking for yet more money.
She wrote: ‘I know you’ve said your struggling with money at the moment but would you be able to send some in on postal order for me please.’
Janis still wears a locket with blades of Alfie’s hair from his first haircut, and sleeps with his favourite teddy bear every night, more than one year on from the tragedy.
A black and white framed photo of Alfie adorns the living room wall in her home, studded with a white rose and an angel decoration.
She said she hopes Waterson ‘gets whats coming to him’ in prison.
Alfie Lamb’s killer was adopted by high-flying Oxford-educated Tory MP and his senior lecturer wife but still turned to a life of crime which ended in three-year-old’s violent death
Alfie Lamb’s killer was taken into the loving family home of a high-flying Tory MP and his doctor wife, but even their strong ‘middle class values’ could not stop him falling into a life of crime which culminated in Alfie’s tragic killing.
Stephen Waterson was adopted by Nigel Waterson, a former shadow pensions minister in John Major’s government and MP for Eastbourne who had previously been elected for his ‘integrity’, and Dr Barbara Judge, once a senior lecturer at the prestigious London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
He was taken in to live in the wealthy London suburb of Beckenham, south-east London in a spacious £1million house.
Waterson also attended Bishop Justus Church of England school in nearby Bromley, which on its most recent Ofsted inspection, received a ‘good rating’. Following this he went on to attend London South East Colleges, before becoming employed at National Home Buyers.
But despite their attempts to keep him on the straight and narrow, he wracked up a series of convictions for attacks, including one on an ex-girlfriend, before he lashed out at the three-year-old son of his on-off partner, Adrian Hoare, in a fit of rage last February.
Waterson regularly shared pictures with his adoptive mother and father, including this one taken on the London Eye. He captioned it, ‘family day out with mum and dad’. Dr Judge attended court to support her son
These pictures taken in December 2016 show the killer with his mother, left, and father, Tory MP Nigel Waterson
Astonishingly, Waterson used tales of his Oxford-educated adoptive father, who was once a top lawyer, to threaten others into not reporting him, telling them he had ‘powerful parents’.
Stephen came to live with Mr Waterson and his third wife, Dr Judge after the politician’s previous marriages had ended in acrimony.
Stephen’s time living with the Watersons failed turn him into a law-abiding citizen, and he has lived a life peppered by incidents of violence.
He attacked one victim in 2014 over a debt of money the man’s wife owed him, and later set upon an ex-girlfriend when she accused him of cheating on her.
MP Waterson had been vocal in his support of what he called Margaret Thatcher’s ‘middle class values’ and had been elected by trumpeting his ‘integrity’.
In 1997, the MP was exposed by the News of the World as having been meeting Dr Judge for ‘hotel trysts’ behind the back of his second wife, Bernadette, who said she knew nothing about it.
Former Conservative minister Nigel Waterson and his wife, Dr Barbara Judge, pictured outside the Old Bailey, London, during the trial where they watched from the public gallery as their son Stephen Waterson, 25, and Adrian Hoare, 23, stood trial accused of Alfie Lamb’s manslaughter
Stephen lived with the Watersons in a spacious house in Beckenham, south-east London (circled) and attended the Bishop Justus Church of England school in nearby Bromley
In the wake of newspaper’s front page, Mr Waterson’s first wife, Gisela Guttler, came forward to say he had cheated on her too at the end of their 13-year marriage.
The stories caused a sensation at the time as Mr Waterson had been not long been appointed a Tory whip and had vowed to drive sleaze out of the party.
Mr Waterson married Dr Judge, herself a mother of three, in 1999, two years after the scandal and they later adopted Stephen.
But the middle-class idyll was shattered in 2008 when Mr Waterson was wrongly arrested by police investigating claims he had attacked his then teenage son.
The MP was detained at the family home and held for nearly 13 hours and questioned over the claims, before being released without charge. The Met Police later accepted the allegations against him were ‘wholly unfounded’ and paid him undisclosed damages.
Mr Waterson lost his seat to a Lib Dem rival in 2010 and has since held the position of the Equity Release Council, which represents firms helping people remortgage their homes.
Stephen’s time living with the Watersons failed to set him on the straight and narrow and he has lived a life riddled with crime and peppered by incidents of violence
It was known that Waterson knocked around south-east London and Gravesend in Kent and met Adrian Hoare, a single-mother to Alfie Lamb, who had trained as a hairdresser but lived off benefits and money from her family.
Friends say Hoare changed after meeting Waterson and put her son Alfie second for fear of upsetting her ‘controlling’ new boyfriend.
Schoolfriend Alicia Midgeley said: ‘He was always very annoyed with Alfie. He had a very short temper with him. Sometimes he would slap him and throw him on to the sofa.
‘But Adrian kept her mouth shut. She told Alfie: “Do as you’re told or Stephen is going to get mad”.’
Waterson is said to have worked in a south-London bar and would demand Hoare meet him at all times of the night and day.
Their chaotic lifestyle meant Alfie had no routine and was often out with his mother and Waterson in his car late into the night.
Miss Midgeley said: ‘She would take him out in Stephen’s car and just go and sit in a car park doing God knows what. A normal parent would be sitting at home with their child in bed, looking after them.’
Waterson then returned to his violent ways when he threatened to kill Hoare and Alfie by crashing his car into a wall.
Witnesses said Waterson was ‘always annoyed’ with Alfie and would often slap him and throw him on the sofa
Police were called but Waterson drove off and later denied the claims.
Less than a year later, a similar fit of rage saw Waterson push his car seat back on little Alfie, leaving him with injuries that would prove fatal.
The prosecutor in the case said Waterson ‘liked it to be known his father is a lawyer’.
She told him: ‘You would say your father is an important person, not just a lawyer but he used to be a government minister, and you were so powerful because you had these connections.’
Waterson’s well-off parents have attended court for his trial, but have declined to comment on the case.
