Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Woking Close, Roehampton @Googlemaps2025 Aug 2024
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHT: In the early hours of Tuesday 27th of August 2019, in an unnamed flat on Woking Close, 15-month old Jacob Lennon was lying in his cot and dreaming innocent dreams. Like every child, he was small, fragile and needed protection from life’s dangers. But whereas many children are shielded by the very worst of predators like drunks, junkies and paedophiles, there is one person who is every child’s nightmare.
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SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: How could a child die weeks before his own death? Find out in Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Woking Close in Roehampton, SW15; three streets south of the cuckooed flat of William Algar, four streets east of the drowned body of 18-month old Dorothy Kaslofski, and three streets west of the teacher who loved detention ‘a little too much’ - coming soon to Murder Mile. Woking Close is a small u-shaped road surrounded by 16 identical brown-brick council blocks for some of the area’s neediest residents. With most of its spare space taken up by transit vans, hot-hatches and stolen Lime bikes, its children are stuck playing on a microscopic patch of brown grass strewn with weeds, dog-shit and car parts. Even though just over the wall at Roehampton golf course lies 100 acres of lush greenery reserved for a handful of old middle-class tax-dodging codgers in garish sweaters. It could be turned into a playground, but it won’t as I’m guessing the town’s counsellor is a regular golfer. Playtime is vital for dealing with stress, not just for children but for their parents and guardians, as it eases the tensions which arise during the day and soothes them both with a peaceful sleep at night. In the early hours of Tuesday 27th of August 2019, in an unnamed flat on Woking Close, 15-month old Jacob Lennon was lying in his cot and dreaming innocent dreams. Like every child, he was small, fragile and needed protection from life’s dangers. But whereas many children are shielded by the very worst of predators like drunks, junkies and paedophiles, there is one person who is every child’s nightmare. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 309: Every Child’s Nightmare. This story begins and ends with a parent’s greatest fear – a sick and injured child. The night of Tuesday 27th of August 2019 was uncomfortably hot, as a mini heatwave had made the nights sticky. In the bedroom he shared with his 4-year-old brother, 15-month old Jacob lay in his cot restless as he was recovering a fever. And down the hall in their bed, 31-year-old Louise Lennon, his mother lay beside her boyfriend of three months, Jake Drummond, who wasn’t the boy’s father. Jake told the Police “I woke about 6am…I heard a bang and a little squeal. When I jumped up, Louise was awake, wide awake…”. As a father of two girls, “it was my parent's instinct, when you hear a bang and you know there is a kid next door, you run to check on him. It was a whingey squeal, the type that would scare you like you'd [wake up and] think ‘oh that doesn't sound right’”, so he went in to check. Only Jacob wasn’t in his cot, but face-down on the floor. “I started seeing his lips turn blue and that's when I put my hands in his throat to make sure he wasn't swallowing his tongue. His nose had loads of sick come out of it, I turned him onto his side. I put my hand in his mouth to make sure his airway was clear... I was heaving from the sick, but I had to try my best to save him... I couldn't just sit there”. Crying as she gave evidence, Louise recalled “I woke as Jake bought him into the room. He was holding him like he was serving him to me, not holding his head… Jacob looked all floppy and unconscious… and Jake was saying 'babe, babe, call an ambulance'”. At 6:02am, Louise called the emergency services in panic; “999, which service do you require?”, “an ambulance, my baby’s been sick, his lips are turning blue and he’s not breathing”, stating that they ‘heard a bump like he fell out of bed of something’ and that “he’s been like this for five or ten minutes”. The dispatcher instructed Jake to perform CPR on Jacob, “he told me, lay him flat on his back, tilt his head back and give 30 compressions on his chest. I might have messed it up a little but that's because I was in shock”, later telling the Police that “the ten minutes I was giving Jacob CPR felt like a lifetime”. At 6:09am, just 7 minutes after the call, Jake recalled “when the paramedics turned up, I was clearing his airways of sick”, but Jacob was already cold, lifeless and in cardiac arrest. Rushed to St George’s Hospital in Tooting, the paediatric team fought to save his life, but Jacob was declared dead at 7.22am. Jacob Lennon died that day… and yet, his death had begun barely three months before. His mother, Louise Jane Lennon was born in August 1990, and as the daughter of Anthony & Caroline, she lived in Wandsworth all of her life, but little is known about her upbringing as she doesn’t appear in any papers and everything she has posted online has been deleted, except her musical preferences. In 2015, she gave birth to her first son, she never married, she lived off benefits, and in March 2018, her second son Jacob was born healthy and happy, but he was far from safe from danger. In December 2018, aged 9 months old, a Child Protection Plan was implemented by Wandsworth Social Services “because of existing concerns about his biological father” due to ‘emotional abuse’ - that implies he was subjected to threat, neglect, degrading acts or being exposed to domestic abuse or drug taking. Jacob needed a role model and a protector, but in the months before his death, what he got was Jake. The similarities between their names are a coincidence, but Louise had known Jake since 2006, when as two families with hard and difficult upbringings, they lived in the same bed and breakfast in Putney. In June 2019, they connected via Facebook, Jake said “she messaged me about bringing her a joint”, and as a recently separated father-of-two girls who worked in a nursery, Louise said “he was nice”. Jake Anthony Drummond was born months and streets apart from Louise, but was far from a suitable father having never really worked; he was sometimes a painter, a decorator, a plumber's apprentice, and briefly a nursery caretaker until he was sacked for heavy drinking, but mostly he was unemployed. Since the age of 11, he used cannabis and cocaine he claimed “to deal with my personal problems”, and had a short history of violence including a juvenile warning in 2005 for holding a knife against his mother’s throat, and in 2008 when he assaulted an ex-girlfriend by strangling her until she passed out. 2013, aged 23, saw a new beginning in his life when he got together with Julie Sanders, an unmarried mother of five boys, and (in 2014 and 2016) they had two daughters together. He recalled in court “I loved it. I always wanted to be a dad, so it was nice to have a big family… I would change nappies, bath them, put them both to bed”, and as one of his daughters was fragile having been born with medical issues, “I’d lay on the floor holding her hand while she went to sleep. I would never hurt a child. Anyone who hurts a child, I think they're disgusting, I would never hurt a child, never”… unlike their mothers. Julie stated that Jake’s violence began early in their relationship, he was jealous, possessive, and he told Louise that they had broken up back in February 2019 after one of her sons accidentally killed one of his daughter’s guinea pigs by knocking a cage onto it, when in truth, he was cheating on them both. Jake only saw Louise he said “as a friend with benefits”, but Julie was the woman he still wanted. By July 2019, having found out he was cheating on her, Julie sent angry messages to Louise. Like a set of tumbling dominoes, Jake lost his job at the nursery, Julie banned him from seeing his daughters, later on video-calls too, and owing to his obsessiveness, she reported him to the police for harassment. That month, Jake moved in with Louise in her flat at Woking Close in Roehampton… …within days the abuse of Jacob had begun, and within weeks, her son would be dead. As had happened before, even though Jake was cheating on Julie with Louise, as cheaters always do, he couldn’t believe that anyone could be faithful, so he assumed that they were both cheating on him. Louise said “after my birthday” in early August “I told him I had gone out”, and after that he started to block numbers in her phone’s contact list; ex-boyfriends, men-friends, and anyone he didn’t trust. With his life spiralling out of control, “he seemed more agitated and aggressive... he was taking more drugs, he wasn't sleeping”, and on more than one occasion, she said he pinned her down and assaulted her. And although she still sent him loving messages, she claimed “that was my way of keeping him sweet, keeping him happy, I didn't want him to get aggressive”, and living in fear of him, “I was very intimidated by him, I was scared... when I was with him, it was hard. I didn't know how to get away”. But he always denied that he ever assaulted Jacob, “I would never hurt a child, never”. In court, Jake claimed "I’m not to blame for it. I did not touch him", denying that he blamed Jacob for losing him his job at the Mr Sheen factory “because he’d been playing with my phone, so I missed a call asking me to come in”, even though he’d slept-in as his drink and drug-use increased, and again, implying she was a bad mother, “I asked her to seek medical attention for Jacob, but she refused”. Jake’s first alibi was to lay the blame on 15-month old Jacob for what became his own death, “at first he was okay with me, then he seemed to be jealous that I was close to Louise... he did have a few bad habits picked up from [his brother]… slapping his mum and screaming at her, stuff like that”. As many abusers do, he claimed Jacob was clumsy, “I heard a bang and cry, and Jacob was on the floor next to [his brother's] bed, crying. I picked him up, gave him his dummy, a cuddle, and put him back into bed”. He claimed that (like many toddlers) Jacob was accident prone, when that month, Louise sent Jake a photo of him with a severe burn to his scalp, having rubbed Veet hair-removal cream on his own head - something that the prosecution said was a malicious act of cruelty by Jake, which he flatly denied. He also claimed in defence of himself, “I’ve see him in a temper tantrum… hitting his head on the floor. He'd have red marks all over his head and then the next day little bruises”, but of course when it didn’t seem feasible to blame a tiny toddler for his own abuse, there were always others Jake could blame. Jake claimed “I'd seen [Jacob's brother] lash out a few times… I'd seen him punch him in the face and slap him”, and of course, as a self-proclaimed good dad and with Louise being a negligent mum, he said “she turned it into a big joke, she’d pick up Jacob’s hands and use them to punch his brother. I never saw [Jacob's brother] told off… on one occasion, [his brother] had kicked him and cut his lip. I said she needed to take him to the doctors, but she said 'no. it’s fine, I'll just put some Savlon on it”. In her defence, it was claimed; she was coercively controlled by Jake her abusive boyfriend, that she was ‘extremely fearful’ of reporting Jacob’s bruises as Social Services had him under a Child Protection Plan, and with the prosecution stating she had prioritised her relationship over her son's welfare... …there was some truth to his claims that she was a bad and manipulative mother. Jake stated he was a good surrogate dad to her boys, “I got on really, really well with [Jacob's brother], he came out his shell a lot, he used to call me buddy”, but also that Louise was lacking as a mother, “he was still wearing nappies day and night at four years old… she said it was because he liked to wear them… (and) ‘it's easier if he wears nappies then I don't have to keep taking him to the toilet’”, also stating “she’d let them go to sleep at 1 to 2 o'clock in the morning, I didn't think that was right. They’d sleep when they fell asleep and she’d do them dinner at odd times, sometimes it’d be very, very late”. Jake & Louise’s priority was themselves, but also the vast amount of drugs they both consumed, with it said, they smoked 15 joints and spent £120 a day on cocaine and cannabis. In fact, in his autopsy, both drugs were found in 15-month old Jacob’s system, whether by accidental or deliberate ingestion. On 16th of August, 11 days before his death, Louise claimed she awoke to find Jake in her son’s room, a large bruise on Jacob’s forehead, and her boyfriend claiming “he fell out of bed”. Again, on the 20th, one week before, she said Jake had awoken to find Jacob banging his head against the floor. In court, under cross-examination, her lawyer stated “Louise had been deceived… and was a victim of Jake’s violent and sadistic behaviour”, of which, Jake’s lawyer refuted this, claiming that even though he had ‘anger management problems’, there was no evidence of his “gratification or glee” at harming Jacob. They accused each other when a hefty custodial sentence was dangled in front of them, but a web of lies had been concocted by them both, to hide the truth, that - together – they willingly abused Jacob. On the 20th of August, the day that Jacob supposedly bruised his whole forehead by headbutting the floor, a social worker arrived at their flat for a routine visit, only to receive a text sent by Louise stating “sorry, we’re in Hastings”. The Prosecutor said it was a ‘deliberate lie’ to stop the social worker from seeing Jacob’s bruising and making it clear that they both were putting themselves over Jacob’s safety. With his bruises still visible, a visit was re-arranged for the 23rd of August, but again Louise postponed it. Yet when Sharon Kane, a friend visited that same day, she said “Jacob’s head looked like a basketball and his eyes were so swollen, he couldn’t see”. Said to be “extremely shocked by Jacob’s face”, Louise lied to her, claiming he’d fallen out of bed, that she’d taken him to hospital and was given the all-clear. The judge levelled no criticism at Wandsworth Social Services, as although the upstairs neighbour had contacted them, concerned that they “often heard children screaming and crying”, by the time that a fourth appointment was re-arranged, it was too late, as Jacob had been failed by his abusive parents. The judge, Mr Justice Sweeting said “perhaps the most haunting photograph is not one of those that show injury, but that taken on August 12th when Jacob appears well, a bright and cheerful toddler… …but less than a fortnight later he was dead”. Jake and Louise were every child’s nightmare… not just one bad parent, but two. He had no-one to protect him, as being so focussed on their own needs, they saw his torture as little more than a game. On the day that the social worker was told “sorry, we’re in Hastings”, Louise texted Jake a photo of her posing with Jacob – whose face was so bruised, the toddler “looked like a panda” – with a baseball cap to cover up the bruises, she joked “he looks like a lil mad man lol, sure he’ll be OK by Friday" (when the next visit was planned), at which, Jake had replied with "fingers crossed" and laughing emojis. Often they joked using a meme from the film Happy Gilmore with the phrase "now you will go to sleep or I will put you to sleep", and on the 22nd of August, just five days before his murder, Jake sent Louise a text saying he was putting the toddler in his bedroom, which he referred to as the "torture chamber". That was how they got their kicks by torturing a young defenceless child… …but the bruises to his face and body weren’t the worst of his injuries. At his autopsy, one of a catalogue of ‘sadistic’ assaults that 15-month old Jacob Lennon had endured was “a gaping 3cm long laceration on the surface of the penis… consistent with extreme pinching or biting”, and “a penetrating injury to his scrotum which was as a result of a semi-sharp or sharp object such as a small-blade or a skewer”, believed to be a knife in the shape of Toy Story’s Mr Potato Head. Jake denied it was him, repeating that he would never harm a child and that “I would never change a nappy that was not my own child’s” implying he never saw or had no reason to see the injury. Louise also claimed she never saw it, but how could she miss it, when she’d have changed his nappy daily? Monday 26th of August 2019 had been a melting pot of bubbling tensions; as the sun was baking hot, the flat was impossible to cool, the social worker had been fobbed off for a third time, and Jake was cautioned by the Police for harassing Julie. Jake later pleaded “I was very upset I was not seeing my daughters. I actually cried because I was missing them, just looking at their pictures really got to me”. According to him “Louise made my favourite, sausage casserole, because of the day I’d had. Jacob was lying on the sofa in a nappy with a cold compress on his head. It seemed like he was in and out of sleep. Louise was sat next to him smoking a spliff”, and as part of his so-called coping mechanism for his issues, that night Jake went out partying with a friend, drinking, taking cocaine and smoking weed. “I got back about 2am, and went to bed not long after that”, he said. Four hours later, “I woke about 6am… I heard a bang and a little squeal. When I jumped up, Louise was awake, wide awake… it was my parent's instinct, when you hear a bang, you run to check on him. It was a whingey squeal, the type that would scare you like you'd [wake up and] think ‘oh that doesn't sound right’”, and that’s when Jake said “I started seeing his lips turn blue and he wasn’t breathing”. Dispatchers received their call at 6:02am and Louise said “he’s been like this for five or ten minutes”, but it was all a cruel lie by two evil parents who put their own needs over those of a defenceless boy. At 1am, an hour before Jake said he went to bed, he was up and (as usual) he was high, pacing their small flat with his phone in his hand and unable to sleep owing to the cocktail of drugs in his system. With Jacob still struggling with a fever in this hot weather, the pain from his bruises, and possibly because of an infection to his scrotum, he wasn’t in his cot, but sharing the bed with his mum, Louise. Ranting, stressing and obsessing about his ex-partner, Julie, as baby Jacob wriggled in the bed and his pained cries split their ears, the jury heard “it is clear that at some stage that night, someone must have taken him out of the bed and the room” and that someone, the Crown said was Jake Drummond. Forcefully yanking the wailing tot as it dangled from Jake’s arm, the more this so-called ‘good dad’ got frustrated with the child’s screams, the more he shook him. Being scared, Jacob cried louder, hoping that his mother would be there to defend him, but she wasn’t. And as Jake snapped, having slapped and punched the child, as its screams only got louder, it was then that – like a broken rag doll – Jake grabbed the boy by either his romper suit or his arm, and slammed him onto the hard bedroom floor. Dr Cary, the pathologist confirmed that “Jacob was thrown to the ground with such force, his injuries were consistent with being hurled from a first-floor window, or being hit by a car at high speed”. Based on the formation of the bruises and the clots in his brain, this violent assault had rendered the boy senseless, and although he lay there silent and still, with the first call to the emergency services not being made until 6:02am, the expert clarified “he had probably been unconscious for (five) hours”. But again, Jacob’s injuries were attended to, and they didn’t call for an ambulance until it was too late, possibly around the time that they realised that he would never wake up, as his brain and body bled. Louise and Jake both claimed they were fast asleep until they heard the baby fall at around 6am, but again, this was a lie to protect themselves and they didn’t seem too concerned with his dying state, as later that night, Jake downloaded a game onto his phone, but his main focus (or obsession) was Julie. Jealous that she was (supposedly) seeing someone else, from 2am to 3:38am, he texted her several times, with the final message at 5.16am reading 'wonder who you were talking to at 3.30am', all while Jacob lay silently in a pool of his own vomit as his brain swelled inducing nausea. In court, Jake denied this, and implied “the texts were sent before I went to bed, but were received later cos of a bad signal”. As for Louise, she claimed she had slept through it, even though she was a ‘light sleeper’, but when the prosecution prodded “surely a mother is attuned to the cries of her baby?”, she had to agree. They did nothing to save him, less to protect him, and realising he was either dead or dying, to protect themselves, “they concocted a story before phoning for the ambulance”… only their alibi was flawed. Jake told the Police “I woke about 6am”, five hours after the assault, “Louise was wide awake”, only having failed to hear her baby’s screams, she said “I woke as Jake ran into the room holding Jacob”. As we know, the baby didn’t (and couldn’t) cry, just as he couldn’t move, and although Jake said “I started seeing his lips turn blue”, when the paramedics arrived 7 minutes later, Jacob was barely alive. Together, they blamed his injuries on his clumsiness getting out of his cot, a severe burn to his scalp on him playing with Veet, his other bruises having fallen in the street 5 or 13 days before, two horrific injuries to his penis (using a knife, hand and/or teeth) on Jacob’s 4-year-old brother, and when the paramedics arrived, Jake made himself sound like the hero - “the ten minutes I was giving him CPR felt like a lifetime”, but with the toddler limp, cold and still, it’s possible that that CPR never happened. Even before his death at 7:22am, it was clear to the doctors that Jacob had been violently assaulted, as there were 20 fresh bruises to his face and neck, 11 to his arms, 7 to his legs, and 7 to his torso. His head was so swollen that the skull was soft and spongey, his bruised eyes were too puffy to open, a haemorrhage constricted his spinal nerve, and a neurologist confirmed that some of the clots were formed “48 hours before his death”, meaning his devastating head injury wasn’t his first that weekend. It was a sustained attack over several weeks, but as the police questioned them, to defend themselves, Louise and Jake turned on each other, but both of them were arrested as the only suspects. (End) With the trial delayed until February 2023 owing to the Covid pandemic, Louise Jane Lennon and Jake Anthony Drummond were tried at the Old Bailey before Mr Justice Sweeting; she denied ‘causing or allowing a child’s death and cruelty’ and he denied ‘grievous bodily harm with intent’ and ‘murder’. The prosecutor Sally O’Neill KC told jurors: “It is the Crown’s case that Jake Drummond had embarked on a campaign of deliberately assaulting and hurting Jacob between July and the end of August. The injuries which he caused were obvious and noticeable”. Throughout the trial, he denied responsibility for Jacob's injuries, and Louise claimed she was "coerced and threatened" by her abusive boyfriend. Alibis and lies flew back and forth, but the jury saw through it, as both of them lacked any remorse. On Thursday 16th of March 2023, the jury began their deliberation, and having concluded the next day, they returned with their verdict. For the charge of ‘child cruelty and causing or allowing Jacob's death’ (the latter charge she admitted to), on the 26th of May, Louise Lennon was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years and 6 years in prison to run concurrently, so she will be out before the decade is over. Jake Drummond was found guilty of ‘wounding with intent’ and sentenced to 6 six years, and guilty of the wilful murder of Jacob Lennon, he must serve a minimum of 32 years before parole in considered. Summing up, Detective Chief Inspector Wayne Jolley described the case as “by far, the most difficult, the most sad” of his thirty year career; “no-one who has listened to the catalogue of injuries inflicted on Jacob can be anything but horrified. It is hard to comprehend how such a young and vulnerable baby could have been so abused”, by these two parents who were truly ‘every child’s nightmare’. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. 
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