In a recent statement, the stepfather of a murdered teenager has expressed outrage over being fined £50 for sending a controversial message regarding her killer. Dean Jones, 54, criticized the perceived ‘injustice’ of the penalty after a message he sent suggested that the murderer should hang himself.
Jones recounted how the ordeal forced him to relive the traumatic events of Jayden Parkinson’s tragic death. He described being ‘dragged’ through the legal system after posting a message on Facebook directed at the family of Ben Blakeley, who is currently serving a life sentence for the crime.
Jayden, who was just 17 at the time, was pregnant with Blakeley’s child when he killed her in a fit of jealousy. After strangling her, he initially buried her in a ditch before moving her body to his uncle’s grave in Didcot, Oxfordshire, back in December 2013.
The teenager had ended her relationship with the abusive 22-year-old the month prior but had agreed to meet him to reveal her pregnancy.
On what would have been Jayden’s 29th birthday this past September, Mr. Jones sent a threatening message to Blakeley’s brother, Christopher. In this communication, he expressed his desire for both Ben and Jake, another brother who had misled police about the murder cover-up, to hang themselves, and also threatened to kill them.
In the message, he said he hoped the killer and his brother Jake, who had been accused of lying to police about helping to bury the teenager’s body, would hang themselves, and threatened to kill them.
Days later, police banged on the door of his bus – where he lived as a homeless person – and arrested him. Following traumatic hearings held in the same court where Blakeley had been tried, Mr Jones was fined £50 by a sympathetic judge last week.
Today, he told the Mail the entire saga had been a ‘complete and utter f****** waste of time’ – and that he has struggled to get mental health support for the trauma he continues to carry around almost 13 years on, while Blakeley luxuriates in prison.
Dean Jones (left) pictured with Jayden Parkinson’s mother Samantha Shrewsbury and her grandfather Eric Shrewsbury. He has been fined for threatening Jayden’s killer Ben Blakeley
Jayden Parkinson (pictured) was pregnant with Ben Blakeley’s baby when he killed her and dumped her body in his uncle’s grave
Blakeley (pictured), a former binman, is serving life with a minimum term of 20 years for murder. He had a history of abusive relationships and beat Jayden
‘Justice hasn’t been done. Ben’s just lost his front door key,’ he said.
‘The system is broken. It costs the Government £45,000 a year to keep him in jail, while I get maybe £10,000 a year in benefits.
‘He can have a life in [prison], he never runs out of food or heat. He gets mental health support, he gets that and I don’t. He just can’t leave, that’s the only thing he hasn’t got. If you kill someone you will be looked after, and that is wrong.’
Mr Jones, who lived in the bus for eight years after his relationship with Jayden’s mother Samantha Shrewsbury crumbled following the teen’s death, told the Mail he sent the message as a ‘reminder’ of what Blakeley had done, with no intent behind it.
‘It was just a reminder. I said those two should do the right thing and hang themselves. I’m not a nasty person – I haven’t got a history of violence or anything. I probably wouldn’t have sent another message for five, 10 years.
‘But we loved her so much, and he just took her. It made me realise you can lose everything in the flick of a finger. I can’t ever forgive him for that. Jake, if he’d shown some respect? It could have been different.’
‘The police coming after me is what has brought all of this back up. I pleaded with them not to take me to the Crown Court. I couldn’t stand it.
‘Samantha and I wake up and there’s a few seconds before we realise that she’s dead. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. I wouldn’t even wish it on Ben.’
Blakeley was ordered to spend at least 20 years in prison for murder in July 2014.
The trial at Oxford Crown Court heard he had been abusive in both his relationship with Jayden and with other women, and that he had attacked her after learning that she had moved on from their relationship.
Judge Eccles, sentencing the killer to life, said: ‘Jayden Parkinson’s burial in this way is not only shocking for all who have listened to the evidence, but it was and always will be an intensely distressing memory for her family.’
Mr Jones says he is still contending with the PTSD he developed in the aftermath of Jayden’s murder, having given her a final embrace in the morgue when she was found two weeks after her death.
These days, his arm is tattooed with reminders of his step-daughter. He shaved his long hair off after she died, placing it in her coffin – the memories of her joyously plaiting it rendering it too painful to keep.
But he rarely ventures outside, saying that he sees Jayden ‘everywhere’ if he does.
He stood in the dock in motorcycle leathers to be given his £50 fine, a 10-year restraining order against the entire Blakeley family and a probation requirement: having ridden there from home on his bike, he went straight home again.
‘Jayden is with me every single minute of the day, because she was taken in such an awful way. I can’t stop seeing her and it drives me insane,’ he added.
Dean Jones pictured in recent years. He has spent much of the time since Ms Parkinson’s murder homeless
Jayden Parkinson is seen meeting Ben Blakeley on December 3, 2013. She would be dead before the end of the day
‘I used to be such a happy-go-lucky person and it’s turned me into nothing. I’m never going to move on. Jayden had a hard life all of her life, and I tried to show her there were people out there that loved her and she had me for that.
‘We were two peas in a pod. I taught her to drive, I taught her everything. She was my world, really. She was my little girl.
‘All this [case] has done is remind me how much I hate that family and all that pain they have caused.’
Judge Michael Roques said he ‘understood’ the reason behind the threat, which also included saying he wanted to kill Blakeley.
‘You have said to police a number of times you want to kill them. This court has every sympathy for why you feel that way, he said, in remarks reported by the Oxford Mail.
The threats really have to stop. I’m sure the last thing your daughter would have wanted is for you to be before the courts.’
Mr Jones accepts that he has been lucky to have been given such a sympathetic sentence.
‘I think he was lenient on me. He said he could have given me 10 years inside. He did say he would try to get me help with my mental health, but I don’t know.
‘But this has brought up so many things again – I can’t stop them going through my head. Getting probation is a kick in the f****** teeth.
‘I’ll carry it all until my last breath. I don’t believe in God or Jesus or any of that. But I really hope I get to see Jayden one more time. He took her away, and he can’t fix that.
‘I just want her to rest in peace and be remembered as a fun kid who never deserved what she got.’
Ms Parkinson’s body was found dumped in Blakeley’s uncle’s grave after he dug it up (pictured: forensics on site)
Dean Jones said his step-daughter had lived a ‘hard life’ but that he had tried to show her that there were ‘people out there who loved her’
A detailed review into Jayden’s death concluded police and councils responded in a ‘fundamentally flawed’ way to her disappearance.
Police were said to have ‘failed to recognise the seriousness of the threat’ Blakeley posed to his ex-girlfriend, who had moved into a hostel a month before her death after finally finding the courage to escape his abusive ways.
Oxfordshire’s social services were also criticised for failing to recognise her as a ‘child in need of safeguarding’.
Her mother, Ms Shrewsbury, told BBC News in 2023 that she would meet him, as she wants to ‘look into the eyes’ of her daughter’s killer.
However, she would ‘never, ever’ forgive the former binman for what he did, because of the life he took away from Ms Parkinson and her unborn baby.
Ms Shrewsbury added at the time: ‘She’d be a mum, she would have a nine-year-old child. I do wonder what she would have been like, how it would have played out.’
