Norton Canes community speak about the killer mum in their midst

Nov 27 2011 by Mike Lockley, Sunday Mercury

THE slim blonde, laughing loudly with a tight knot of mothers at schoolgates, betrayed nothing of the terrible, bloody secret locked inside her.

Only 48 hours earlier, Sheila Jones had bludgeoned her own grandmother to death in an attack so brutal it left the near-blind 93-year-old with a fist-sized bruise on her face, broken collarbone, dislocated shoulder, fractured rib and severe bruising to her neck.

Frail Daisy Myring – beaten over the head with a stool, then punched and kicked by the woman who cared for her – was discovered the morning after the horrific attack, sobbing softly on the floor of her Brownhills home.

She died in hospital hours later.

It is a crime that has rocked the tight-knit former mining community of Norton Canes, Staffordshire, where 36-year-old Jones and doting husband Lee, 41, have spent their entire life.

And those who knew the killer – and everyone in the village seemed to – are asking the same question after she was given a life sentence last week: what turns an ordinary housewife and caring mother into a monster?

The answer, Wolverhampton Crown Court was told, is greed.

Jones had systematically drained £7,000 from her nan’s savings and struck in the dead of night to prevent disabled Daisy, who relied on a pacemaker, from blowing the whistle.

Villagers are not buying it.

Friend Jackie Elson, 46, said: “You don’t kill someone for £7,000. A life is worth a lot more than £7,000.