Drug user Jake Drummond found to have tortured toddler to death

32 years inside for Jake Drummond and 10 for Louise Lennon

May 26, 2023

A man who murdered a 15-month-old child in Roehampton after a sustained campaign of physical abuse has been jailed for 32 years.

33-year-old Jake Drummond was found to have killed Jacob Lennon on 27 August 2019 by shaking and hitting him. Pathologists later found a series of cuts and bites to the child’s body indicate that he had been subject to assaults over prolonged period of time.

The sentence was pronounced in a televised hearing at the Old Bailey on Friday afternoon (26 May). The judge said that an already emotionally volatile Drummond had seen a deterioration in his behaviour due to his drug use. He had taken cocaine the day before the fatal attack when partying with a friend. The court was told that Drummond was frustrated at Jacob staying in bed with him and the boy’s mother, 32-year-old Lousie Lennon, rather than his cot.

Drummond had a string of previous convictions for drug possession, holding a knife against his mother’s throat and assaulting an ex-girlfriend.

Jacob Lennon. Picture: Met Police

The judge also rejected a claim by Lennon that she had been coercively controlled by Drummond and concluded that she had deemed the relationship with him more important than her son’s welfare. The pair had joked about the boy’s injuries in texts they shared and described him as looking like ‘a little madman’ due to the extent of his bruises. When questioned about Jacob’s injuries Lennon had claimed they were due to accidents or had been caused by other children. She consistently lied to social services about Jacob’s condition and his location.

Lennon, 32, was found guilty of causing or allowing the death of a child having admitted child cruelty and was sentenced to ten years imprisonment.

Speaking afterwards, Detective Chief Inspector Wayne Jolley from the Met’s specialist crime unit, described the case as “by far, the most difficult, the most sad” of his thirty year career with the police.

He told the PA news agency, “This was a very emotional and distressing case over a three-year period, and to bring those responsible, Drummond and Lennon, to justice for Jacob means everything to us.

“This is extremely unusual. In my 30 years of service, this was a really distressing and emotional case for all of those involved.

“This is a horrific case in which Jacob, who was a 15-month-old baby, was subjected to some horrific injuries that are truly awful and cruel.

“There were over 20 individual injuries to his body at the time of his death. One of the most significant injuries was the injury to his genitalia, which was cruel and sadistic in its own right.

“Jacob’s eventual cause of death was a significant head injury. He had been subjected to assaults over a three-week period by Drummond, and Louise Lennon would have been fully aware, as mother of that child, that these injuries were significant and required medical assistance.”