Eligible for parole but killer mum still in jail

A mother who smothered her baby in his hospital cot, and claims to be the jailhouse girlfriend of one of Queensland’s most notorious prisoners, is still in prison nearly a year after becoming eligible for parole.

Candy Metius with Bray at age three months.

AN EVIL mother who smothered her baby in his hospital cot while being secretly recorded by a hidden camera continues to languish in prison nearly a year after becoming eligible for parole.

The Courier-Mail last year revealed Candaneace Lea Metius considers herself to be the jailhouse girlfriend of notorious prisoner and one-time suspect in the Daniel Morcombe murder, Douglas Jackway – despite having never met him.

Prison intel officers have intercepted sexually explicit letters between the baby killer and her pedophile “boyfriend” in which they promise to meet up on the outside.

But neither have been granted parole, with Jackway, who is often described as Queensland’s worst prisoner, knocked back on multiple occasions.

Metius’ son Bray was eight months old when she killed him in 2004 by turning off his hospital monitors and repeatedly holding one hand to the back of his neck and another over his mouth and nose.

When he finally stopped breathing, she called for help, alerting several nurses who came running.

They resuscitated the little boy and eventually left the room.

Metius waited a while and turned the monitor off again before laying on top of Bray and smothering him until he was dead.

Bray had been admitted to the Mater Children’s Hospital following a series of mysterious “hypoxic episodes” – a lack of oxygen to the brain.

One episode had been so bad it had left the baby with a severe brain injury.

Authorities had become suspicious of Metius and cameras were put in Bray’s hospital room. Hospital staff had been monitoring her actions from another room but that stopped two days before Bray was killed.

Police, however, had kept the cameras recording.

The footage of an overweight Metius laying on top of her baby was played to the jury in her murder trial – leaving some so traumatised they needed counselling.

She was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in jail with a non-parole period of 15 years.

She was believed to have been eligible for parole last October but remains an inmate at Brisbane Women’s Correctional Centre.

Justice Ros Atkinson, who presided over the trial, said had she not seen the footage, “it would have been difficult to believe that it did happen”.

“Unfortunately it does not show a distressed and depressed mother who is unable to control her actions. It shows someone who is cold and calculating,” she said in sentencing.

“No one knows why you did this, perhaps even you yourself don’t … but it is clear that you killed that little boy coldly and carefully.”

Jackway has a lengthy criminal history. One of his worst offences involved the abduction of a young boy who had been riding his bike with friends.

Jackway punched the boy, bundled him into his car and drove him into mangroves where he raped him.

He has been knocked back for parole at least six times.