An evil mother who was jailed twice for stabbing her newborn baby to death with a pair of scissors has died in prison.

Rachel Tunstill had told her boyfriend she had miscarried, but gave birth alone in the bathroom of the flat they shared in Burnley before murdering the tot.

During her first trial at Preston Crown Court in June 2017 a jury heard how Tunstill stabbed her daughter Mia Kelly 15 times in the bathroom of the Burnley flat she shared with the baby’s father, Ryan Kelly, in January 2017.

Tunstill, then aged 28, denied murder on the basis of diminished responsibility, but was found guilty by a jury and jailed for life by trial judge Mr Justice William Davis and told she would have to serve a minimum of 20 years before being eligible for parole.

However, the conviction was quashed by High Court appeal judges who said the indictment put to the jury should have contained infanticide as an alternative verdict to murder.

Infanticide is the deliberate killing of a child under 12 months by a mother who was ‘disturbed by reason of her not having fully recovered from the effect of giving birth to the child’.

She stood trial for a second time at Liverpool Crown Court over seven weeks where a jury took around five hours to unanimously find her guilty of Mia’s murder.

The court heard how Tunstill delivered baby Mia alone in the bathroom of her flat in Wellington Court, Burnley, as her then partner played Xbox in the next room.

Mr Kelly, who had been in a relationship with Tunstill for nine years, did not suspect his partner was giving birth and thought she was going through the motions of a miscarriage she claimed she had suffered six weeks earlier.

She used a pair of scissors to stab the tiny baby before wrapping her body in two plastic carrier bags and dumping the body in the kitchen bin.

Following the retrial in 2019, she was convicted again and ordered to serve a minimum of 17 years.

A prison service spokesman confirmed that Tunstill, 32, died in HMP Styal, Cheshire, on August 1. 

It is not believed her death was self-inflicted and the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman will now investigate.

The prison service spokesperson said: "HMP Styal prisoner Rachel Tunstill died in custody on 1 August 2023. As with all deaths in custody, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman will investigate.”