Biological father mourns murdered toddler Preston Davey at vigil

A candlelit vigil at Preston’s Flag Market gathered family, friends and well-wishers to remember Preston Davey, the 13-month-old toddler whose death has shaken Lancashire and reopened questions about how abuse was missed. His biological father, Gary Nolan, used the moment to speak of the suffering he said his son endured, saying Preston had faced months of “terror at the hands of a monster.”

The vigil took place on 16 June 2026, the day Preston would have turned four. For those who came to the town centre, the tribute was not only a mark of grief but a public reckoning with the failures believed to have preceded the child’s death.

Preston died in July 2023, months after being adopted at nine months old in April 2023 by Jamie Varley and John McGowan-Fazackerley. Varley, a former teacher at South Shore Academy in Blackpool, was found guilty of Preston’s murder and a series of related sexual and child cruelty offences. McGowan-Fazackerley was convicted of allowing the death of a child and other offences.

The case has drawn scrutiny because of what campaigners and investigators have described as missed opportunities by social workers and medical staff to spot the abuse before Preston died. Those concerns have made the boy’s short life a symbol of more than one family’s loss, placing child protection practice, professional oversight and inter-agency communication under a harsh public lens.

Background reporting has also focused on Preston’s path into care. His birth mother, Sarah Davey, was convicted of killing a pensioner when she was 14, a history that underscored why Preston was taken into care shortly after birth. He was later placed with Varley and McGowan-Fazackerley at their home on Staining Road in Blackpool.

For many who gathered in Preston, the vigil reflected the unbearable distance between the child remembered in photographs and the violence uncovered in court. Nolan’s words gave the grief a sharper edge: not just mourning for a dead toddler, but anger at the institutions and adults who failed to keep him safe.