A woman accused of murdering her two-year-old daughter told police her partner wanted her to "lie" and take the blame for the toddler's death.

Scott Jeff and Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell, both 24 and of no fixed address, have denied murdering Isabella Wheildon between June 26-30 last year.

The two-year-old's body was discovered at a temporary housing unit in Sidegate Lane in Ipswich.

On Wednesday police interviews with Gleason-Mitchell and Jeff were read out to court.

Jeff told police he never committed "any unlawful act" but had noticed bruising to the child’s face and arms before her death.

In the statement he said Gleason-Mitchell suggested the marks were nothing to worry about and he accepted this.

Then on the day of her death he woke up and heard "strange" noises from Isabella and when he picked her up, she was “floppy and unresponsive” and he could not find a pulse.  

However, Gleason-Mitchell rejected this as a “lie”.

She said Jeff kept saying to her after Isabella died: “If the police do find us, it’ll be you who goes down. You just say it was you all throughout."

She told police: “He told me to lie to you all to say it was all me.

“He wants me to lie so he don’t get locked up.”

She said she had seen Jeff assaulting Isabella and that he wanted to bury her “in a lake or forest” and had told her to buy tools to do it - but she had refused.

The police asked if Jeff ever moved the child after she was dead.

Gleason-Mitchell replied; “He kept going back looking at her and touching her after she died. Just putting a hand on her”.

Gleason-Mitchell said Jeff had started abusing the baby during potty training and would smack her hands for “any little accident”.   

She said eventually he beat her so much it was “like she couldn’t feel pain, like she had forgotten how to cry”.

The defendant said in her interview: “He wanted her to be a daddy’s girl and if she ever said mummy he would say ‘no daddy’s girl’ and then he would hit her."

The court also heard while being interviewed police asked Gleason-Mitchell why she was smiling on CCTV as she pushed Isabella's dead body in the pram.

The trial heard officers asking her if she did this “to cover it up”. 

Gleason-Mitchell replied: “I felt I wanted the last few days with her.

“I wanted to still feel like I had a child."

She then denied taking her around to keep up a pretence the child was still alive to avoid being caught.

The defendant later said in the interview she was still having showers in the bathroom where Isabella was found dead.

In addition to denying murder, Jeff has also denied causing or allowing the death of a child between June 26-30 last year and two offences of cruelty to a child.

Gleason-Mitchell has pleaded guilty to causing or allowing the death of a child and two offences of cruelty to a child under 16.