It’s a murder that has sent shockwaves throughout the UK – and one that once again had life insurance as a central issue in the perpetrator’s motivation.
Helen Bailey, 51, was a children’s author with the world at her feet. She created the Electra Brown novels for teenagers that earned her vast success; and also wrote a successful blog named Planet Grief following the passing of her husband, who drowned while the couple were on vacation in the Caribbean back in 2011.
In her mourning she signed up for a Facebook group for bereaved people – and it was from there that she met the man who would ultimately become her next partner, Ian Stewart. They began a relationship and he became the heir to her £4 million fortune as Bailey changed her will and gave him power of attorney. Additionally, Bailey took out a life insurance policy to cover the possibility of a £1.2 million inheritance tax bill in the case that she died before they married.
Yesterday, he was found guilty of murder, fraud and perverting the course of justice, as well as preventing a lawful burial with sentencing set for today.
Bailey was found in July last year under the garage of the home that she and Stewart shared, buried alongside her miniature dachshund, Boris.
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It was revealed that Stewart had been drugging his partner secretly with zopiclone, a sleeping medication that he had been prescribed.
According to a Guardian report, on April 11 Bailey had spent the morning Googling where the couple would have their wedding – but by midday she was not answering calls. It was on that day that Stewart is believed to have suffocated his partner, killed her dog and dumped their bodies in a cesspit under their garage. CCTV footage later showed him dumping a large white object at Royston tip, believed to have been the duvet involved in either killing.
With Bailey missing, Stewart paid for flyers to be sent as a way to publicise her disappearance. DCI Jerome Kent, of Hertfordshire police, told the Guardian that Stewart is “the most bizarre, manipulative, greedy and self-centred man I’ve ever met”, who laid out “a carefully planned deception”.
Charles White of the Crown Prosecution Service said Stewart “murdered Helen Bailey and then conducted a cynical, deceitful and calculated charade as he watched the police conduct a futile missing person investigation.”
Police are now set to look again at the death of his first wife Diane, who was deemed to have died by natural causes, with no existing evidence to suggest her death was suspicious.
