Killer of top author charged with murder of his first wife
A CONVICTED killer serving life for smothering a best-selling children’s author appeared in court yesterday charged with the murder of his first wife.
Ian Stewart, 59, is accused of killing Diane Stewart six years before he murdered his partner Helen Bailey.
The body of 51-year-old Ms Bailey, who wrote the Electra Brown series of books, was found in 2016 in a cesspit at the sevenbedroom detached house she shared with Stewart.
A jury found him guilty of the murder in February 2017 and he was jailed for a minimum of 34 years at St Albans Crown Court, Hertfordshire.
Dreaming
Yesterday, he made a brief appearance at the same court charged with the murder of 47-year-old Mrs Stewart.
He is alleged to have killed her on June 25, 2010, at their home in Bassingbourn, Cambridgeshire.
Judge Michael Kay QC formally remanded Stewart in custody until another preliminary hearing on September 21.
The defendant was not asked to enter a plea. No date for the trial has yet been fixed.
Father-of-two Stewart denied murdering Ms Bailey at their home in Royston, Hertfordshire.
He insisted two men, identified only as Joe and Nick, kidnapped the author on April 11, 2016, before returning to the house and dumping her body in the cesspit under the garage without his knowledge.
Stewart reported Ms Bailey as missing on April 15 after Joe and Nick warned him not to go to the police, the jury was told.
Her remains were found in July that year.
He said he failed to mention the two men to police until months later because he was worried about his sons Jamie and Oliver.
Born in Ponteland near Newcastle in 1964, Ms Bailey began writing when she was a teenager. She later recalled: “Whilst at school I used to sit and stare out of the window, dreaming of anything but lessons, then go home and write pages and pages in my diary of who did what to whom and (usually) why wasn’t I part of it.”
While working as a temporary secretary in London, she met John Sinfield, the head of a licensing rights’ company. They married in 1996.
Ms Bailey later wrote five books on teenage angst featuring Electra Brown, as well as books for young children.
In 2011, Mr Sinfield drowned while swimming while the couple were on holiday in Barbados.
She later wrote about the torment of grief in her first book for adults called When Bad Things Happen In Good Bikinis.