Did £3.5m author’s murderer kill first wife too?
‘She was too young to suddenly die’
THE man who murdered writer Helen Bailey is to be investigated over the death of his first wife, it was revealed yesterday.
School secretary Diane Stewart died suddenly at the age of 47, but her death raised no suspicions until her widower Ian was accused of secretly drugging and killing his fiancée Miss Bailey, 51.
Mrs Stewart’s mother Noreen Lem, 85, yesterday told of her horror that her former son-in-law could be linked to the 2010 death and said she would welcome a police investigation. She said: ‘Diane’s sudden death was such a shock. Now there’s a possibility her husband had something to do with it. It’s shocking. I couldn’t imagine him doing anything as horrible as this. I don’t know what to think now. She was fit, happy and healthy and too young to suddenly die.’
Stewart, 56, is to be sentenced today for the murder of Miss Bailey at the £1.5 million home they shared in Royston, Hertfordshire, last April. He had wooed the wealthy widow, who changed her will to make him the main beneficiary of her £3.5 million fortune.
Last night detectives said Mrs Stewart’s death – which was officially recorded as a sudden unexpected death caused by epilepsy – would be ‘re-examined’.
Stewart, a former Cambridge University PhD student, was alone with Mrs Stewart, his wife of 24 years, when she died in their garden, and told police he had desperately tried to revive her after she suffered an epileptic fit.
But similarities between what happened to her and the murder of Miss Bailey have prompted fears that Mrs Stewart’s death might not have been natural.
Stewart, a computer software engineer, stood to gain an inheritance on the death of each partner and he was alone with both in their shared homes when they died. Police stopped short of naming him as a suspect, saying their reexamination of the death was not a murder investigation. Mrs Stewart’s body was cremated, but detectives will analyse post-mortem examination results and pathology reports, as well as her former husband’s statements about her death. The couple had two sons – Jamie, 24, and Oliver, 21 – who have been in court for much of their father’s murder trial. They refused to comment afterwards.
Mrs Lem told the Daily Mail: ‘The coroner said she died in unknown and inexplicable circumstances. It was very strange but at the time I never questioned it.
‘I don’t know what to think. I have to question if Ian had anything to do with my daughter’s death. Diane’s death was heart-breaking and I’ve never got over it.’
Stewart’s murder trial heard how he deliberately targeted Miss Bailey on a bereavement website because she was wealthy and vulnerable after the death of her first husband John Sinfield, who drowned while the couple were on holiday in Barbados in February 2011.
Stewart started messaging Miss Bailey two days before Mr Sinfield’s funeral, and overwhelmed her with messages and lavish displays of affection.
In her book on coping with grief, she described how she had moved on after meeting a ‘Gorgeous Grey Haired Widower’ and dedicated the book to him, writing: ‘You are my happy ending.’
A jury of seven men and five women took just five hours to find Stewart guilty of murder yesterday after a seven- week trial at St Albans Crown Court.
Det Chief Insp Jerome Kent, who led the murder inquiry, said Stewart was a manipulative narcissist who had deliberately lied to his own family, Miss Bailey’s relatives and police to cover up his crime.
Miss Bailey’s brother John, 48, said: ‘Despite this victory for justice there can be no celebration. Our families have been devastated and nothing can ever bring Helen back to us, or truly right this wrong.’