Missing midwife: Brother-in-law of ex-fiance charged with her murder
POLICE investigating the murder of midwife Samantha Eastwood last night charged her former fiance’s brother-in-law.
The 28-year-old’s body was found at a disused quarry on Saturday eight days after she failed to arrive for work.
Detectives announced 32- year- old Michael Stirling had been charged with murder and will appear before magistrates today.
Two other men, aged 28 and 60, held on suspicion of assisting an offender have been bailed.
Last night it was claimed that Miss Eastwood had told a colleague she had been threatened in the period leading up to her disappearance.
Yesterday, police made the unusual decision to publicly confirm that Miss Eastwood’s ex-fiance, John Peake, 34, was not one of three men being held in connection with her murder. His Facebook profile has been targeted with abusive comments from internet trolls.
Miss Eastwood and Mr Peake had been a couple for seven years and were due to marry in June, but the midwife ended their engagement at the start of the year. Mr Peake moved out of the home she bought in 2016 at Stockton Brook on the edge of Stoke-on-Trent and now lives on his own. Yesterday police were seen entering a house in the Northwood area of the city owned by Mr Peake’s sister Katie Stirling, 32, and her husband Michael. The semi- detached property became a focus of the police hunt for Miss Eastwood last week.
An officer present yesterday confirmed the address was now being treated as a crime scene.
The house is less than four miles from the Bucknall home of Mr Stirling’s parents, Stephen, 60, who is believed to work in a garage, and 57-year-old wife Carol. Officers searched the home yesterday and a small white van was seen being taken away by police on Saturday. Last night it was claimed that Miss Eastwood had told a colleague at Royal Stoke University Hospital she had been threatened in the period leading up to her disappearance.
A source said: ‘[ After this] Samantha asked one of her colleagues to report it if she didn’t turn up for work.
‘And that is what happened on the Friday night, that is why the police were called so quickly. She must have feared something like this would happen – that’s why she set up this raising the alarm thing with her colleague.’
A spokesman for the hospital declined to comment on the claim last night. Officers searching for Miss Eastwood found a body at Tick Hill Quarry, around eight miles from her home near Caverswall, Staffordshire. Police said the body was still to be formerly identified, but added that officers believed it to be that of Miss Eastwood. A post-mortem examination was taking place yesterday.
The development came 24 hours after Miss Eastwood’s sister Gemma, 26, made a tearful public appeal for information to help find her ‘best friend’.
In a brief statement issued through police yesterday the Eastwood family said: ‘We would like to say thank you to all the people who followed Samantha’s story and tried their best to help.’
Mr Peake’s Facebook page has also been inundated with almost 500 comments – with some trolls pointing the finger at the innocent steam railway manager. One wrote: ‘Of course you murdered her, couple of her mates and a pair of pliers would get the truth out of you.’
A spokesman for Staffordshire Police said: ‘We are not naming the three men arrested yesterday but John Peake is not one of them.’ The force later added: ‘ Detectives investigating the death of 28-year- old Samantha Eastwood have charged a man with her murder.
‘Michael Stirling, aged 32, from Stoke-on-Trent will appear before North Staffordshire Magistrates Court.’ Miss Eastwood was last seen in her Volvo XC60 on CCTV, moments after leaving hospital at the end of a night shift last Friday morning. Colleagues raised the alarm when she failed to return to work that evening.
‘She feared this would happen’