Fiance who murdered author ‘killed first wife and said she had a fit’
THE fiance who killed children’s author Helen Bailey was back in the dock yesterday accused of murdering his wife six years earlier.
Ian Stewart, 61, was jailed for life in 2017 for murdering Miss Bailey, 51, whose body and that of her dog were found in a cesspit under her home.
The wealthy author of the popular Electra Brown series for teenagers had been drugged with sleeping pills.
Police then began to look into the 2010 death of Stewart’s wife Diane, who at the time was thought to have been killed by a massive epileptic fit at the age of 47.
The court heard that by a ‘stroke of fortune’ she donated her brain to medical research. Tests in 2017 said the chances of a seizure having killed were ‘100,000 to one’ but allegedly revealed that the supply of oxygen to her brain had been ‘substantially reduced’ in the hour before her death.
Prosecutor Stuart Trimmer, QC, told a jury at Huntingdon Crown Court in Cam
‘Diane’s death was definitely suspicious’
bridgeshire: ‘You have to determine whether Ian Stewart was responsible for the killing or whether it was a medical accident.’
Stewart had called 999 late at night claiming he found his wife ‘unresponsive, not breathing’ at home in Bassingbourn, Cambridgeshire. The incident was recorded as ‘sudden unexplained death through epilepsy’. But after Stewart’s conviction for killing Miss Bailey, his wife’s epilepsy was revealed to have been mild. She hadn’t suffered a fit in 18 years and three experts said epilepsy could not have killed her. and there was evidence of a ‘substantial reduction of oxygen’ before she died.
‘Death was most likely caused by a prolonged restriction of breathing from an outside source and the account given by Mr Stewart, the only other person on the premises, was directly contradicted by medical evidence,’ said Mr Trimmer.
after his arrest for her murder, Stewart claimed he had gone out that night and found her unconscious on the patio later.
The prosecution said there was only his word that he had not been with her when she died and claimed the couple had been arguing the week before.
Stewart also gave different accounts of what had happened to different people and acted ‘unusual’ afterwards, staying ‘very calm’ and in the background at the funeral – and then ‘buying a sports car and embarking on new relationships’.
Mrs Stewart’s sister, Wendy Bellamy-Lee, told the jury she ‘definitely’ had suspicions and recalled how Stewart got angry after she told him she had asked the coroner for information.
‘Ian said, “You don’t need to know”, that I had no right to do it. He thought it was not my business,’ she told the court.
asked about an incident in 1992 when Mrs Stewart collapsed in a shop, she insisted it wasn’t a ‘major thing’, adding: ‘Diane wasn’t an epileptic person. She didn’t suffer from epileptic fits throughout her life.’
Stewart began his relationship with Miss Bailey in 2012. She began complaining of drowsy spells from March 2016 and was reported missing from home in Royston, Hertfordshire, a month later.
Stewart told police she had left home ‘as she needed space’. But he made ‘repeated attempts’ to alter his fiancee’s finances to his benefit, the jury was told.
He had not worked for 17 years while she was worth £4million.
Searches finally revealed she had been dumped in a septic tank with her dog, Boris.
The case continues.