Millionaire couple ‘murdered with painkiller by IT worker who then rewrote their will’
AN IT worker murdered a millionaire couple he befriended with a powerful painkiller before re-writing their will to make himself a director of their company, a court heard yesterday.
Luke D’Wit, 34, worked for entrepreneurs Stephen and Carol Baxter and claimed he became so close to them he was ‘like an adopted son’.
But he is said to have given them fentanyl – a prescription opioid up to 100 times more potent than morphine – before making himself a beneficiary in a ‘very odd will’ written on his phone the day after their bodies were found.
The document stated he was to be made a director of Cazsplash, a company the Baxters founded and which made them their fortune selling bathmats designed to fit around curved showers.
D’Wit allegedly invented online personas to manipulate the couple and other family members, including a ‘US-based doctor’ who advised Mrs Baxter to limit time with her family because of her health.
Opening the case yesterday, prosecutor Tracy Ayling KC told jurors: ‘He had rewritten their will and stolen Carol’s jewellery, among many other things, to benefit from their deaths.’
D’Wit, who lives near the couple’s £1 million five-bedroom home in the yachting village of West Mersea, near Colchester in Essex, denies murdering Mr Baxter, 61, and his 64-year-old wife.
Chelmsford Crown Court heard yesterday that the deaths were treated as unexpected but not suspicious at first, with emergency services initially checking for a carbon monoxide leak.
The bodies were found in armchairs in the conservatory of their home by the couple’s daughter, Ellie, last April.
In a 999 call played to the court she wailed: ‘They’re poisoned. They’re dead. They’re frozen.’ D’Wit took over the call, the jury heard, and was asked if the couple were beyond help, to which he ‘calmly’ replied: ‘Yeah. There’s some blood on her mouth. She has yellow, blue fingers.’
Ms Ayling said: ‘There was no obvious reason for their deaths but, as their bodies were examined, it was revealed they had been poisoned using a drug called fentanyl.’
In police bodycam footage from the scene, D’Wit admitted being the last person to see them alive on April 7 but he ‘wasn’t seen as a suspect and, in fact, provided statements to police as a witness’, the court heard.
A toxicology report later indicated fentanyl was a factor in both deaths, the court was told, with identical packets of the drug found at the defendant’s home and the Baxters’ house.
Checks of both victims’ stomach contents suggested ‘the drug was ingested orally’. Mrs Baxter, who had a thyroid condition and a pacemaker, also had antihistamine drug promethazine in her system.
‘It’s difficult to imagine any scenario when two individuals who are not prescribed fentanyl could accidentally contaminate their food with this drug,’ Ms Ayling said. The prosecution say D’Wit had been preparing drinks for the couple since 2022, including their ‘final cup’ on the day they died.
Around 80 devices including phones and computers at D’Wit’s home were allegedly used to spin a ‘web of deception and manipulation’ involving the fake online contacts the Baxters were unwittingly in contact with.
They included a Florida-based endocrinologist, Dr Andrea Bow
den, who gave Mrs Baxter advice to help with her Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis condition and recommended restricted time with family as it ‘ releases too many chemicals in the adrenal gland’.
D’Wit is alleged to have managed Mrs Baxter’s medication and was in the couple’s house every day to care for her.
Jurors heard Mrs Baxter had a CT scan at Colchester General Hospital on February 2022 after complaining of pain and was found to have a 17mm metal tack in her pelvic region.
Ms Ayling, who described how identical tacks were later found in D’Wit’s possession, said: ‘You will have to consider how the tack got inside her.’
D’Wit’s home was searched following his arrest on July 6 and police uncovered an Adidas bag and inside was a white pharmacy bag with packets of fentanyl. The prosecutor said: ‘Some [packets]
were opened and some were not. The police officer searched the bag in front of D’Wit at the police station.
‘In a significant comment, D’Wit said words to the effect of “that is my bag, that’s my granddad’s stuff, he died a few weeks ago”.’
Mrs Ayling then explained four fentanyl patches were missing from the bag, and four fentanyl patches from the same supplier were found at the Baxters’ address in Mersea.
D’Wit met the Baxters in 2013 when they needed help with IT for their business.
He claimed to have an MSc in computer science from the University of East Anglia but the prosecution said there was no record of him at the university.
The defendant denies two counts of murder, a charge of possession of a Class A drug and one count of theft. The case continues.
‘He managed her medication’