My mum & dad took him under their wing ..then he killed them
Family fury as fentanyl poisoner gets life for murdering couple & altering their will
THE daughter of a couple murdered with fentanyl by an IT worker told how he had “hacked his way into our lives” a decade before killing them.
Ellie Baxter spoke of the family’s horrific loss as Luke D’Wit, 34, was jailed for life for at least 37 years for killing Stephen Baxter, 61, and his 64-year-old wife Carol, before creating a fake will.
In her victim impact statement, daughter Ellie, 22, said: “My parents and I were manipulated by someone we had looked after for so many years.
“Mum and Dad took him under their wing… but he schemed and thoroughly planned my parents’ demise.”
In 2014, D’Wit befriended the Baxters, who gave him a job at their shower mat firm and treated him “almost like a son”.
But he began secretly drugging Carol as part of an extraordinary long-term case of manipulation lasting two years.
D’Wit set up a string of fake personas to trick the Baxters in a bid to take over their successful company.
He posed as a female American doctor online to brainwash Carol, who had the thyroid condition Hashimoto’s. His messages poured scorn on conventional GPs and urged her to follow the US medic’s advice, which even mentioned fake patients.
This enabled D’Wit to administer Carol’s medication and add drugs that made her seriously ill.
Prosecutor Tracy Ayling KC said the drugs made her appear as if she had dementia or a stroke and told how the pain inflicted on her “was for Luke D’Wit’s own satisfaction”.
D’Wit changed the couple’s will to make him a director of their company Cazsplash, also using a fake solicitor. He went on to kill the couple with fentanyl at their home on Mersea Island in Essex. He extracted the opioid from patches, which had originally been prescribed for his late father.
They were crushed into a powder and given to Carol and Stephen in what they believed was a liver detox supplement. D’Wit then watched them die on a mobile camera he had hidden in their luxury property. Daughter Ellie found their bodies in their conservatory last Easter Sunday. She told Chelmsford crown court: “I have never known an emotional pain to physically hurt so much. It was like my insides were on fire. I screamed and screamed.” She said D’Wit’s manipulation of her parents was “twisted and abominable”, while her brother Harry said: “Our life will for ever be punctured.”
D’Wit was convicted of murdering the couple earlier this week and was handed two mandatory life terms.
Det Supt Rob Kirby, of Essex Police, described him as “one of the most dangerous men I have ever experienced in my policing career”.
Mr Justice Nicholas Lavender told D’Wit he was possibly motivated by a “desire to control others”.
He described his actions as cruel and senseless and said killing the couple was the “ultimate form of control”.