Lotto millionaire accused of hitting ex who campaigned against male domestic abuse
Former cleaner who shared £148m win faces trial on assault charge
‘Vicious and manipulative’
LOTTERY multi-millionaire Gillian Bayford is to face trial accused of repeatedly attacking her ex-boyfriend – a domestic abuse campaigner.
Prosecutors claim that she lashed out at Gavin Innes, 46, while they were dating in 2017.
Court documents allege that on three occasions between August 1 2017 and October 31, 2017, Bayford – who is now remarried and also using the surname Deans – assaulted her former partner Mr Innes at an address in an upmarket area of Dundee.
She is also accused of repeatedly striking and punching him on the head and neck to his injury in the village of Auchterhouse, Angus.
At Dundee Sheriff Court yesterday Bayford, 47, who was not personally present, tendered a plea of not guilty through her solicitor to the single charge of assault to injury.
She was ordered to attend court for trial next month.
Bayford, of Broughty Ferry, Dundee, and her former husband Adrian shared a record-breaking Euro-Millions win of more than £148million in August 2012, before separating 15 months later after nine years of marriage.
The former hospital cleaner, who had been living with her then husband in Haverhill, Suffolk, returned to her native Scotland with the couple’s two children.
After announcing her split from Mr Bayford, she left their £6million Georgian mansion on a 200-acre East Anglia estate they bought with their winnings.
She then invested in a new house in an exclusive estate on the outskirts of her home town of Dundee.
After coming back to Dundee, Bayford launched a buy-to-let property business based in Carnoustie, Angus, spent millions buying homes to rent out, and bought a cafe, Sugar and Spice, in Arbroath.
The eatery shut in 2016, putting 21 staff out of work, after reporting a £129,000 loss. She was then linked with Audi sales dealer Alan Warnock who sold the Bayfords a fleet of luxury cars.
They met soon after the £148million win, when the Bayfords visited her parents in Scotland.
They went to the John Clark Audi dealership in Dundee, where Mr Warnock was sales manager, and ordered five luxury cars.
The vehicles – three Q7 SUVs worth about £60,000 each and two Q5s worth around £40,000 apiece – were bought for Mrs Bayford, her parents, her brother and his girlfriend.
In 2016, Bayford, who lives in a £750,000 house in Broughty Ferry, fell out with her parents, Ian and Brenda McCulloch.
She claimed they were ‘demanding and greedy’, despite being given £20million.
They, however, insisted that they had only been given £1million and that their daughter was ‘vicious and manipulative’.
Mr Innes and Bayford – who had gone to school together – are reported to have started their relationship after he approached her to help with a charity he was starting to help male victims of domestic abuse.
Mr Innes campaigns on Facebook and Twitter to raise awareness of the problem of men who suffer domestic abuse – and of the plight of their children.
He had reportedly hoped that Bayford would help him launch a Tayside-based charity with the aim of tackling the issue.
Latterly, Bayford married convicted fraudster Brian Deans, 37, in August last year in a lavish ceremony in St Andrews, Fife, six years to the day after she landed her jackpot.
Bayford, who is understood to have taken her new husband’s surname, got hitched in what was described by sources at the hotel as a ‘traditional wedding’ at the home of golf.