The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Teacher had her partner’s mother over for drinks as his body lay buried in garden
Killer pleads guilty after luring boyfriend upstairs with promise of sex and stabbing him in neck
A WOMAN murdered her boyfriend then invited his worried mother over as his body lay in a makeshift grave in the back garden.
As Fiona Beal entertained her guest, Nicholas Billingham’s body was lying just a few feet from where his mother Yvonne Valentine was sitting.
Beal pleaded guilty mid-trial at the Old Bailey yesterday to the murder of Billingham, 42. She had earlier admitted manslaughter, claiming that she had experienced a “loss of control” when she killed Billingham, claiming they had a “coercive” relationship.
The court heard that the 50-year-old had lured Billingham into the bedroom with the promise of sex, tied him to the bed with cable ties, and stabbed him in the neck before hiding his body and telling friends and family that he had left her for another woman.
The “highly capable and respected” primary school teacher told colleagues and friends they had tested positive for Covid so that she could take 10 days to “isolate” – as per government guidance at the time. This excuse allowed her to be undisturbed while she built a makeshift grave and repainted her Northamptonshire home to hide the blood.
Shortly before Christmas 2021, Beal told Mrs Valentine that her son, a builder, had left and moved to Essex to “start a new life”. But all the time his body was lying buried in the garden of the home they shared. Despite this, Beal invited Mrs Valentine to the house to wrap presents and have a drink.
Mrs Valentine told
“She’d said Nick had gone up to Essex. I noticed she’d moved some furniture – it was to block access to the back garden – and when I commented on it she said ‘Oh, I’m glad you like it’.”
A few days later Beal even tried to use Billingham’s mother as part of an elaborate hoax to create an alibi for herself after she had killed him the previous month. As part of the ruse she wrote a text message to Mrs Valentine on Dec 30 2021, purporting to be from her son saying he had gone off to start a new life with a fictional woman called “Faye”.
It stated: “All good. We’re in Manchester for New Year. Just watched Utd beat Burnley at Old Trafford. Back to Essex Sunday. I know what you think of me but I felt like a prisoner and then I met Faye. I’m back selling cars and happy. I’ll let u know my address when things calm down. Happy 2022 xx.”
Mrs Valentine said: “After Christmas, I sent him a message asking if he was alright and how he was doing because I didn’t feel it was like him to go off like that and I was a bit worried. So when I got that message back I believed it. It was incredibly evil of her to do that. ‘It was incredibly evil of her to do that. My lovely son did not deserve what she did to him’
Bless him, Nick didn’t deserve what she did to him. She stabbed him after he’d fallen asleep. It was horrible.”
Following the murder, Beal, who was smoking up to 10 joints of cannabis a day before the killing, returned to work behaving completely normally and took pupils on a school trip to London.
Police believe the killing took place on Nov 1 2021 and records from the school where she worked showed she had been absent between Nov 1 and Nov 12, using the excuse that she had Covid and needed to self-isolate for 10 days.
On Nov 1 she manufactured a positive test result by completing the NHS questionnaire online and there was no evidence she ever did a PCR test.
The school’s head teacher had been in contact with her during this period, and when she returned to work she said her partner had left her.
In March 2022, Beal called in sick but told her family she was away on a residential work course.
She was arrested that month after being discovered at a holiday property near Kendal, Cumbria, where she had attempted to take her own life.
After police recovered a notebook giving a chilling account of how she had planned and then carried out a killing, they went to her Northampton home where they discovered a blood-stained mattress in the basement. They then excavated the garden and after four days of digging found Billingham’s “partially wrapped and partially-clothed” remains, buried in a makeshift grave filled with compost and ten 22.5kg bags of Cotswold Stone that Beal had bought from B&Q and topped off with a plant pot for decorative effect.
Prosecutor Hugh Davies, KC, told the trial: “This was a major job, requiring her to plan what was needed, order it, collect it, burn other incriminating material in an incinerator in the garden and carry on throughout as if nothing remarkable was occurring.”
Billingham had affairs during his relationship with Beal and at one stage moved out of the home before the couple reconciled. In the notebook recovered by police, Beal claimed she had decided to act because Billingham had been cheating on her.
It read: “I suppose I ought to explain what happened to get me to this point. My mental health had been deteriorating. Whenever he was cheating he would up the ante on belittling, moaning and criticising. I have to confess. OK here goes. October 2021. He spat on me and threatened me during sex. I thought about leaving but the things he said and it fuelled my dark side – I call her Tulip22, she’s reckless, fearless and efficient. Ruthless. I knew I couldn’t let him get away with it. Halloween sealed it. He was vile. That night I planned.
“Covid rules meant I had a guaranteed 10-day isolation period from positive symptoms. I called [Beal’s school’s headteacher] on the Monday and said we’d tested positive and had symptoms. He went to work. Tulip22 smoked and planned. I’d planned it mentally so many times before. I had a bath. I left the water in. I encouraged the bath with the incentive of sex afterwards. While he was in the bath I kept the knife in my dressing gown pocket and then hid it in the drawer next to the bed. I brought a chisel, bin bag and cable ties up. I got him to wear an eye mask. It was harder than I thought it would be. Hiding a body was bad. Moving a body is much more difficult than it looks on TV.”
Beal’s original murder trial collapsed after more than four months in June last year, when it emerged that a key defence witness was a court custody officer who had conducted welfare checks on her in the cells. Appearing at the Old Bailey yesterday for what would have been the third day of her trial, Beal, wearing glasses and a black cardigan, finally admitted murder. The jury was directed to confirm a guilty verdict and Beal will be sentenced at on May 29 and 30. Judge Mark Lucraft told her she faces a sentence of life imprisonment.
Following Beal’s guilty plea, Det Chief Insp Adam Pendlebury, from Northamptonshire Police, said: “We are pleased Beal has taken the decision to admit she did indeed murder Nick Billingham and hope that it brings the start of some closure to his family who have faced a torrid time.”
Mrs Valentine told she can never forgive Beal. “Nick was a hard-working, house-proud young man. She made out he just sat there doing nothing,” she said. Mrs Valentine rejected Beal’s claims that her son had been abusive to her. She never gave the impression of being mistreated or being unhappy with him. Whenever I saw ‘Moving a body is much more difficult than it looks on TV. It was harder than I thought it would be’ them they seemed like a normal couple.
“I’m Nick’s mum, I loved him. He was my firstborn. He was a lovely boy. He was a lovely cheeky boy. What she said about Nick was just a lie. I didn’t recognise what she was saying about him. He wouldn’t have been like that.”
Mrs Valentine’s husband Russell added: “When Nicholas was found it was just so shocking. He’d been missing a while by then so we knew it was bad news when the police said they had something to tell us.
“We thought that perhaps he’d gone back to the house to pick up some possessions and they’d had an argument and something had happened in the heat of the moment. When they said he’d been killed in November we just reeled. We had thought he was still alive up until that point.”