Primary teacher admits killing boyfriend found buried in garden
A PRIMARY school teacher accused of stabbing her partner to death “in cold blood” before burying his body has pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
Fiona Beal, 50, admits she killed 42-year-old Nicholas Billingham, whose remains were discovered in their garden four-and-a-half months after he was last seen.
Darker
But Beal, of Northampton, denies murder between October 30 and November 10, 2021.
Opening her Old Bailey trial, prosecutor Hugh Davies KC told jurors after Beal killed him she created time to dispose of the body by messaging people from both their phones that they had Covid.
On November 8, jurors heard Beal texted her sisters saying he had run off with another woman, which was “completely false”.
Back at work she got a “sympathetic response” over her break-up.
In March 2022, she rented a cabin in Cumbria and sent messages that worried her family. They asked police to check on her, the prosecutor said.
Officers found in the cabin journals with “clear declarations of what she had done,” said Mr Davies.
He continued: “Promising sex after a bath, she stabbed him in the neck when he was wearing a sleep mask and was probably cable-tied on their bed.”
The prosecutor said Beal claimed to have been “controlled and manipulated in the relationship” and wrote “of unpleasant things he had done”.
Mr Davies said she revealed an alter ego called Tulip 22 “capable of wholly different and darker conduct”.
The journals triggered a police investigation, which soon established Mr Billingham’s disappearance, the court heard.
Officers found his garden “grave”, which Mr Davies said comprised of concrete she had mixed and a “de facto coffin” made of breeze blocks, timber and sheets.
He called it a “major job” which needed planning.
The case continues on Monday.