Double murderer Ian Stewart met second victim and wealthy author Helen Bailey at bereavement group
The killer widower who nearly got away with it: How Ian Stewart murdered his first wife and escaped justice for 12 years – before meeting author Helen Bailey at a bereavement group and poisoning her for her £1.8m fortune
Ian Stewart met wealthy children’s author Helen Bailey at a bereavement group Stewart had already suffocated his first wife Diane Stewart at their home in 2010 He met Bailey in 2011 after contacting her online as he ‘grieved’ Diane’s deathWithin two years of meeting, they had moved into £1.5m Royston home togetherIn 2016, Stewart strangled her and left her body to rot in the cesspit of the home
<!–
<!–
<!–<!–
<!–
(function (src, d, tag){
var s = d.createElement(tag), prev = d.getElementsByTagName(tag)[0];
s.src = src;
prev.parentNode.insertBefore(s, prev);
}(“https://www.dailymail.co.uk/static/gunther/1.17.0/async_bundle–.js”, document, “script”));
<!–
DM.loadCSS(“https://www.dailymail.co.uk/static/gunther/gunther-2159/video_bundle–.css”);
<!–
New details have emerged which reveal how a double murderer escaped justice for more than a decade and met his second victim at a bereavement group years after killing his first wife.
Ian Stewart, 61, was today handed a whole life order after he was found guilty of the murder of his first wife Diane in 2010, and for later strangling wealthy children’s author Helen Bailey and dumping her body in their £1.5million Hertfordshire home.
In 2016, Stewart strangled Ms Bailey, 51, before leaving her body and that of Boris, their brown miniature dachshund, in the cesspit of the Royston home their shared where they lay undiscovered for three months.
Six years earlier, he had attacked his first wife Diane in a similar fashion, before weaving a web of deception that saw friends, family and medics convinced she had died after suffering a ‘1 in 100,000’ fatal epileptic fit.
In both cases, Stewart was set to pocket a large windfall after his partners’ deaths. He received £96,607.37 after Diane’s passing from life insurance pay outs and her savings, while he stood to gain £1.8 million should Helen die.
Mr Justice Simon Bryan today slammed Stewart – who will now die behind bars – for a ‘concerted and callous charade’ in denying the murders and pointed out the ‘striking similarities’ in both gruesome cases.
Ian Stewart, 61, was today handed a whole life order after he was found guilty of the murder of his first wife Diane in 2010, and for later strangling wealthy children’s author Helen Bailey and dumping her body in their £1.5million Hertfordshire home
Helen Bailey, had lost her husband John Sinfield when he drowned in front of her on a holiday to Barbados, had coped with her grief by writing about it.
Her blog Planet Grief was turned into a successful book, When Bad Things Happen In Good Bikinis, serialised in this newspaper.
In 2011, Stewart first met Helen, the daughter of a public health inspector and originally from Northumbria, whom he had got in touch with through an online bereavement group as he ‘grieved’ over the death of his first wife Diane a year prior.
Within two years of Stewart making contact with Helen, the couple had sold their respective homes and together bought a stunning Arts and Crafts house with an outdoor pool and acre of land in Royston, Hertfordshire.
Believing Stewart to be her ‘happy ending’ – and with her writing career in the ascendant – Helen believed she had finally found contentment.
Ian Stewart would strangle renowned children’s author Helen Bailey before dumping her body in the cesspit of the £1.5 million home they shared in Royston, Hertfordshire, together with that of Boris, their brown miniature dachshund (pictured together above)
Within two years of Stewart making contact with Helen, the couple had sold their respective homes and together bought a stunning Arts and Crafts house with an outdoor pool and acre of land in Royston, Hertfordshire
But shortly after, Stewart would strangle Ms Bailey before dumping her body in the cesspit of the £1.5 million home they shared in Royston, Hertfordshire, together with that of Boris, their brown miniature dachshund.
Her body lay undiscovered among raw sewage hidden 15ft beneath their garage for three months as Stewart pretended to police that she had gone missing. Detectives had considered him a suspect, but waited a full month before arresting him and carrying out extensive searches of the property.
But Ms Bailey’s corpse was finally discovered months later after a tip-off from a neighbour and he was found guilty of murder a year later.
Delay: Police faced backlash and questions about why it took them three months to find the body of murdered children’s author Helen Bailey at her home in Royston, Hertfordshire
A judge said Stewart suffocated her with a pillow while she was ‘too drowsy to fight him off’, with the fiend knowing he stood to gain £1.8m from her substantial investment portfolio, which included two properties.
Ms Bailey had met the ‘master manipulator’ on a bereavement group and, just before her death, was planning a wedding with the man she referred to in her writing as ‘the Gorgeous, Grey-Haired Widower’.
Meanwhile, Stewart had first met modern language student Diane at Salford University, where they studied, after stealing a chip off her plate in the canteen 28 years before he would kill her.
He worked for a year after leaving the university in 1982, before moving to Cambridge with Diane where he studied for a PhD.
Two years her senior, he had been studying computer science and remembered being wowed as he planned for Diane to become his ‘companion… almost immediately’.
Diane worked several jobs, including for DHL, Philips and later Kitchen Range Foods – which made products for fast food giants such as McDonald’s.
Stewart told jurors the pair ‘were in love and wanted to spend the rest of our lives together’. They married in 1986 and went on to have two sons, Jamie and Oliver.
In 2010, Diane Stewart, then aged 47, suddenly died. Ian managed to convince friends, family and neighbours that she had collapsed and suffered an epileptic fit at their £500,000 family home in Bassingbourn, Cambridgeshire
Diane met Stewart at the start of her modern languages degree while he was in his final year studying computer sciences
But in 2010, Diane, then aged 47, suddenly died. Stewart managed to convince friends, family and neighbours that she had collapsed and suffered an epileptic fit at their family home in Bassingbourn, Cambridgeshire.
Although she seemed in perfect heath, Diane’s cause of death was recorded at the time as Sudden Unexplained Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP) and her body was cremated.
Stewart had claimed in court, as his two sons listened to his evidence, that he returned from the supermarket to the family home in Bassingbourn, Cambridgeshire, and found his wife lying in the garden.
But Mrs Stewart had not had an epileptic fit for 18 years and took daily medication, jurors were told, with consultant neurologist Dr Christopher Derry estimating that her risk of having a fatal epileptic seizure was about one in 100,000.
During a 999 call Stewart was instructed to perform CPR on his wife and said he was doing so, but paramedic Spencer North, who attended the scene, said there ‘didn’t seem to be any effective CPR’.
Diane’s death was not treated as suspicious at the time and, while a post-mortem examination was carried out, it was not a forensic post-mortem.
As part of the police investigation, following Stewart’s 2017 murder conviction, consultant neuropathologist Professor Safa Al-Sarraj was asked to examine preserved parts of Mrs Stewart’s brain, which had been donated to medical science.
Prof Al-Sarraj said there was evidence that Mrs Stewart’s brain had suffered a lack of oxygen prior to her death, and he estimated that this happened over a period of 35 minutes to an hour.
Prosecutor Stuart Trimmer QC said her death was ‘most likely caused by a prolonged restriction to her breathing from an outside source’, such as smothering or a neck hold.
Pathologist Dr Cary described SUDEP as a ‘diagnosis of exclusion’, adding that ‘an equal diagnosis of exclusion is having been put into such a state by some covert means – smothering or interfering with the mechanics of breathing or some kind of drug use’.
Stewart denied the murder of his wife, and during the trial at Huntingdon Crown Court he described his conviction for the murder of Ms Bailey as a ‘miscarriage of justice’.
Questioned by Mr Trimmer, Stewart insisted during his trial that the two women’s deaths were a coincidence. The prosecutor told Stewart: ‘You’re a devious man.’
On Wednesday a jury of five men and seven women at Huntingdon Crown Court found Stewart guilty of strangling Diane to death in 2010.
Speaking after the verdict, Diane’s siblings Wendy Bellamy-Lee and Christopher Lem said: ‘Diane was a very special, caring and capable person. She will always be greatly loved and hugely missed by her family and all who knew her.
‘We have many happy memories of growing up together through the years and later having close bonds sharing our family lives together.
‘Tragically she died far too soon, she will always be in our hearts.’
Jamie and Oliver Stewart, sons of added: ‘Our Mum was amazing. All the people we have spoken to and things we have heard since her death have only enhanced this feeling.
‘We were privileged to have a wonderful caring upbringing and we were supported through all the activities and hobbies that we undertook.
‘It’s been really upsetting the last six years to have to recall the events of the toughest time of our life.
‘We now look forward to recalling the many happy moments we had growing up as a family.’
