Ian Stewart slammed by judge for ‘heinous’ financially-motivated murder of fiancee Helen Bailey – as he faces death behind bars
The cesspit killer has been jailed for at least 34 years and the court heard he will 'likely end his days behind bars'
EVIL Ian Stewart was today jailed for life for the murder of his millionaire fiancée Helen Bailey after dumping her body in a cesspit below her home.
The killer - driven into a jealous fury by the children's author's miniature dachshund - faces death behind bars after being found guilty of the greed-fuelled plot to get his hands on her £3.3million.
Today Stewart, who refused to attend sentencing, was jailed for at least 34 years after being convicted of tragic Helen's murder.
Judge Andrew Bright told him: "Helen Bailey was excitedly making arrangements for your wedding while you were planning how to kill her.
"You planned her murder well in advance and secretly administered zopiclone tablets to her so you could smother her when she was too drowsy to fight you off."
Simon Russell Flint, defending, said during his mitigation: "The likelihood is, given his state of health, the sentence has a like-effect of a whole-life order.
"There is every prospect and likelihood Mr Stewart will end his days behind bars."
The judge slammed Stewart for the financially-motivated murder of fiancee Helen.
He told St Albans Crown Court: "Helen Bailey was only 51-years old and at the height of her success as a writer when you brought her life to a cruel end and dumped her body and that of her beloved dog Boris in a foul-smelling cess-pit to decompose.
"I am satisfied that your principal motive for killing her was to enable you to take advantage of the generous provision she had made for you in the event of her death which you knew the law would presume after she had remained a missing person for long enough.
"In the meantime and within a few hours of her murder you used your knowledge of her financial affairs and your computer expertise to substantially increase an existing standing order from her personal bank account to enable you to have immediate access to some of her money."
I am firmly of the view that you currently pose a very real danger to women with whom you form a relationship
Judge Andrew Bright QC
Judge Bright added: "You knew Helen Bailey to be a wealthy woman but were not content with having to share in her wealth as her husband.
"Instead you wanted it all for yourself. She had assets well in excess of £3 million and had taken out a life insurance policy in the sum of a further £1.28 million which you stood to receive in the event of her death.
"I am firmly of the view that you currently pose a very real danger to women with whom you form a relationship."
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Questions are now being raised by the family of the 56-year-old's first wife Diane after they told of their fears over her sudden death in 2010.
Speaking to the relative, who did not want to be named, revealed Stewart hadn't even allowed Diane's mum to see her death certificate.
They said: "We were told at the time it was an unexplained death and it has worried me, it has been on my mind that it was unexplained."
The relative added: “He [Stewart] was the only one there when she died… I know her brother and sister have been very concerned."
"Diane's mother never knew how she died, he never showed her Diane's death certificate even when she requested it and he just said it was unexplained."
Stewart preyed on wealthy widow Helen, who was still grieving over the sudden drowning death of her husband, "love-bombing" her by showering her with compliments.
The pair became secretly engaged just a year after meeting through an internet group for bereaved widows and widowers - but their relationship had been orchestrated from the very beginning.
The Cambridge-educated software engineer had been playing "the long game" to get her almost £4million estate.
The plot, which prosecutors said had a "beginning, middle and end", then began to unfold, as Stewart, branded as "wicked" and a "full-blown liar", secretly plied his besotted lover with sleeping pills.
Police say he may have snuck them into the scrambled eggs he made his fiancee in the mornings.
Today The Sun revealed how friends said the 56-year-old dad-of-two was “fed up” with the attention lavished on the pedigree dog.
They told how Helen, 51, would even sign Stewart’s name last on Christmas cards — after that of Boris.
Stewart is said to have smothered Helen, using a duvet to drag her body out to the garage and dumping the body of the woman he had promised to marry in the human excrement.
To complete the plot, he also threw in the body of Helen's beloved dachshund Boris - with the author never having gone anywhere without the pet.
The pair had met on a Facebook group for the bereaved, starting a relationship within a year of Ms Bailey's first husband drowning while on holiday.
'He sent shivers down my spine'
BY AMY JONES, SUN WRITER
WHEN I began investigating Helen’s disappearance I told cops of Stewart’s strange and worrying behaviour.
Speaking to neighbours in Royston, Herts, I was met with a wall of silence that disturbs me to this day.
Most claimed Stewart had told them not to talk to the press. It sent a shiver down my spine even then.
Didn’t he want to know where she was?
When I called on Stewart himself, he slammed the door on me without a word.
And in Broadstairs, Kent — where they had a second home and where Stewart claimed Helen had gone — things took an even more sinister twist.
Nobody had seen her. They had seen him, though, and said he seemed more concerned with what cops knew than where Helen was.
Alarm bells rang again. Stewart was building a wall of silence intended to hide his guilt.
These were not the actions of a devoted man in fear for his loved one’s safety.
The truth was hidden in plain sight.
Police yesterday said the “sudden, unexpected” passing of Stewart’s wife of 20 years would now be re-examined.
Mum-of-two Diane, 47, died in the couple’s garden in Bassingbourn, Cambs, as she suffered an epileptic fit.
Stewart had stood to gain £1.8m from her investment portfolio, plus her properties in Royston and Kent.
But duped Bailey, who had nicknamed her fiance "GGHW" - Gorgeous Grey Haired Widower - had slowly begun to realise something was wrong.
She had begun searching on the Internet reasons why she was struggling to stay awake, even unable to recognise her own hands.
Stewart knew it would only be a matter of time before Helen went to her GP with her concerns.
Police say the plan came to a head on April 11.
With the existence of the cesspit known only to a few people, and Stewart planning to park his car over the entrance to ensure it was hidden, all he had to do was call the police and act as the bereaved fiance.
He had sent her text messages and called her, pleading for her to come home and told police he never stopped loving her.
Police launched appeal after appeal for the author, searching the area and checking her final movements online.
But putting together the clues, including that money was being transferred out of Helen's account into their shared account where Stewart would have access to it, cops arrested the 56-year-old.
Four days later, on July 15, officers checked the cesspit.
Opening up the hole below the Royston home, they found Helen's arm sticking out of the excrement.
Stewart, who had already slipped up beforehand, accidentally speaking about Ms Bailey in the past tense, was charged with murder and remanded in Bedford Prison to await his trial.
On December 12 last year, five months after the discovery of Helen's body, the Crown Prosecution Service finally received the defence case statement in which Stewart said two mysterious men he named only "Joe" and "Nick" had murdered Helen Bailey and disposed of her body in the cesspit
But more holes appeared in his story.
Stewart had claimed that Helen had taken her phone with her when she went missing.
It was why he had sent her text messages pleading with her to come back or at least contact him.
On April 16 Stewart, playing the role of the anxious partner desperate for news, had gone to the cottage in Broadstairs supposedly to check the property himself.
But while Stewart had removed the phone's SIM card, ensuring it wouldn't connect to the phone network, it was revealed that the phone had connected to a wireless router at Helen's Broadstairs property that same day.
When police tried to examine the router again - they found it was no longer there - and was instead at the Royston home - with all the information found earlier gone.
LIVING IN FANTASY LAND: How Helen Bailey's deceitful IT expert fiance tried to pin her death on two blokes called 'Nick and Joe' before his web of lies slowly unravelled to reveal sinister truth
Ian Stewart faces a lifetime behind bars for the murder of Helen Bailey. But protesting his innocence til the very end, Stewart had to come up with a plausible explanation for why his fiancee's body was found underneath their Royston home, three months after he reported her missing. Sitting in jail, awaiting his trial, Stewart knew he had to think of an excuse. So, five months after she disappeared, he told this story to police: Ian Stewart told police that Helen Bailey had been kidnapped by former business associates of her dead husband, John Sinfield. Identifying the men only as "Joe" and "Nick", he said that the pair had called around to the Royston home in February 2016, demanding to speak to Helen about some paperwork. It was during one of their mysterious visits that the men saw the cesspit, being inspected by Helen and Stewart, with Nick, described as a big man with tattoos on his neck, even helping to slide the manhole cover back into place. The men visited the home again, with Stewart claiming Helen said: "Please go away and leave me alone" with Joe simply whispering back "Just think about it". Later that day, Helen disappeared and Stewart was confronted by the thug Nick, who punched him in the stomach. Painting himself as the victim, Stewart said he ended up on the floor and was told: "Helen and Boris are with us. She is helping us solve a problem. Don't tell anyone where Helen is." It wasn't until Friday that he heard from Helen, with Nick handing him a phone with Helen on the other end. Stewart said: "She said 'I love you, sorry about everything.' I said 'It's not your fault, I love you too'." Months later, in June, the pair visited again, forcing him to let them drive their car into their home. It was then, Stewart claimed, they must have stashed Helen's body in the cesspit without him knowing. In June of last year Stewart claimed he was told by the kidnappers he would have to come up with half-a-million pounds in "compensation." Stewart claimed he hadn't told the police about the kidnapping for fear that harm would come to Helen and his sons. Even on remand in Bedford Prison, Stewart claimed the kidnappers managed to warn him against talking to the police. He said he was attacked by another inmate who told him "Don't snitch." It was since revealed in court that there were, in fact, two men who resembled the mysterious abductors. Joe Cippullo and Nick Cook were men known to him from when he lived in Bassingbourne. Joe Cippullo went bowling with him and Nick Cook was his former next door neighbour. The real life Nick and Joe were presented to the jury while Stewart was being cross-examined. " You recognise them, do you, Mr Stewart?" asked Mr Trimmer. "Yes, it's Nick and Joe," he replied.
John Bailey, Helen's brother, revealed the true cost of the final judgement, saying: "Despite this victory for justice, there can be no celebration.
"Our families have been devastated and nothing can ever bring Helen back to us, or truly right this wrong.
"A long shadow of loss has been cast over the lives of so many who will always remember Helen with enduring love and affection."
Following the sentence Helen’s elderly mum Eileen, 89, who lives with husband George, 91, in Ponteland, Northumberland, said: "My son rang to tell me the sentence and that he had been jailed for 34 years.
"That's good and yes it's true that he will spend the rest of his life in jail.
"But whilst we are glad that justice has been done it's little help because of course it does not bring Helen back, nothing can do that.
"There will be no sense of putting it behind us and no feeling of starting again or looking to the future, we are too old for that.
"My husband suffers dementia but I'm afraid he knows only too well what has happened, he still looks at the photographs of Helen and has a weep.
"There was little the court could have done to change that."
'Our families have been devastated'
Helen's brother John Bailey said: "Despite this victory for justice there can be no celebration.
"Our families have been devastated and nothing can ever bring Helen back to us, or truly right this wrong.
"A long shadow of loss has been cast over the lives of so many who will always remember Helen with enduring love and affection.”
Charles White, senior prosecutor of the CPS, said: "The motive for the killing is believed to be a combination of greed and other psychological factors.
"Stewart was the primary beneficiary, under a discretionary trust set up in her most recent will and stood to acquire property, savings and pension funds.
"Stewart is clearly a cold hearted, deceitful and calculated man.
“Stewart obstructed the police investigation, pledged support to a national press campaign to find Helen, attended a dog walk on Royston Heath in support of the ‘Where is Helen Bailey?’ campaign organised by her friends, paid for posters, which were created and distributed, and vehemently denied any involvement in, or responsibility for, Helen’s death for three months."
Yesterday the Cambridgeshire coroner confirmed he was working with police on their re-investigation into Diane's death and would not be releasing inquest documents.
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