The Murder of Helen Bailey
In April 2016, Author Helen Bailey disappeared. She left a note for her fiance saying she needed some time alone, but after not hearing from her, he began to worry and called the police…
Helen Bailey was born on the 22nd of August 1964 in Ponteland, England. She graduated in London as a Physiologist, with intentions of being a forensic scientist. She changed jobs and started working in marketing before marrying John Sinfield in 1996. In 2008, Helen Bailey had her first book published. ‘Life at the Shallow End’ was the first in a series of five books aimed at teenagers. The series ‘The Crazy Life of Electra Brown’ proved to be popular and Helen was nominated for a ‘Queen of Teen’ award in 2010.
In February 2011, Helen’s husband, John Sinfield, drowned in the sea while they were holidaying in Barbados. They had been together for 22 years. During her time of grief, Helen started a blog called ‘Planet Grief’, which ended up being so popular that it was turned into the book ‘When Bad Things Happen In Good Bikinis’.
Then, Helen Bailey met Ian Stewart in an online support group a few months after her husband’s death. She referred to Ian as the ‘Gorgeous Grey-Haired Widower’ on her website. Ian Stewart’s wife had died in 2010.
In 2016, Helen and Ian got engaged. They moved into a home together in Royston, Hertfordshire, with Ian’s two children and Helen’s dog Boris.
In April 2016, Ian called the police to report 51-year-old Helen missing. He claimed he last saw her on the 11th of April when she took Boris for a walk. Neither of them were seen alive again.
Ian showed the police a note that Helen had supposedly written, stating that she needed some time alone and was going to a holiday home they had in another city. When Ian drove there, there was no sign of Helen or Boris. Her simply disappearing was not part of her character.
In the first few days following Helen’s disappearance, the police searched the couple’s home for evidence of what had happened but didn’t find anything.
Police were monitoring Helen’s bank accounts to see if she had been using them. She had her own account and a joint account she shared with Ian. Someone was using the accounts, but it was Ian, not Helen.
Then, in the middle of the investigation, Ian went on holiday to Spain. This made investigators suspicious as it made it seem like he was not worried about his fiancee.
On July 11, 2016, three months after Helen Bailey’s disappearance, investigators found her body. They conducted an intense search of the £1.5 million home, looking again for any evidence, and found her body in the cesspit in the garage for a home. Boris the dog’s body was found with her. Investigators learnt of the cesspit when talking with a neighbour, and on the previous searches they had done on the home, Ian’s car was parked over it so they didn’t know it was there. Helen’s cause of death was asphyxiation.
Ian was arrested and charged with murder, pleading not guilty, his trial was set for January 2017.
During the trial, it was discovered that Ian had been drugging Helen in the months leading to her murder. She had Googled things such as ‘Why do I keep falling asleep?’ She had booked an appointment with her doctor to see what was wrong. Could this have made Ian act sooner in his plot to kill her?
When Ian originally called the police to report Helen missing, he struggled to give personal details to the call operator, including Helen’s eye colour, height and date of birth, showing that he didn’t really know anything about his future wife.
It was also discovered that that same afternoon, Ian signed off on the sale of a property, telling the lawyer he had come alone because Helen wasn’t feeling well. He tried to sell more of her properties using a power of attorney.
There were claims that when Helen and Ian first met, Ian ‘Love Bombed’ Helen so that she became reliant on him during her time of grief after her husband died. Those close to her felt he was only after her money as he had gotten her to change her will so that he would get everything if she died.
At trial, Ian claimed that Helen had been kidnapped by two men who demanded a ransom of £500,000. He said he spoke to her on April 15th, 2016 and did not tell the police, ‘to keep her safe’.
On 22 February 2017, the Jury found Ian Stewart guilty of the murder of Helen Bailey. He was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum term of 34 years, meaning he will be 90 years old before being eligible for parole.
After his sentencing, investigators looked into the death of his first wife, Diane Stewart. Diane died at their family home in 2010. At the time, her death was recorded as Sudden Death in Epilepsy. Ian claimed that he returned home from the supermarket and found Diane collapsed in the garden, where he tried to revive her. Investigators discovered that she had died after having her oxygen cut off for 35 minutes – 1 hour. Ian was found guilty of murdering Diane and was given a whole life sentence, meaning he will die in prison. Stewart was given the whole life sentence for the murder of his first wife, after having already been given a life sentence for the murder of Helen Bailey.
*Update – In July this year (2022), Ian Stewart had his sentence reduced from a whole life sentence to life with a minimum term of 35 years after a successful appeal. In a ruling on 29 July 2022, five judges made the decision that Stewart was “not one of the rare cases” where a whole life sentence should be imposed. Whole life sentences are reserved for those who commit the most heinous crimes and are rarely handed down in UK courts.
Sources
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/ian-stewart-helen-bailey-wife-b2011378.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-55766988
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/helen-bailey-murder-diane-stewart_uk_5b7e4d04e4b0348585fd5abe
https://theywalkamonguspodcast.com/new-episodes/2017/9/6/season-2-episode-5