The killer fiancé who murdered a Northumberland-born author in a greed-motivated plot has been found guilty of killing his first wife.
Ian Stewart, 61, was convicted on Wednesday of the murder of Diane Stewart in 2010, six years before he drugged and smothered children’s book author Helen Bailey.
Stewart was jailed for life in 2017 after a jury convicted him of killing his 51-year-old fiancée, who wrote the Electra Brown series of books.
Go here for the latest crime news and breaking North East police updates
Helen, originally from Ponteland, was smothered and dumped in a cesspit alongside her dog, by the man with whom she'd shared her £1.5m home.
Stewart met the author on a Facebook group for the bereaved in 2011 - the year after he killed his wife.
For months, he claimed his bride-to-be had disappeared - when in fact he knew her to be buried in a tank beneath their garage.
The killer was investigated for the 2010 murder after his conviction in 2017.
Stewart had denied murdering his 47-year-old wife Diane, but jurors at Huntingdon Crown Court rejected his account that he found her collapsed having suffered an epileptic fit at their home in Bassingbourn, Cambridgeshire.
The cause of Mrs Stewart's death had been recorded at the time as Sudden Unexplained Death in Epilepsy, but prosecutors said it was most likely her death was in fact caused by a prolonged restriction to her breathing from an outside source, such as smothering or a neck hold.
The 61-year-old defendant looked across from the secure dock to his two sons who sat in the public gallery after the unanimous verdict was returned.
The judge, Mr Justice Simon Bryan, said he would sentence Stewart on Wednesday afternoon.
Stewart had claimed in court that he had returned from the supermarket to the family home in Bassingbourn, Cambridgeshire, and found his wife collapsed in the garden. He said he thought she had suffered an epileptic fit.
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”.
Mrs Stewart’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.
Home Office pathologist Dr Nat 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”.
The court heard that full toxicology was not carried out as part of the 2010 routine post-mortem examination, and nor was a neck dissection.
Dr Cary said that, as in the case of Mrs Stewart, there was “no injury that was visible” in the case of Ms Bailey, who was in the cesspit for three months before she was found.
The court heard that Stewart received £96,607.37 after his wife’s death, in the form of £28,500.21 from a life insurance policy and the rest from bank accounts.
For daily news from the North East's courts direct to your inbox, go here to sign up to our free court newsletter
