A primary school teacher who stabbed her partner in the neck and buried his body in their back garden has denied the killing was “revenge” for a suspected affair.
Fiona Beal, 49, told a court she could not remember moving Nicholas Billingham’s van, using his phone to view online pornography, ordering a wood burner, or changing her council tax status from double to single occupancy after his death.
She also claimed she had no memory of using the 42-year-old’s credit card to renew her TV licence nine days after he is believed to have been killed.
The crown alleges Beal got Billingham to wear an eye mask before stabbing him in their bedroom in a planned attack on 1 November 2021. The year 6 teacher, from Northampton, denies the charge of murder, claiming her “broken” mental state means she is guilty of the lesser offence of manslaughter.
During cross-examination by the prosecutor, Steven Perian KC, at Northampton crown court on Monday, Beal said she did not know what had happened to Billingham’s clothing, belongings and credit cards.
“I don’t remember what room I killed him in,” she said. “I remember dragging something heavy into the garden but it’s not a clear memory.”
Asked whether she had used Billingham’s phone to view pornography online after his death, Beal told the court: “It would have to be me, yes.
“I think at this point I was using [Billingham’s phone and her own] interchangeably. I don’t think it was a conscious decision to use either phone.”
Beal also told the jury she was smoking about 10 joints of cannabis on non-school days at the time of the killing. When it was put to her that the killing had “nothing to do with cannabis use”, she replied: “I don’t know.”
She then rejected the suggestion she had killed Billingham because she suspected he was having an affair, saying: “No. There had been plenty of affairs over the years.”
Perian asked: “This was a revenge killing, wasn’t it?”
“No,” Beal replied.
The court also heard that, after messaging her son in December 2021, Billingham’s mother had received a reply saying he was “back selling cars and happy” and wishing her a happy new year.
Beal, whose evidence is expected to finish later this week, admitted sending the reply and acknowledged that it “wasn’t a kind thing to do”. She said she did not recall using her late partner’s phone to send a message to his cousin in the early hours of 1 January last year.
Responding to a suggestion by Perian that a “confession book” found shortly before her arrest was a written record of what she had done, Beal said: “No, I say it’s just a journal.”
The trial was adjourned until Thursday.
