MAN KILLS FIANCEE,WITHDRAWS MONEY FROM HER ACCOUNT
Fiance accused of murdering children’s author Helen Bailey ‘sent bogus texts from her mobile and received £12,000 from her account’
Ian Stewart denies drugging the writer and dumping her body with the family dog in a cesspit at their £1.5 million home
Ian Stewart flooded the Electra Brown writer’s phone with messages despite initially having possession of it and supposedly knowing she was in the hands of kidnappers, a court heard.
He was also said to have received £12,000 from the author’s bank account in the months after she vanished by allegedly setting up a standing order.
The 56-year-old denies drugging the writer and dumping her body with the family dog in a cesspit at their £1.5 million home as part of a plot to inherit her fortune.
He told his trial at St Albans Crown Court he had Ms Bailey’s phone when he called police to report that the 51-year-old had not “contacted anyone”.
A series of apparently concerned texts from Stewart from the week after Ms Bailey went missing were read to the court, which prosecutor Stuart Trimmer claimed were “pointless”.
The defendant previously told the court that, by this point, the author was in the hands of two mystery kidnappers – Nick and Joe – who had sworn him to secrecy.
Mr Trimmer said: “You set about a complicated charade, you had to press with, you had to keep going with.”
Among the messages Ms Bailey received from Stewart were ones urging her to “contact the police”, as well as a string of kisses, the court was told.
The prosecutor asked: “Why did you send her a relatively pointless three kisses and then not send anything else for a week?”
He added: “If this had any truth, and I suggest it is all nonsense, this was the only line of contact you had with Nick and Joe.
“The only way of contacting the people was on this phone, but you did nothing, it wasn’t ‘What do you want?’, ‘What can I do?’.”
Stewart replied: “You can see for yourself.”
The defendant claimed his fiancee’s captors demanded he hand them her phone in Margate, Kent, after snatching her last April.
He initially told her friends, family and the police she had gone to her seaside cottage in Broadstairs, Kent, for some “space”, but later claimed this was to keep her safe.
Mr Trimmer told the court: “Anyone looking at this (the texts) would get the impression of someone whose lover had disappeared and you were expressing your love to her.
“It looks like you’re trying to expand and burnish the lie that she had just gone on her own.”
He added: “If she was never found, if she remained in the bottom of that cesspit for years, all we know is that she had gone away and you had tried your best.”
Stewart, of Royston, Hertfordshire, denies murder, preventing a lawful burial, fraud and three counts of perverting the course of justice.
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