Teacher’s chilling last words to partner before she stabbed him to death

Fiona Beal is being sentenced over two days at the Old Bailey (Picture: Northamptonshire Police)

A teacher stabbed her cheating partner to death in a ‘carefully planned domestic execution’ after he penned her a letter declaring his love ‘until the day I day, the Old Bailey has heard.

Fiona Beal, 50, faces a life sentence after pleading guilty to murdering Nick Billingham, 42, whose mummified remains were found four-and-a-half months after he was last seen in November 2021.

Beal, a ‘highly capable and respected’ Year 6 teacher, told friends they had both tested positive for Covid so she wouldn’t be disturbed while clearing the blood away and building a makeshift grave.

Detectives who traced her to a cabin in Cumbria in March 2022 found a journal in which she detailed her plan to lure Mr Billingham into the bath before killing him.

She wrote: ‘I had smoked all day. I had a bath, I left the water in. He had been pushing for sex. I encouraged the bath with the incentive of sex afterwards.

‘While he was in the bath I kept the knife in my dressing gown pocket and then I had it in the drawer next to the bed.

‘I brought a chisel, bin bag and cable ties up too. I got him to wear an eye mask.’

She went on: ‘My last words to him when he asked why was that he was not going to do to (another female) what he had done to me.’

Fiona Beal’s journal entry setting out the murder (Picture: Central News/Northants Police)

Fiona Beal faces a life sentence (Picture: Northamptonshire Police/PA Wire)

Beal appeared at the Old Bailey on Wednesday for the start of her two-day sentencing by Judge Mark Lucraft KC.

During the hearing, prosecutor Hugh Davies KC read out a letter Mr Bellingham had written to Beal after he had an affair during their 17-year relationship.

In the letter, Mr Billingham accepted his faults and described Beal as ‘kind hearted’, ‘generous’ and ‘the most beautiful woman in the world’.

He wrote: ‘I promise to never again belittle you or make you feel rubbish again.

‘My body, my heart, my love has been yours since the day I met you and will be until the day I die. I love you with all my heart.’

Beal pleaded guilty mid-trial at the Old Bailey to the murder of boyfriend Nicholas Billingham (Picture: Northamptonshire Police/PA Wire)

The court heard a victim impact statement written by Mr Billingham’s mum Yvonne Valentine in which she described visiting Beal for a Christmas drink while he was still presumed missing.

She said: ‘I remember that the house looked different; the furniture moved, new furniture and ornaments in the front room, which made it look nice.

‘But all of this was you covering up that you had killed my son! You moved the furniture to obscure views to the garden – why?? To stop anyone seeing where you had buried my son!

‘You sat in your front room with me, having a casual chat with me, having a Christmas drink with me and the whole time, you knew that you had killed my son and buried him only feet from where I was sat.’

On the day of his death weeks earlier, Mr Billingham had worked on a house renovation before returning to the home he shared with Beal in Northampton.

That evening, she killed him in a ‘carefully planned domestic execution’, Mr Davies said.

Beal stabbed him in the neck and disposed of the body in the side return of their home like ‘building waste’, he added.

She covered her tracks with a false story that they had Covid and needed to isolate.

Similar messages were sent from Mr Billingham’s phone from November 2 in which Beal pretended to be him.

On November 8, Beal sent messages to her sisters saying she and Mr Billingham had split up, with one message saying he left because he had had an affair with another woman.

When she went back to work, Beal received sympathy from those who had heard about the apparent break-up.

But the court heard her mental health started to deteriorate in late February 2022.

In a journal entry dated February 12, she wrote: ‘I’m not a total monster. I know what I did.’

She also listed ‘memories, messages, confession, final farewell’, Mr Davies said.

By February 28, Beal had been signed off work with anxiety, stress, depression and low mood, the court heard.

The following month, she rented a cabin in Cumbria and sent messages to family members which gave them cause for concern over her wellbeing, prompting them to call police to check on her.

In the cabin, police found Beal’s journals containing a confession to the killing.

The journals triggered a police investigation, which soon established that Mr Billingham had not been seen or spoken to by telephone since the afternoon of November 1, 2021, the court heard.

Beal was arrested in March 2022 after police discovered his body.

Summarising the evidence, Mr Davies said Beal ‘planned to execute’ Mr Billingham then ‘delivered a false narrative’ that he had an affair and had run off and stopped communications.

He said she ‘accepted sympathy’ which resulted from her ‘false narrative’ and ‘took elaborate and sustained steps over a period of weeks to conceal her crime’.

They included disposing of his body ‘as if it was building waste in her garden’, posing as him in communications with his friends, colleagues and family, and even manufactured arguments between him and her.

All this was done while she continued ‘to deliver high-quality teaching to Year 6 pupils as if nothing had happened’, Mr Davies said.

Beal even ‘actively lied’ to her partner’s mother when he was supposedly ‘off grid’ with another woman, he added.

The original trial collapsed last June when it emerged that a key defence witness was a court custody officer who had conducted welfare checks on Beal in the cells.

The sentencing hearing continues and is expected to conclude on Thursday.

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