Fiona Beal, 50, pleading guilty to murdering Nick Billingham, 42, whose mummified remains were found four-and-a-half months later (Picture: PA)
A primary school teacher who stabbed her partner to death in a ‘carefully planned domestic execution’ has been jailed for at least 20 years.
Fiona Beal, 50, 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.
Jailing her for life at the Old Bailey today, the Recorder of London, Judge Mark Lucraft KC, said: ‘On November 1, 2021, Nick left home and went to work pretty much as normal.
‘From a journal you kept it is clear that by the time he returned home from work that day you had resolved to kill him.
‘It was not until March 19, 2022, some four months after you had killed him, that Nick’s body was discovered and excavated from the burial site you had made in the garden.
‘In the handwritten journal found in March 2022 you wrote, and I quote, “My last words to him when he asked why was that he was not going to do to [another woman] what he had done to me”.
‘Having done what you did you pretended to the outside world Nick had left you and was having an affair.
‘You lied to his mother, family, friends and colleagues and even your own family, friends and colleagues about what you had done.
‘There is a wealth of evidence demonstrating your plans to kill him, taking elaborate steps to hide his body and then, having done so, going to great lengths to make sure that what you had done would not be easily uncovered.’
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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)
Prosecutor Hugh Davies KC earlier told the court 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.’
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Mr Billingham’s mum Yvonne Valentine described in a victim impact statement how she visited 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 second day of Beal’s sentencing hearing, Andrew Wheeler KC, defending, told the court that revisions to the prosecution case before trial proceedings started at the Old Bailey impacted expert evidence which had supported Beal’s defence to the murder charge.
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Mr Wheeler said: ‘Ms Beal as the court knows has had the courage shortly after the change in evidential circumstances to enter a plea to murder which as the court knows happens extremely rarely.’
He also told the court that Beal cannot remember ‘any’ of the details of the attack, and that there is expert evidence which supports her ‘amnesia’ as ‘genuine’.
The barrister said Beal expressed ‘remorse’ in journals she wrote, quoting one entry which recorded her reaching a ‘breaking point’ and apologising for a host of things.
She wrote: ‘I’m sorry for a lot. I’m sorry I didn’t leave him. I’m sorry I let him rip my self-esteem, self-worth, apart. I’m sorry I let him control me. I’m sorry for taking him back. I’m sorry I’m weak. I’m sorry for what I did.’
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