Luke D’Wit has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 37 years
A loner who befriended a couple before poisoning them in a plot to try and inherit their business has been jailed for life with a minimum of 37 years.
Luke D’Wit, 34, met Carol and Stephen Baxter, 64 and 61, more than a decade ago while building a website for their shower mat company in Mersea Island, Essex.
Carol suffered from a rare autoimmune disease, which D’Wit used to manipulate her into taking ‘potions’ he had invented.
The 34-year-old created more than 20 fake personas, including a doctor from the US and members of a fictitious support group for the disease, to contact Carol and convince her the remedies were legitimate.
Eventually he would leave them a mixture of hot water, aspirin, lemon juice and fentanyl – a highly potent painkiller which can be lethal at very small doses – to drink in their armchairs in April last year.
D’Wit had installed a security camera allowing him to monitor the couple from his phone.
A court heard he ‘watched them dying on his phone’ and re-entered the home to cleaned up their cups and ‘any trace’ of his concoction before leaving.
The Baxters let ‘helpful’ D’Wit into their lives in 2012 or 2013 and grew very close to him
The couple were found dead by their daughter Ellie two days later when she came over for Easter Sunday, as well as a fake will giving D’Wit control of the Baxters’ business.
D’Wit was so trusted by the family that he was one of the first people Ellie messaged for help, and rushed over while she frantically called 999.
Jurors heard he took her phone from her to relay the situation to call handlers and later spoke with a police officer at the scene.
As part of their close-knit island community, D’Wit was said to have little social life outside his friendship with the couple and still shared a bedroom with his mother.
D’Wit spoke to police on the day the Baxters were found dead
Among his characters – seven of whom had fleshed-out fake online profiles – were ‘Dr Andrea Bowden’ from Florida.
She was supposedly an endocrinologist who would prescribe herbal remedies to help Carol with her illness, a thyroid condition called Hashimoto’s disease.
A real doctor told the court the treatments were all ‘utter rubbish’, but they did not harm Carol at first as most of the ingredients were harmless over-the-counter supplements.
Meanwhile, her medical records suggested her condition was being successfully treated by her GP before she took a turn for the worse in 2021.
Carol’s health deteriorated quickly in the last two years before she and her husband were killed (Picture: PA)
But D’Wit doubled down on his lies, convincing Carol her GP’s advice was wrong and concocting more drinks including something they called ‘energy bombs’.
In February 2022, a 17mm tack was found in her digestive system after she was taken to hospital with stomach pain.
Prosecutors say he had opened up a tablet and hidden the tack inside before feeding it to her.
Another made-up persona, ‘Jenny’, claimed to be a theatre producer who could help the couple’s daughter, Ellie Baxter, 22, with her career as a vocalist.
D’Wit went so far as to send Carol voice notes pretending to be Jenny in a high-pitched voice.
Ellie broke down in court as she told jurors how ‘embarrassing’ it was to have fallen for his trickery.
‘Jenny was a trusted person, I thought that she was there to help, I thought she was a real person,’ she said.
In a victim impact statement read out on Friday, Ellie told how her mother ‘felt so alone’ as she lost her function in the two years before her death.
‘I tried to push her to go to the doctor’s, which she did but she was completely brainwashed by Dr Andrea Bowden,’ she said.
Ellie and ‘Jenny’ even stayed in touch after Ellie’s parents died, with D’Wit sending her condolences for the couple he had murdered.
D’Wit was arrested at an office he was renting in Colchester after the ‘trail of fentanyl went straight back to him’, according to police.
He had extracted it from patches originally prescribed to his father in 2021.
Det Supt Rob of Essex Police said: ‘D’Wit’s downfall was the arrogance that existed within him.
‘He didn’t cover his tracks properly and he was deluded in thinking he could use fentanyl to kill two people, and that wouldn’t be found to be suspicious.’
Mr Justice Nicholas Lavender, sentencing, told the defendant: ‘It’s distinctly possible what motivated you was a desire to control others.’
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