- 2 hours ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:27Calling the
00:35Police, good afternoon, how can I help?
00:39She was reported as a missing person
00:42and then because her family can't get hold of her today, they've rang us.
00:49Hello, it's police.
00:57Hello, police.
01:04I don't think what we're about to find might be nice.
01:14Oh, God.
01:16Don't go in the bathroom.
01:30Hello, are you awake?
01:33What have you taken?
01:35To get you out of the bath.
01:37Conscious and breathing comes.
01:39Conscious and breathing comes.
01:40It's all right.
01:42We've gone in.
01:42It is a genuine suicide attempt.
01:44She's in the bath.
01:45She's cut her wrists with a knife.
01:47Right.
01:48Where's she from?
01:51Northampton, sure.
01:54We need to get you some help, lovely.
01:56If something happens to cause this...
01:59Police were called to attend a holiday cabin in Cumbria.
02:03It was a concern for welfare in relation to Fiona Beale.
02:11Fiona was a year six primary teacher at a local school in Northampton.
02:17We want to help you.
02:18While she is being treated by paramedics, police start to have a look around the lodge and they
02:24gathered up some belongings, including some journals which had been written in.
02:32And Fiona was taken off to the hospital to be assessed by doctors.
02:43I see the phone as well.
02:46Fiona, what's the pin code for your mobile phone?
02:50Doctors have started to read through the journals and immediately there was some concern about
02:56what had been written in there.
02:59The doctors have rightly spoken to officers and said, you need to see this.
03:04And as they start reading through it, it starts telling a bit more of a story as to some emotional
03:09impact and a trauma that she's potentially faced at home.
03:17Inquiries were then made as to who she lived with.
03:20From there it was identified that she was a joint owner on a property in Northampton with
03:23Nicholas Billingham.
03:31She had written this journal out explaining that she was suffering with real guilt and
03:38that she'd done something really bad.
03:45I had to consider, could it have just been someone that is suffering from mental ill health and
03:51potentially what's written down is not completely accurate?
03:56But there was something about the way the journal was written that was really concerning.
04:02She speaks about having a knife and a chisel, bin bags and cable ties.
04:10She speaks about having a knife and a chisel, bin bags and a chisel, bin bags and a chisel, bin
04:18bags and a chisel, bin bags and a chisel.
04:27I went to the toilet, bin bag, bin bags, and a chisel.
04:27I was on the toilet with Fiona Bill and I was her teaching assistant.
04:31Fiona was a great teacher.
04:34She always showed kindness and the children adored her.
04:39She was funny, outgoing.
04:44She was my friend.
04:45and Fiona and I, I believe, were good friends.
04:57Fiona and Nicholas lived in Northamptonshire together
05:02and Nicholas Billingham was a... he was a tradesman.
05:08He did lots of different projects, building and renovation.
05:13The relationship between Nick and Fiona seemed to be relatively happy.
05:21Nick and Bill first got together around 18 years ago
05:28and I always remember going round to meet her for the first time
05:34and I remember she just seemed quite friendly.
05:41I would say that I liked her but I don't think I ever really got to know her that well.
06:01Just to update you, they want a section or a section two for people's safety.
06:07So Fiona's sectioned from the lodge in Cumbria.
06:10She's also got to be assessed because she might not be fit to be detained,
06:13she might not be fit to be interviewed.
06:15They're just going to see if there's transport available from private ambulance
06:18but they're not sure there's going to be one available tonight.
06:21That mental health process has still got to take its place, much to my frustration.
06:25We needed to understand the material that was in her journal.
06:32We start to dig into that person's psyche as it were to understand a bit about them.
06:37Is there something going on in the relationship, some sort of trigger
06:41that's caused her attempting to take her own life?
07:00Good morning Britain. Boris Johnson says the country can ride out the Omicron wave.
07:05It does appear that Omicron spreads very rapidly.
07:10Our scientists are deeply concerned.
07:13We will be requiring anyone to self-isolate at home and take a PCR test.
07:34Fiona let the school know that she wasn't going to be able to come in
07:38because she had tested positive for Covid.
07:40Fiona had to self-isolate for 10 days but wasn't allowed to return to work
07:45until she had a negative Covid test.
07:49When I think back now, knowing what happened,
07:54it's just really hard to put it into words.
08:11There were also messages being sent from Nick's phone
08:14to the place where he was working.
08:24The message coming from the house was, we're ill, we've got Covid,
08:29nobody come in because you run the risk of catching Covid.
08:33In effect, it was a do not disturb scenario.
08:47The couple of days afterwards, a news story started to emerge from Fiona's phone.
09:01Nick's mum said that Nick had sent a message to his mum to say that,
09:07I've met Faye, I've moved to Essex.
09:15Fiona was now on her own and life had carried on.
09:22So I think it was within a week of her being back at work,
09:25the first thing I said to her was,
09:29oh my God, you look like shit.
09:31She looked like she'd aged 20 years in the two weeks.
09:35And she said that Nick had left her for another woman.
09:39I knew Nick had previously cheated and left.
09:42So when she said it, I wasn't shocked, but I was very hurt for Fiona.
09:48She seemed quite determined that he'd gone
09:54and he was not going to be coming back again.
10:01People thought Fiona was very much, I'm getting over this and I am moving on with my life.
10:11Fiona had made an online order.
10:13It was collected from B&Q in Northampton.
10:16There was two trolleys and it was a mixture of wood chippings,
10:22various decorative items which were loaded into her car.
10:34Fiona was decorating her home.
10:37It could be seen as her having a new beginning.
11:01There was a series of messages between Fiona's phone and Nick's phone.
11:05It was an argument about the sale of the house and financial matters going forward.
11:12Nick hadn't returned to his job.
11:16His tools were still there, where he worked.
11:19There were attempts to get in contact with Nick at the house, from who he was employed by.
11:24A note was left through the door.
11:26Which was when Fiona messaged to say that Nick had left, and she couldn't give any information on where Nick
11:32had gone.
11:35You could be forgiven if you weren't feeling very festive at all.
11:39With all this talk of a new variant, people asking that very depressing question once again, will Christmas be cancelled?
11:47I always felt bad because Nick had gone off and it was Christmas.
11:52I had been trying to message the owner to ask whether it was okay to come round to bring presents.
12:00I wouldn't say there were any concerns.
12:04I drove round and she just seemed the same as she usually did.
12:10You know, she'd give me a hug and said, come and in and have a drink.
12:16Until I walked into the living room and I said, well, you know, you've been decorating.
12:21And she said, yeah, I have.
12:24I said, oh, it looks okay, quite good.
12:27So, I just said, yeah.
12:52We went out for a Christmas night out at a local pub and we had a sit-down meal.
12:57And Fiona was there for that.
12:59We both looked so happy in the picture.
13:03I never realised those photos would come back to haunt Nick.
13:19Just go speak to Dr. Horner and just confirm physically she's fit.
13:24It's just a mental health assessment.
13:25Yeah.
13:25Cheers.
13:27Fiona Beale was detained under the Mental Health Act.
13:30The doctors decided she was not fit to be interviewed by police.
13:35It was very frustrating that we couldn't interview Fiona.
13:39But in our favour, we had a journal.
13:48I started to believe the cover story.
13:52But in the dark times, I would remember.
13:56Remember what I've done.
13:58What I am.
14:01It's just chilling.
14:03It's the kind of thing that you see in fiction on television rather than a real-life story.
14:08It was harder than I thought it would be.
14:12Hiding a body was bad.
14:14Moving a body is much more difficult than it looks on TV.
14:18and the other one.
14:48It's probably not.
14:50Hello, my love.
14:52I'm going to come and sit with you for a while, all right?
14:54I'll let you rest.
14:58They identify that Nicholas Billingham
15:01is the partner to Fiona Beale.
15:03But when the officers read Fiona's journal,
15:06they had real concerns.
15:08There's something a little bit untoward that's gone on.
15:12I know I still haven't actually said what I did.
15:15Because once I do, there's no going back.
15:18The way that it was written,
15:20there was a concern that she may have killed somebody.
15:23His last word to me was, why?
15:28As a result of reading that journal,
15:30I was quite concerned that he was very likely
15:33to come to serious harm if he hadn't already.
15:36I declared Nicholas Billingham a high-risk missing person.
15:53The uniform officer goes in, he's body form, body warm video's rolling.
15:57Mr Blue, make yourself known.
15:59Scoping, looking to see if he can find Nicholas Billingham.
16:02And in that first instance, doesn't find him.
16:07That then prompts the next stage of the investigation,
16:09which is very much around, right,
16:11if we can't find him at his home address,
16:12where else could he be?
16:14Does he have a phone?
16:15Do we know if he has a vehicle?
16:23Are you looking at phone data?
16:25You'd be looking at phone text
16:46to go and sell cars with a woman called Faye.
16:49You start conducting those inquiries to try and find him.
16:52When was the last time you saw him?
16:54Is he working?
16:55But still, we had no idea where Nicholas Billingham was.
17:02I do remember the day when I received a message from the police.
17:08Your son Nicholas is a missing person.
17:12And it just took me ages for it to sink in,
17:16because I'm thinking, what?
17:19Nick, how can he be a missing person?
17:22Absolutely, I went bananas.
17:26We were constantly getting called by the police.
17:29Have you seen Nick?
17:30And I got quite cross, because I said to the police lady,
17:34why are you asking us where Nick is?
17:37Why aren't you finding this lady called Faye?
17:45As far as family were concerned, he was in Essex.
17:49But we knew at the time, Nick's vehicle was only parked round the corner.
17:59Bashing the coastline, Storm Eunice making an entrance.
18:04Winds as high as 122 miles per hour.
18:08Back in February, one month before March of 2022, when the investigation commenced,
18:14we got a phone call into the force control room from somebody concerned to say,
18:18I've got a tree on Tudor Road, it's looking very unstable in the winds,
18:22I want to do something about it, but I can't because there's this van parked underneath it,
18:26and I'm conscious if I do anything with the tree, it's going to get damaged.
18:33It prompts the control room to send a PCSO round to the registered address of that car,
18:39which is on Moore Street, and it's the home address of Nicholas Billingham.
18:48And what we know now is that Fiona Beale answers.
18:51But the PCSO recalls quite clearly that she had an element of shock on her face,
18:55so I was concerned.
18:56Do you know where Nicholas is because we wanted to move the van?
18:59And it's at that point she says,
19:01No, he's not here, he's moved away, and I don't know when he's going to be back.
19:05And this was the first time she'd had somebody in a police uniform, in this case, or a PCSO,
19:10come to the address.
19:12That knock on the door probably completely threw Fiona's whole world.
19:17If the police can't find Nick, they're going to start looking.
19:20We believe that that was the trigger that caused her to do what she did,
19:24with her attempt to take her own life.
19:38So when we started to look at these inquiries with Essex, nobody had seen Nicholas Billingham.
19:43And all while, his van was parked less than a mile away from his home address,
19:47on a road called Tudor Road in Northampton.
19:50If Nick was dead, could he be in the van?
19:54Yes.
19:57Whilst we're conducting a full forensic examination of it,
20:01CID go back to the home address and do another search.
20:05Hello?
20:06The difference with this search is first, when the uniform officers went,
20:09they were trying to find him.
20:10When the CID officers went, they were trying to find him,
20:13but also evidence of what might have occurred.
20:16Anybody home?
20:18Hello?
20:19And it's during that search, when they're going round the house,
20:21that they've had cause to go down into the cellar.
20:25As soon as we went down there, there was normal household items that you'd expect to find,
20:29maybe in a garage.
20:31And there was just this big double mattress covering those items.
20:34And the side that we could see initially was clean, and myself and another colleague tipped it upside down,
20:41and we just saw this pool of blood.
20:47And it was at that point I said to everyone,
20:51put everything down, don't touch anything else, we're going to have to treat this now as a murder scene.
21:00I think police officers in general are used to quite gory scenes, but with this particular incident,
21:09I wasn't expecting it.
21:10I had a part of me hoping that this was all going to be like some sort of psychosis,
21:17and hadn't happened, and that Nicholas would be safe and well in Essex.
21:29The actual house itself was locked down.
21:33It was subject to quite a lengthy forensic examination.
21:38And whilst it appeared to be a normal family home, there was also quite a dark side to that.
21:47I had considered if it could have just been a violent incident and he was still alive somewhere,
21:54and had run away from Fiona, but they came back in to me and said,
21:58there's a big mound of bark, and it just looks really out of place.
22:05And miscellaneous garden items that all seem to be piled on top.
22:10It just wasn't normal because he would use that as a pathway to come out from the dining room.
22:15We locked up, and that's what we briefed the senior officers on.
22:20I then returned to the address with the forensic team.
22:23When we went out to the garden, we were looking at that bark,
22:26and I think that was everyone's primary hypothesis of where he might be.
22:32With these kind of operations, it has to be done very methodically.
22:36You have to actually employ the services of specialists like an archaeologist.
22:44The dig took a substantial amount of time to uncover layer after layer after layer.
22:50From the scene images, you can see that there's wood chipping, there's compost, there's breeze blocks,
22:57there's fabric, there's slabs. It's almost like a tomb had been created.
23:06Eventually, we got down to a layer where there was a grey rug, and there was the outline of a
23:14body.
23:15And it was that point, we believed that we had found Nick Billingham.
23:21Officers searched the couple's house at Moore Street in Northampton,
23:24and found a blood-stained mattress in the basement and a grave in the garden.
23:30Once Nick had been excavated from the ground, he was transported to the hospital for a forensic post-mortem to
23:36take place.
23:41I believe it was on a Saturday night, we were asleep in bed at midnight,
23:48and he finally got a call to say that the police wants to come.
23:59You know that, you know that if they get you out of bed at midnight,
24:04I knew it wouldn't be good news, it would be bad news.
24:14So we stood in the kitchen in our dressing gowns with two family liaison officers,
24:22and they told us that they'd found Nick's remains.
24:29It just didn't seem real, and it still doesn't, because it was just so dreadful.
24:38Dreadful, I can't find the right way.
24:52Right, Fiona, at this moment in time, I need to inform you that you're under arrest,
24:57suspicious of murder.
24:59We went to the Crown Prosecution Service to request authority to charge Fiona Beale with murder,
25:05and she was remanded to custody.
25:06She needs to put these on you.
25:10She was a trusted teacher.
25:12Everyone is so full of questions as to why she would do such a thing.
25:18How? When did this happen?
25:21We had to build a case.
25:31People living in this quiet back street in Northampton say they found it hard to believe
25:36that police found a man's body buried in the rear garden of this house,
25:40followed by the news that one of their neighbours had been charged with murder.
25:51I got an email from work saying they needed to have an emergency team meeting.
25:57Fiona had been arrested for a very serious crime.
26:01And I, I'm sorry.
26:09I was so emotional.
26:11I didn't believe it.
26:12I didn't believe it for a second.
26:14And then I thought, well, it's got to have been something spur of the moment.
26:19I think I went through a hundred scenarios, what it could have been.
26:22But I couldn't believe out of all the people I knew, Fiona was arrested for something like that.
26:30I was devastated.
26:36In March 2022, Beale rented a holiday lodge in the Lake District.
26:41They discovered that she had cut her wrists and she was detained under the Mental Health Act.
26:46But the officers also found journals written by Beale, journals which spelled out exactly what she had done.
26:59Now, we couldn't say specifically when Nick died.
27:05But we established quite quickly that the last known time that Nick had been seen
27:10by anybody physically alive and well was on the 1st of November 2021.
27:29When we unearthed him back in March of 2022, I don't think anybody realised what condition he would be in.
27:37And I remember seeing when you saw the skin of his arm for the first time, you realise he'd been
27:42there for quite a considerable time.
27:43And it's only when we started seeing the forensic post-mortem, we realised that on or around that time of
27:491st November, end of October,
27:51that's potentially when he was murdered, that period of time where they thought Fiona was at home dealing with COVID
27:57symptoms.
27:58And by the time we've removed him to the ground, he'd been there for five months.
28:15We had to question it because we knew from inquiries that his phone was still active.
28:24We knew he was sending messages because his mum had told us.
28:27We thought there's something not quite marrying up here.
28:38Where are all these messages coming from?
28:40If they weren't coming from Nick, who was it who was sending me messages?
28:57We realised actually that when those messages were sent, they were all sent within the vicinity of the home address.
29:02So those times when he said, I'm in Essex with Faye and I'm selling cars, that message was sent when
29:07it was in Northampton.
29:08When he said he was in Manchester having watched a game of football, that was sent within the vicinity of
29:12the home address.
29:13And it dawned on us very, very quickly that these messages were not from Nick, they were from Fiona.
29:18And Fiona had control of his phone.
29:39Speaking with Yvonne, her belief was still that he was in Essex with Faye.
29:44And I did have to, unfortunately, say to Yvonne and Russell, there is no Faye.
29:53I'm 21 years nearly into my police service and I've never had an inquiry where somebody has fabricated a story
30:03and used other people's devices because of the decision to kill somebody.
30:07I've never come across that before.
30:12To think that a mother spent months believing her son was safe and well is just, it's just horrific.
30:22When I think back, I spent about an hour there and had Christmas drink.
30:30I walked in and it was hugs, you know, kisses.
30:36Little did I know that my son was buried in the ground a few feet wide.
30:42I still can't get my head round it.
30:51Fiona Beale has been living a life.
30:53And then how did she manage to keep up the ruse of him still being alive?
30:56We needed to understand how is it that no one didn't realise he wasn't there for five months.
31:02And that's when we started to unearth a lot more around Fiona Beale's character.
31:06We started understanding how dark depths she went to.
31:12I'm sorry.
31:15I've struggled with my mind for as long as I can remember.
31:19I thought about leaving, but the things he said and did fuelled my dark side.
31:25I call her Tulip 22.
31:30She's reckless.
31:32Fearless and efficient.
31:36Ruthless.
31:39Left to right, down, slight right.
31:45Within the journals that were found in the lodge, she talked around how Fiona, as a person, would struggle with
31:57life.
31:58But Fiona had an alter ego.
32:01If Fiona became Tulip 22, she was more confident.
32:06The journal gave some snippets as to what potentially had occurred.
32:11It didn't go into all the detail.
32:12It very much talked in the lead up to what we believe was the moment of the murder,
32:16and then kind of the efforts afterwards.
32:23I still haven't actually said what I did.
32:27I planned it mentally so many times before.
32:30The knife cut my dressing gown pocket.
32:34I have to confess.
32:36Halloween sealed it.
32:38I started plotting as Tulip 22.
32:42Covid rules meant I had a guaranteed 10-day isolation period from positive symptoms.
32:47I called work on the Monday and said we tested positive.
32:51He went to work.
32:53Tulip 22 smoked.
32:55Unplanned.
33:01She actually made reference to the fact that she said all I had to do was send a couple of
33:06messages as him.
33:08It was very calculating, the way that it was written, almost like not talking about a human being.
33:13Then it turns a bit sinister.
33:17Monday, November 1st.
33:20I encouraged a bath with the incentive of sex afterwards.
33:25I kept the knife in my dressing gown pocket and hid it in the drawer next to the bed.
33:30I bought a chisel, bin bag and cable ties up too.
33:35I got him to wear an eye mask.
33:37Left to right, down, slight right.
33:42From the pathology report, it was identified that he had a single stab wound to his neck with such force
33:48that when that knife went in that it went all the way through, severing key arteries in his neck.
33:53He died, potentially, within a couple of minutes of that taking place and it wouldn't have been immediate.
33:59What we found with Nick's body was that he was, potentially, cable tied to the bed.
34:08His last word to me was, why?
34:13Hiding a body was bad.
34:15Moving a body is much more difficult than it looks on TV.
34:20It would require a significant amount of effort to move a person of 14 stone through the whole house.
34:29In the house, it was quite disturbing what was found.
34:34Crime scene officers actually used luminol to look at the walls.
34:38There was a very large patch of blood, which had been painted over.
34:46There was balustrades.
34:48They were all missing.
34:50It may have been easier to have rolled Nick through the gap.
34:56When Nick was found, he did have cable ties around his person.
35:01He had bin bags around his head and around his feet.
35:04Those potentially could have been used as a mechanism to drag him along.
35:13Having charged Fiona Beale with murder, the next stage of the investigation,
35:17arguably the hardest and most important, is we're now preparing for trial.
35:22The trial of primary school teacher Fiona Beale, accused of murder, is set to start in March.
35:29Beale pleaded not guilty to murdering Nicholas Billingham when she appeared before Northampton Crown Court.
35:36So when we present a case at court, it's never with any certainty.
35:41Fiona's going to come out with her defence around diminished responsibility, around loss of control,
35:45and he's going to try and talk about how bad a character Nicholas was.
35:49There was a lot of information that was going in Fiona's favour.
35:52She was a well-respected woman. She held a good position within her school.
35:57The people that knew Fiona would never have believed it.
36:01Fiona gets a voice in that trial. Nick doesn't.
36:04Nick has to rely upon the police and the prosecution to be able to tell his story,
36:07and that's ultimately what we're there for.
36:09With any trial that goes on, you're never ever home and dry.
36:13It will be down to a jury.
36:25Fiona Beale is accused of stabbing her partner Nick Billingham in the neck at their home in Northampton in November
36:322021.
36:35There's always a strong defence, and whatever defence that is needs to be explored.
36:41Fiona opted to pursue two defences, which reduce an offence from murder to manslaughter.
36:48What was Fiona Beale's state of mind when she stabbed her long-term partner,
36:52whose partly mummified remains were found buried in the garden?
36:56That is what jurors have been asked to determine.
37:02Fiona didn't deny killing the victim, but it was being argued that she had a mental health condition.
37:07A defence team had instructed expert witnesses and a defence was put forward of loss of control
37:14and also diminished responsibility.
37:18The process of breaking me was slow and imperceptible to most.
37:23I am eternally sorry.
37:26I'm sorry I didn't leave him.
37:29I'm sorry I let him rip my self-esteem and self-worth apart.
37:34I'm sorry I let him control me.
37:36I'm sorry for what I did.
37:40Fiona would say that Nick had spat on her during sex.
37:46That he wanted dinner on the table at a specific time.
37:50When she cooked the dinner, if he didn't like it, he wants to just throw it at the wall and
37:54then
37:54made her clear it up.
37:56She had to have all of the bottles in the bathroom all facing the same way.
38:00That the house had to be scrubbed from top to bottom.
38:03The slightest bit of mess would cause a big argument and it was causing a lot of friction within the
38:09house.
38:09We know that Fiona was smoking drugs. We know that Nick was gambling.
38:15When we considered the relationship between Nicholas and Fiona, we considered domestic abuse.
38:21And whilst there was no active reporting to the police, we're not blind to the fact that
38:26that doesn't mean it hasn't happened.
38:29We knew he was not a great partner because he'd had affairs.
38:36Fiona had mentioned that Nick had cheated on her in the past.
38:42He'd left her for another lady and had a child together.
38:47Fiona had made the choice to go back to him after that.
38:51I got the impression that Nick had a bit of a temper.
38:54And Fiona seemed to be quite down when she mentioned arguments.
39:02Nick wasn't perfect. I don't know anyone who is, but why would you put somebody through
39:09what Bill put him through? There's just no, no answer.
39:19We then found out that she was also talking about coercive controlling behaviour.
39:23If she was able to evidence that he was subtly abusive, he was controlling of her life,
39:29that may have impacted her mental health.
39:34Fiona was assessed by expert witness, psychiatrists and psychologists to inform the trial.
39:40These experts considered various diagnoses including PTSD, depression, they looked at dissociative amnesia.
39:48The psychiatrists and psychologists looked out for claims around TUNIP 22 and found that
39:53Fiona didn't suffer with a personality disorder.
39:56However, defence and prosecution experts agreed that Fiona presented with PTSD.
40:04Now everyone has a negative internal monologue.
40:07Mine is just dominant.
40:10He knew my insecurities and how to play them.
40:13Ugly, lazy, physically unattractive, fucked in the head.
40:20He belittled my mental health problems. Failure, not good enough.
40:25I'm angry. I'm angry that my choices led me here.
40:34Experts give their opinion on what they think Fiona is suffering from, that's their expert opinion.
40:39But there was nothing to suggest or corroborate some of the allegations that Fiona was making.
40:48There's no record of domestics between the two of them.
40:53I wish anyone suffering domestic abuse would come to us because we will look to help.
41:04We couldn't find the evidence of this coercive controlling behaviour.
41:07She had a lot of independence.
41:09He was not an angel by any stretch, but he was not, based on the evidence and material we found,
41:15someone that controlled her life to a degree that we would say she was a coerced individual.
41:20Certainly, we don't believe there was evidence to support that he was a domestic abuser.
41:24In our favour, we had a journal which was almost a written confession of what had happened,
41:30and much of what was written in that journal was matched to the crime scene.
41:33We had CCTV showing her buying the materials to cover it up.
41:41She had collected it in person on the 13th of November.
41:46When we had excavated the site, there were purple bags that were found in amongst the materials
41:51that were present at the burial site.
42:00I uncovered a lot of material that suggested there was quite a good degree of planning.
42:04One in particular was a document called New Life.
42:08And it was recovered from her device, and it was in the deleted section.
42:14So she planned what she was going to send and who she was going to send it to.
42:21Some of the text messages that we later uncovered that she sent from Nicholas's phone,
42:26that's not evidence of somebody that had lost control.
42:31It's somebody that had a clear mind, that had thought about it and knew exactly what they were going to
42:36do.
42:37So on the day of the 1st of November, Fiona had taken some pictures in the back garden.
42:43They were quite significant because this was only two hours or so before Nick was murdered.
42:50Clearly quite relaxed, enough to take selfies during the day,
42:54knowing what she had planned for only a couple of hours later.
43:00Fiona goes back to work after the Covid period, after the period we know when she's killed Nicholas.
43:10She plans her lessons as normal, she teaches children, she's taken them on school trips,
43:15which she's planning. Nobody had any concerns whatsoever.
43:21This is a murder that's been described as a carefully planned domestic execution.
43:29Once the paper was starting to print the diaries that Fiona had written,
43:35that's when I realised that it was premeditated and she had planned it.
43:41And it devastated me.
43:58Fiona has already admitted the lesser charge of manslaughter. She's not disputing having killed him,
44:05but does deny the charge of murder. The trial continues here at the Old Bailey.
44:14All murders are serious and tragic. I wasn't satisfied that diminished responsibility was properly
44:25arguable. So we invited our own expert. He agreed with our analysis. His report was served on the
44:33two defence experts. And they also agreed, having changed their minds, that her position did not
44:40justify a finding of diminished responsibility. There was a shock turn of events. Her forensic
44:46psychologist and psychiatrist had withdrawn their support for diminished responsibility.
44:53So effectively, that defence was withdrawn by Fiona Beale.
44:58One obvious question for you to keep in mind is this. What was her mental state at the time of
45:04the killing?
45:06There is no evidence that she was depressed or traumatised by what she'd done until after she
45:12went to Cumbria. She was not entitled to start a new life by ending that of her partner. And in
45:19doing it
45:20as she did, the prosecution contends she is guilty of murder.
45:28There came a day at trial where defence counsel in this case, Mr. Wheeler approached me to say that,
45:34having reflected on it, Fiona Beale was determined to plead guilty to murder.
45:42When the sentence was read out, everybody was elated. Finally, she'd got a comeuppance.
45:54During sentencing here at the Old Bailey this afternoon, the defendant, primary school teacher
45:58Fiona Beale had her head lowered towards the ground for much of the proceedings, her hair
46:03partially covering her face as she was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 20 years.
46:10Judge Mark Leucraft KC accepted that Fiona Beale had a long history of depression and that
46:16Nicholas Billingham's behaviour had contributed. He'd belittled Fiona Beale and was, at times,
46:21coercive. But the claim she'd simply lost control was outweighed by the evidence against her.
46:27Behind her facade as a kindly school teacher, she was secretly planning the cold-blooded killing of Nick.
46:36I feel really disappointed that Fiona didn't tell me anything.
46:40I don't know that I could have helped her, but to be a shoulder, sometimes is all you need.
46:49It's such a waste. Beale had so many of the choices that she could have taken, it just doesn't make
46:57sense.
46:58Had she chosen to do something else, like leave Nicholas or not let him back into the relationship,
47:05and Nicholas would still be alive.
47:08I still think that Nick's going to come and walk through the front door one day and say,
47:16you know, hello mum. But no, it's not going to happen, is it?
47:23That's not going to happen.
47:24it's not going to happen.
47:25So
Comments