GUILTY UK - Diane Stewart, 47, found dead, Bassingbourn, Cambridgeshire, 25 June 2010 *arrest in 2020*

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Helen Bailey's furious family say killer fiance had 'licence to kill'


The close cousin said she had no idea the oddball would end up being a narcissistic double-killer - who only cared about getting Helen’s money to himself.

Judith said: “The first time I knew Helen had met someone was when I got a Xmas Card in which she called him a ‘wonderful partner’.

“He came across as a strange character from the start - a “Man of Few Words” my auntie always said. But we never said much because he was Helen’s fiance

“Helen referred to him as ‘the gorgeous grey haired widower’. I did not think he looked gorgeous at all. He had a great big pot belly and a scraggly beard.

“But she was always very trusting - which is probably what drew him to her.

Blasting him as “a monster” Judith added: “I am sick of all the damage that has been done to the family.

“I am a very sensitive person and I have carried it for a long time.


“It is a relief to know it might be finally over. Other than that, I don’t care what happens to him.

“He is a real monster. There are monsters. I am grateful this one has been put away.”
 
Just pulled this from your link Skigh - I do like this extremely accurate description

Helen referred to him as ‘the gorgeous grey haired widower’. I did not think he looked gorgeous at all.
He had a great big pot belly and a scraggly beard.
 
Moll said:
Shelley Whitehead, a close friend of Ms Bailey who was once her bereavement counsellor, told The Telegraph: “It really raises questions about how someone so very evil could literally get away with murder, and do it again.

“Did they look at this bereaved, vulnerable father, this man whose wife has ‘died' from an epileptic fit, the father who now has to raise his boys on his own - is he so convincing that they didn’t do the proper checks? Or was something overlooked?"
Click to expand...

RS&BBM


Shelley Whitehead urged Helen Baily to grab IS, with words like 'How would you feel if in six months (?) one year (?) he has found another partner?' Perhaps she should have questioned the judgement of this bereaved, vulnerable Helen Baily who had only lost her husband a mere 10 months earlier.

I cannot find the exact quote, but there is an ample discussion on HB thread #10
 
ZaZara said:
RS&BBM


Shelley Whitehead urged Helen Baily to grab IS, with words like 'How would you feel if in six months (?) one year (?) he has found another partner?' Perhaps she should have questioned the judgement of this bereaved, vulnerable Helen Baily who had only lost her husband a mere 10 months earlier.

I cannot find the exact quote, but there is an ample discussion on HB thread #10
Click to expand...

Oh yes - good point, I remember that discussion. You might think she'd stay quiet.
 
I'm pleased that Diane has had justice, but sad that the media have swiftly moved the focus back to Helen.

Why was he left free to kill again? A valid question, but here's another: Why did he have to kill a famous woman before anyone looked twice at the death of his "ordinary" wife?
 
Perodicticus potto said:
I'm pleased that Diane has had justice, but sad that the media have swiftly moved the focus back to Helen.

Why was he left free to kill again? A valid question, but here's another: Why did he have to kill a famous woman before anyone looked twice at the death of his "ordinary" wife?
Click to expand...

A reasonable question but IS does seem to have had an extraordinary capacity to fool people, and there were factors that made it easier for him to get away with Diane's murder at the time.

In the case of Helen Bailey it wasn't that just that she was famous-ish as that the circumstances were more obviously odd and there was a long, long search by her friends and police at the time before the awful truth of her death was known. (Sarah Everard's and Kim Wall's deaths had some similarities in that respect.) Inevitably this increased media interest enormously, and the police looked harder.
 
ZaZara said:
RS&BBM
Shelley Whitehead urged Helen Baily to grab IS, with words like 'How would you feel if in six months (?) one year (?) he has found another partner?' Perhaps she should have questioned the judgement of this bereaved, vulnerable Helen Baily who had only lost her husband a mere 10 months earlier.

I cannot find the exact quote, but there is an ample discussion on HB thread #10
Click to expand...

ZaZara, I did look at thread #10 and found a wonderfully furious rant by you on this subject at the end. I feel your tribute then to the Strimmer should also be revived!

The life coach / bereavement coach still makes me see red. How is it possible that she utterly lacks self awareness? Not one grain of those famous lessons learned or future warnings ... nothing.

If you do not have a clue, please stay out of the coaching business. Don't mess with people's lives. Simply admit that you were a friend of Helen's and not among the brightest of the pack.

... Should anyone be in need of a life coach, or a marriage counsellor, I recommend Mr Stuart Trimmer.
 
MsMiniSleuth said:
'Police gave him a licence to kill': Author Helen Bailey's family slam police | Daily Mail Online
Click to expand...

Dear certain members of the family, dear Bereavement Coach, before slamming the police, why not talk to Helen's former neighbour?

=====

A former neighbour told MailOnline that Helen was 'besotted' with Stewart, who 'exploited' her.

'She was mad about him. I think it was because she had not really recovered from the loss of her husband (whom she had seen drown) and was looking to replace him.

'To Helen he appeared to be in similar circumstances - his wife had died suddenly and unexpectedly - and that is what drew them together.

'She was very vulnerable and was besotted by Ian and he exploited that. She called him her Georgeous Grey-Haired Widower.'


BBM



.... I think it was because she had not really recovered from the loss of her husband ..... She was very vulnerable

The husband had died in February and Helen Bailey met IS in october of the same year. She wondered if this was too early, or words to that extent. There is probably a lot that the family might have done without the interference of the police. Perhaps they tried, without success, perhaps a grieving HB would not listen to reason, but none of that is the fault of the police.
 
No it's not, but what they (the cousin etc) are blaming the police for, no doubt vastly amplified by the Mail, is their failure to investigate Diane's death and thus prevent him ever exploiting Helen or anyone else. (Their own focus is understandably on Helen, but as has been pointed out, Diane herself deserved that attention.) As I understand it the chief fault there is with the coroner, as also suggested in that article.

One of the difficulties of the poor reporting of this trial and the length of time since Diane was killed is that I'm not always sure which comments were only made recently and which were stated at the time. Still, various discrepancies could have been flagged up more by those attending the scene but everyone gave IS the benefit of his apparent 'grieving husband' status.
 
About the poor reporting: being somewhat obsessional I felt I had to send a correction in to The Times about their trial report of 9 February (it's behind a paywall but I have a cheap online-access deal, and I think you can get a couple of articles a week free on subscription) concerning their reporting of Oliver's witness statement:

'Please make a small but important correction to your article about the Ian Stewart trial.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/helen-baileys-killer-ian-stewart-convicted-of-murdering-his-first-wife-0vlldm8tj

"Their younger son, Oliver, who was 15 at the time, said he arrived home on the day of his mother’s death to find her having an epilectic (sic) fit and gave her “one last kiss” while his father was “in bits”.

But reports during the trial did not say Oliver said he found his mother having an epileptic fit. The Standard said:

"Oliver said someone from either the police or ambulance service told him his mother was dead.
Wiping tears from his eyes, he told the jury he identified her body.
“She had foam coming out of her mouth,” he said, adding his gave his mother “one last kiss”.
Asked by defence barrister Amjad Malik QC how his father was at that point, Oliver replied: “In bits.”
Oliver said he was given information from the pathologist about how his mother died at a later date."

This is important: comments below the line show some people inferred from your article that Oliver was in some way complicit, which he certainly was not. Even Ian Stewart didn’t say he found his wife actually having a fit.'

I felt I had to do this after seeing someone below the line ask something like 'Was the 15-year-old an accessory, then?' I recall we were all a bit puzzled during the reporting by the way his testimony sounded, to the extent that it had to be clarified that he was a witness for the prosecution. But it was made clear in the judge's sentencing remarks that he really did have to identify his mother's body formally for the police (which we couldn't believe) and that his descriptions of his father were how he perceived him at the time, further evidence of IS's capacity to deceive.

There's no change in the article so far, alas. The Times used to care about accuracy...
 
I agree Moll - the standard of reporting in general is very poor - at times even the title of an article is so garbled and confusing, plus poorly punctuated, that it's difficult to make sense of it! Word count, rush to get article out etc etc
I was niggled because in one article it stated that the boys stared straight ahead when IS looked "beseechingly" at them. In another article it said that Jamie gave IS a cold, hard stare! Small details but they matter!
Also I've noticed that job descriptions of defendents are often nonsense e.g. "film actor", when they may have appeared as an extra 10 years ago! Model - where they may have entered a holiday camp competition years ago :rolleyes:
 
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