Teacher Fiona Beal jailed for life with minimum 20 years for murder of partner she buried in garden

A primary teacher who stabbed her partner to death "in cold blood" before burying his body in their back garden has been jailed.

Fiona Beal, 50, admitted the murder of her partner Nicholas Billingham, whose partially-mummified remains were discovered four and a half months after he was last seen.

The teacher, of Moore Street, Northampton, was arrested in March 2022 after police discovered the body of the 42-year-old.

She was jailed for life with a minimum term of 20 years at the Old Bailey.

At the end of a two-day hearing, Judge Mark Lucraft KC told Beal: “Having moved and buried the body in the garden you then lied to his mother, numerous friends, all his family and yours as to what you had done and where he was.”

The defendant had her head down as she left court.

During the sentencing hearing, prosecutors explained Beal confessed to killing her partner in a diary found by police which said her victim "was not going to do... what he had done to me" to another woman.

Prosecutors said Beal killed Mr Billingham in a "carefully planned domestic execution", stabbing him in the neck before disposing of him like "building waste in her garden".

Beal stabbed her partner in the neck and buried him in a side passage outside the house they shared before pretending he had left her.

As part of the cover-up, she told family, friends and colleagues they had contracted Covid and were isolating. She sent messages from Mr Billingham’s phone and convinced his family that he was safe and happy.

In late February 2022, Beal rented a cabin in Cumbria in late February 2022 as her mental health had begun to deteriorate, prosecutor Hugh Davies KC told the Old Bailey.

Family members had become concerned for her welfare and police were called to check on her, and found her after she had made an attempt to take her own life.

In the cabin, officers found Beal's journals containing a confession to the killing which triggered an investigation, with Mr Billingham's body being found soon afterwards.

A first murder trial took place in the summer of 2023 but was abandoned after a legal issue with a witness.

Yvonne Valentine, Mr Billingham's mother, said in a statement read on her behalf outside court: “Nothing will ever make up for the pain we have suffered over the now more than two-and-half-years since, but at least we can sleep safe in the knowledge that Beal will be locked away for years during which she will have more than enough time to reflect on her actions.“She has demonstrated extraordinary evil. Behind her façade as a kindly schoolteacher, she was secretly planning the cold-blooded killing of Nick. Once the deed was done, she went to great lengths to conceal his body, dumping him in an impromptu grave, like rubbish, before carrying on with her life as if nothing had happened.

Andrew Baxter from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “Fiona Beal’s crime and her ongoing deception shocked family members and the whole community.

"She exploited a narrative that she was the victim of abuse at the hands of her long-term partner, but rather than leave the relationship, she killed him in a planned, cold-blooded execution when he thought he was safe with his partner.

“This has been a particularly distressing time for Mr Billingham’s family as they have had to come to terms with Beal’s ongoing lies, and deceit, which even included letting them visit the house when his body was hidden there."

Det Sgt Spencer Bailey from Northamptonshire Police welcomed the sentence handed to Beal.

"Nick was a hard-working 42-year-old father who died at the merciless hands of Beal who had calculatedly planned his murder and then the subsequent burial of his body in the back garden of their Northampton home.

"For months afterwards she carried on living a life as if nothing had happened. But she was really living a lie."

He added: "But eventually, the pressures of her guilt overwhelmed her. The journal outlining what the jury was told was her 'chilling execution' of Nick meant there was never any doubt she had killed him."

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