Ian Stewart: He Murdered His Fiancée. Then Police Learned His Wife Had Died Too.

 

Ian Stewart: He Murdered His Fiancée. Then Police Learned His Wife Had Died Too.

Ian Stewart was already a convicted murderer when investigators took another look at the sudden death of his first wife, Diane.

In 2016, Stewart drugged and suffocated his fiancée, celebrated children’s author Helen Bailey, then dumped her body, along with her dog, into a septic tank beneath their property. Prosecutors said the murder followed a calculated campaign of manipulation and “love bombing,” motivated by money.

That conviction made police reconsider Diane Stewart’s death six years earlier.

Diane had died suddenly in 2010. Stewart had her cremated, seemingly destroying any chance of discovering what really happened. But Diane had donated brain tissue for medical research.

That tissue still existed.

Scientists examined the preserved samples and found evidence consistent with oxygen deprivation. Prosecutors argued Stewart had suffocated Diane too.

In 2022, he was convicted of murdering her.

Two women who trusted the same man. Two deaths initially surrounded by completely different stories. One killer eventually held responsible for both.

He thought cremation had buried the evidence with Diane. Science proved otherwise.