Royston, Hertfordshire.
Police arrive at the home of children's author, Helen Bailey.
After numerous appeals,
organised searches and sightings, she has not been seen for 3 months.
Police are about to give her fiance some bad news.
Is it possible to get away with murder?
What does a killer do after committing the most
heinous of crimes?
Do they carry on as normal and hide in plain sight?
Or go on the run?
You try very hard not to mention the word murder.
How do the actions of a killer,
after their crime, influence the police investigation?
She'd been suffocated.
By focusing on the aftermath,
we unpick the mind-set of a killer...
..understand the motive, and reveal
what the killer did next.
Hello and thank you very much for clicking on this video link.
My name's Helen Bailey and I'd like to introduce you to my new book,
which is called 'When Bad Things Happen in Good Bikinis,'
subtitled 'Life After Death and A Dog Called Boris.'
Helen Bailey had lived in London with her husband John
and had a successful career as a children's author,
but in 2011 her life changed forever.
He took Helen on a holiday, they went to Barbados,
and John wanted to go swimming.
And she told him to be careful,
and then she realised that he was in difficulty in the sea.
People went to his rescue.
He sadly died and she was stranded on holiday without anybody else
to help her, and I remember her saying
that it was the suitcases - she had to bring the suitcases back
full of clothes and just put them in the hall.
And then gradually try to come to terms
with what had happened.
All of us will grieve at some point. To grieve is to mourn
the loss of someone or something that we cared deeply about.
After her husband's untimely death, Helen processed her grief
into a blog, 'Planet Grief,' and a bestselling book.
Peppered throughout the book are the thoughts and experiences
of other men and women
who have also gone through bereavement.
And it was via her blog, Helen had a second chance at love.
Helen met Ian through her 'Planet Grief' blog
and he was a widower and he joined her blog.
And they started communicating and quite quickly afterwards,
they became an item and formed a relationship.
They'd both suffered tragic losses
and they were making a real good go at it.
When the newly engaged couple decided to set up home together,
they chose the rural Hertfordshire town of Royston.
It's friendly, it co-operates with each other,
communicates with each other, it has street parties
and things at Royal celebrations,
and it carries on like a small market town should do.
They settled into life, sharing their ample home with Ian's two sons
and Helen's beloved dachshund, Boris.
They got engaged and soon became a huge part of the community.
Boris was always with Helen.
I think Boris, as I recall,
was really the main part of what was left from her marriage
to her first husband, and so she adored him on every account.
When they moved to Royston, it was Helen that knocked
on the neighbours' doors and asked them to come round for brunch
or champagne and cakes and coffee.
As a successful author, Helen had amassed
an extensive property portfolio, including the 1.5 million pound house
in Royston, and a writer's retreat in Broadstairs in Kent.
(PHONE RINGS)
So when Helen Bailey had gone away
for a few days in the middle of writing a book,
fiance Ian was initially unconcerned but after four days,
and having not been in contact with anyone, he was starting to worry.
Ian revealed Helen had been feeling really tired recently
and was anxious about her health.
At this point, police log a missing persons file,
but as time passes, fear spreads around the town.
Whether she'd taken her own life, or she'd been killed.
Has she been abducted for a ransom?
It was clear that something was wrong.
Ooh!
That wasn't supposed to happen.
(PHONE RINGS)
Children's author Helen Bailey has been missing for four days.
Having initially thought she needed time alone to write,
her fiance Ian Stewart is now worried.
Every 90 seconds in the UK, someone is reported missing.
The majority of these people return within days,
citing mental health issues, or a relationship breakdown.
So when police receive a call regarding Helen Bailey,
they need to assess what is going on in her personal life,
and if she's at risk.
We're told by Ian Stewart there's a note.
She said she wants to go away for a few days.
That's not a particularly worrying situation.
So in terms of the spectrum of missing person inquiries,
this is going to come initially quite low down.
There's not going to be a huge amount of worry, the expectation
would be Helen Bailey will turn up in the next day or two.
Initial enquiries with Helen's friends
confirm the relationship between Helen and Ian is strong.
They were in a good place.
They were very touchy-feely,
they would be holding hands
and they had what one would describe as a good relationship.
She wanted to be happy,
she wanted Ian to be happy, she wanted the boys to be happy.
She trusted him, without question.
When news of Helen's disappearance
becomes public, neighbours react with concern
that Helen's busy lifestyle could have prompted her
to take some time away.
It makes sense if she left a note.
She wanted peace, with Boris, to start writing her new book,
away from all of us, who would pop in and have coffee
and maybe disturbed her when she was trying to concentrate.
I had read a passage in her novel where she'd said,
"I would like to sometimes chuck everything in and run away",
so half of me did wonder maybe she is quite a,
I don't know,
a carefree woman who would like to just run away to Greece
and just forget all her worries.
Days turn into a week and still no-one has heard from Helen.
Hertfordshire Police say they're worried
about a well-known children's writer
who's been missing...
Police decide to speak to a visibly worried
and exhausted Ian at his home.
Police are going to want to know
what was going on in Helen's life.
Were there any problems, were there any people
that she was having problems with, arguments with?
Were there any challenges in her life?
Were there any financial problems?
Were there problems with the relationship, with her partner?
There are all sorts of things that the police need to pull together.
With Ian unable to provide any further clues,
the mystery deepens.
Police enquiries reveal Helen hasn't been in contact with anyone.
Not only that, but since the day she went missing,
it appears there's been no sign of her anywhere.
It's just not possible for somebody to live in 21st century Britain
and not leave a trail,
financially, with their doctor, with their dentist,
with their friends, with their social media,
with their bank accounts.
Even if somebody were trying deliberately to disappear,
they would leave a footprint of their preparations.
If you're planning to disappear, to start a new life for yourself,
then you're going to make certain preparations.
Whether that's making sure that you've withdrawn a large amount
of money, so you can take care of yourself,
maybe you'll have bought a new mobile phone
so you can't be traced,
but certainly there will be clues,
and those clues are what the police are going to look for.
By now, concern for Helen is rising and initial hopes
she has taken time away are diminishing.
Helen's friends are starting to fear the worst.
As the weeks went by, it was clear
that something was wrong.
Whether she'd taken her own life,
it just started to eat away at people. People don't disappear
like that, there's a reason we still talk about Lord Lucan.
This obviously wealthy woman,
probably vulnerable as well because of her recent bereavement.
Helen's a writer who's actually shared
a really emotional blog online.
She's talked about her grief and loss,
and that's a connector, people feel that they know you,
and sometimes those individuals can become obsessed and,
when you think about it in a sinister context,
could it be that somebody wanted to be with her
against all the odds and not let anything get in their way?
Police decide to carry out a search
of Ian and Helen's home, hoping it will throw up more clues.
Six weeks after Helen's disappearance
and there's still no sign of her.
Police change tack and expand their search area.
They were putting the flyers all over the town,
not just in this area,
and they were searching nearer to the town,
they were searching the houses at the top of this road,
and the police did come back several times to ask us,
more than once,
to look in our garages and sheds again, which we did of course.
Friends and neighbours organised a dog search on the heath.
Ian went over there and spoke to them and said,
"thank you very much for doing the search."
Ian seemed quite lost and bewildered at that point,
I think, to me, when I saw him, and really again,
you just can only imagine yourself in that situation.
Police widen their search and visit Helen's bolthole
in Broadstairs and make a startling discovery.
Ian Stewart tells police on the 15th of April
that Helen Bailey's phone has gone with her,
she's got the phone with her.
He's calling it, he's texting it, friends, family are calling her,
texting her.
All the calls go to voicemail.
So the phone is either switched off or it's diverted to voicemail.
Can't get through to it. However, on the 16th of April,
Helen Bailey's phone connected with the network in their cottage
at Broadstairs.
Was Helen Bailey in Broadstairs all the time?
The Wi-Fi router history at Helen Bailey's holiday home
reveals Helen's mobile phone had automatically connected to it
on 16th April, five days after she went missing.
The news throws the case wide open.
Has Helen Bailey been in Broadstairs all along?
And if so, where is she now?
Police contact Helen's mobile phone company and bank
to see if they can reveal any more clues to her whereabouts.
So you start looking at her digital footprint,
for want of a better word. What's happening with her bank accounts?
That can be done. What about her mobile phone?
What about her email account,
what about her social media accounts?
Suddenly there's a breakthrough.
Helen's bank reveals transactions have been made.
Police make a renewed appeal for Helen's whereabouts.
It is a possible line of enquiry, that Helen has taken herself off
and she's staying in a B&B or a hotel.
We know she liked to go to Brighton, we know she went
to Broadstairs, so our appeal would be, if you see anyone
or suspect anyone fitting Helen's description,
but is using another name, then again, I would encourage
people to come forward and report that to the police.
But as police delve deeper into bank records hoping for a crucial clue,
they discover all is not as it seems.
Police informed us that money had been moved around
in different accounts. A Standing Order
from Helen Bailey's personal account
to a joint account was increased
from 600 pounds a month, to 4,000 pounds a month.
Has Helen been moving money into another account?
Is she in fact hiding out somewhere?
Police examine the accounts further,
and discover Helen's bank card has been used since her disappearance.
To renew her 3,000 pound Arsenal Football Club season ticket,
but it appears it isn't Helen using the account.
It's her fiance, Ian.
Police urgently need to speak with Ian Stewart again.
But are shocked by what they discover at his home.
Ian Stewart is nowhere to be seen.
Police investigating the disappearance
of children's author, Helen Bailey, have discovered her fiance, Ian,
has been transferring money from her account.
They need to speak to him urgently.
But, he's gone missing.
I was surprised when I heard he was going on the holiday,
and that he went on the holiday.
I was very surprised about that.
He'd gone on this holiday booked for the two of them
and that completely left me flabbergasted
because I couldn't imagine,
if I was in his situation, how I would even consider
the possibility of going on holiday if my loved one had disappeared.
Well, what if they turned up at the house while I was on holiday?
The focus of the investigation suddenly changes.
Missing person investigations can become murder investigations
quite quickly, and as time goes on,
the longer that somebody is still missing,
the more suspicious you become.
During that time, while the investigation's going on,
you will find pieces of evidence which add to the suspicion.
And then one overtakes the other
and it becomes a murder investigation.
After two weeks in the sun,
Ian Stewart returns.
And he's in for a shock.
Police have arrested Ian Stewart over the disappearance
of his fiancee, Helen Bailey,
and despite not having found Helen's body,
they believe Ian has murdered her.
Has Helen's killer really been in front of the police all along?
How has he managed to evade police for three months?
And what really happened on the day Helen went missing?
On the morning of the 11th, I was doing my accounts
at the dining room table, and suddenly I was aware
of the back door here opening
and then shutting rather quickly.
At first I took absolutely no notice of it whatsoever,
but then as it happened again and again,
I got up to look,
but there was nothing there to see and then it went quiet
so then I went back and sat down again
and carried on with my work.
Just before 3:00pm on the day of his fiancee's disappearance,
Ian Stewart left the house for a doctor's appointment.
Ian was due to go to his GP and he made a phone call
and said that he'd had car trouble and wasn't going to be able
to make his morning appointment.
Ian rearranged the appointment for later that afternoon.
And when he did turn up to the appointment,
the GP described him as being very distant.
After the doctor's, Ian has another errand to run,
and this time he's caught on CCTV.
On that same day, he went to the local refuse tip
and discarded of a duvet.
Ian then visits Helen's solicitor, who is dealing with selling
one of her properties.
Ian was very aggressive regarding a property she had in Gateshead.
He really wanted to push through the sale and the solicitor
intervened and said it wouldn't be possible to do so without Helen,
and it was quite unusual that, for someone that should be,
by rights, concerned that their partner's gone missing,
he was more preoccupied with pushing through the sale
of a rental property.
Later that evening, Ian Stewart drives into town,
parks up, and spends the evening with one of his sons.
He even goes to watch his son play bowls, unannounced,
and takes him out for a Chinese meal.
It's just not what you'd expect
from someone whose wife's gone missing.
This type of killer, generally speaking, will do some planning,
and they are very, very motivated to set up alibis for themselves
so that they will not get caught.
So it's quite possible that, on the day that he killed Helen,
he had planned lots of activities to make it look
as if he was busy when she went missing.
Two days after Helen's disappearance, and friends and family
are surprised they cannot great hold of her,
Ian tells them that she's gone away to Broadstairs.
So two days after Helen's supposedly gone missing,
Helen's brother is concerned he can't get in touch with Helen
and that prompts him to get in touch with Ian Stewart
and ask what's going on; it was that unusual to go
two days without speaking to her.
Helen's brother went to Broadstairs to see if he could find her,
and he spoke to her neighbours there, to the people
in the local shop and nobody had seen her.
Realising Helen's disappearance is now being noticed,
Ian decides to report her missing.
From this point on, Ian believes he is in charge of what the police
will think and how they will react.
(PHONE RINGS)
Every word of Ian's call to police is recorded.
At the time it was just that - a missing person's call.
But this is actually the voice of a killer
trying to get away with murder.
I mean, not knowing her birthday,
that's very odd, isn't it?
In the call to the police, Stewart forgets some key details.
It's not completely unusual when you're really concerned
and anxious, when you're worried about somebody
that you love and you fear for them.
You're not necessarily thinking rationally, but the likelihood
in this phone call is more that he's trying to think of the best way
of avoiding certain facts because he either hasn't formulated them yet,
or he's concerned that some of them might incriminate him.
As the call continues,
Ian starts to lay a trail for the police to follow.
Now we can see this for what it really is -
the smokescreen of a murderer.
He claimed that she'd left a note,
but then he couldn't locate the note
and he wasn't able to accurately say what had been written on that note.
Nobody has ever seen that note.
He tells police "the note existed, but I've now thrown it away."
This note, it seems, didn't exist.
Police launch a missing persons investigation
and every move Ian now makes, is likely to be scrutinised.
He wants them to dance to his tune.
So he chooses not to join in the search for Helen
on the heath, nor do a public appeal.
Perhaps afraid he'll give himself away.
But what he does do,
is go to the couple's hideaway in Kent.
Ian Stewart went to Broadstairs to look for her,
ostensibly, and that's when the phone connected to the Wi-Fi.
There's no doubt that she didn't go there, she would have been seen,
she would have done something.
Ian Stewart had said she had gone to Broadstairs in Kent and,
lo and behold, the phone was pinging in the Broadstairs area
and that probably, or possibly, was to make the police think
that that's exactly where she was and she was still alive.
With the hunt for Helen Bailey intensifying, Ian Stewart continues
going about his day-to-day life as if nothing is wrong.
He walked about the town as if nothing had happened
and he talked about anything else but Helen.
But Ian cannot avoid talking to the police, who interview him
as a witness in a bid to try to piece together Helen's movements.
And all his reactions are caught on their body cameras.
What initially appeared to be a flustered, concerned fiance...
..is actually the reactions of a killer trying to cover his tracks.
First of all, he's been thrown.
He didn't realise that people were going to be so adamant
that Helen had gone missing, so now he's having to articulate
a whole set of circumstances that all of these little parts
of his story, he needs to really think about,
to make sure that he appears to an innocent partner.
But two months after Helen's disappearance,
Ian's lies begin to catch up with him.
As he makes the inexplicable decision to go on holiday to Spain.
They'd booked a holiday to Spain,
the two of them, and he went on his own.
He presumably decided that it was the thing to do,
not to waste a holiday.
And I think he said something along the lines of,
"Helen would have wanted me to",
which, in my mind, doesn't suggest someone
who's worried sick about their missing partner.
It suggests someone that's callous and lacking in any sort
of concern for what had happened to their supposed fiancee.
But while he's away, Ian is unaware
police have been following his every move.
Police have received information that Ian
has been spending Helen's money and now they have new evidence.
They find Helen's last will and testament,
and its contents point to a clear motive.
Helen left everything to Ian in the will, just like that.
Police discovered that in the will they were each other's next of kin,
and if something happened to Helen, that she'd made provisions
that he'd be looked after financially
and she certainly had enough means
to look after him for a very, very long time.
She was worth over three million pounds.
Police believe they have enough evidence to prove that Helen Bailey
was murdered, by Ian Stewart.
Ian Stewart is under arrest.
But with Helen's body still having not been found,
will this killer walk free?
Police investigating the disappearance
of missing Hertfordshire author, Helen Bailey, have arrested
a man on suspicion of murder.
Three months after the disappearance of children's author, Helen Bailey,
police have arrested her fiance, Ian Stewart.
When the police turned up to arrest Ian,
he looked very dishevelled and he was acting
completely confused, that the police had turned up to arrest him.
He kept on putting his head in his hands,
like wiping his face.
He was just totally bemused as to why they'd come knocking.
But without a body, police had no proof of a murder.
They have to hope that Ian will crack under questioning.
There has been absolutely no trace of her since the 11th of April.
The details from all her financial had come through.
The strange behaviour, in many ways, by Ian Stewart,
in the way that he's gone on holiday,
the way he tried to sell the flat,
this has all come together then.
And it's reasonable to suspect that he's got something to do
with it because he's the only person who stands to benefit from it.
At that point, there isn't enough evidence to charge him,
so while he's under arrest and he's at the police station,
the opportunity has to be taken to make a full and thorough search
of the house.
He isn't commenting, he isn't responding.
His body language demonstrates quite a lot
of arrogance. He's incredibly aloof in the interview.
It's almost like he feels that he's being patronised even being there.
In his mind, the reason he isn't answering
is because no body, no case to answer.
With Ian giving nothing away, the police need to act fast.
They can only keep him in custody for up to 96 hours.
So they focus again on the footage of his arrest,
and this time they spot something
they hadn't previously picked up on.
Watch again as Ian speaks to the police -
has he unwittingly given them a crucial clue?
As he's arrested, the very last thing that he does,
is he turns round to his son
and says "oh, the garage is open".
It's interesting that Stewart made this comment.
When Stewart's arrested, he's shocked.
He's thinking, how have they found her?
There is undoubtedly a conscience in his response regarding
the garage. He knows that Helen's body is there and he's trying
to make sure that the police don't connect that situation to him.
For two days specialist officers and sniffer dogs
have searched every inch of the sprawling house,
its two acre grounds, swimming pool and garage, but have found nothing.
Without a body, police will have no choice but to release Ian Stewart,
but then, a chance comment from a neighbour
leads to the breakthrough they have been desperate for.
It was a crime scene and the generator
was making an awful lot of noise, so we couldn't sleep,
and they told us that they had finished their search,
that they were packing up,
they'd keep their generator on till midnight, and as we went out,
it was my daughter that actually said,
"You know about the well?"
What they had actually drained,
which they thought was the main tank, it was a septic tank,
the one in the garage was a cesspit.
Suddenly there's a flurry of activity.
The police go into the garage and there they find that there's
a Jeep that is parked over a manhole cover.
They move the car, get access through this manhole cover,
find this second old cesspit.
And within two hours, they had found her.
Police in Hertfordshire investigating the disappearance
of the author, Helen Bailey, have confirmed they've found a body.
It was the worst possible outcome that everyone had feared
and everyone had hoped wouldn't happen.
Helen's body being found in the cesspit
shook the local community.
The discovery of Helen's body is sickening,
but that isn't all they find.
They also found her Dachshund, Boris,
who she was incredibly fond of.
So I don't know how he killed Boris.
They awful thought that he might have thrown Boris in after Helen,
it doesn't bear thinking about.
Helen's body was recovered from the cesspit,
was taken for a post-mortem examination.
She'd been suffocated and that's how she died.
However, it was inconclusive
whether or not she'd been suffocated
and died and then thrown into the cesspit,
or whether she was actually still alive when she was put in there.
And we'll never know, but it's a terrifying thought.
Helen's post-mortem results revealed traces of Zopiclone,
a powerful sleeping pill.
It's prescribed for insomnia.
Now, Helen Bailey wasn't prescribed Zopiclone.
Ian Stewart was.
She'd even googled, "Why do I feel tired all the time?"
It was because Ian had been drugging Helen
in the lead up to her murder.
He had been putting them into her scrambled eggs
every morning for about two months.
Ian Stewart had control of Helen's finances,
access to her property portfolio,
and having been drugging her for months,
he had slowly taken control of her.
Now, having discovered the bodies
of Helen and Boris, police charge Ian Stewart.
Ian Stewart's trial begins with the prosecution
stating Helen Bailey's murder had money as its driving motive.
I'm not sure that when he started the relationship he was necessarily
looking for a vulnerable, widowed woman,
a wealthy widowed woman, to steal her money.
But I think that came later.
The fiance of the Northumberland born children's author,
Helen Bailey, has been jailed for a minimum of 34 years for her murder.
On February 22nd, 2017 the jury returned a unanimous verdict.
Ian Stewart was found guilty of murder, fraud,
preventing legal burial
and three counts of perverting the course of justice.
He was jailed for 34 years.
Ian Stewart is now behind bars for a crime that,
if not for a noisy generator, and a concerned neighbour,
he could well have got away with.
The aftermath of this case in Royston is still being felt.
This was a tragic death
of a talented author who had it all, who was drugged,
thrown in a cesspit and abandoned by the person
who was meant to love her.
Ooh, we'll just move the camera slightly.
There he is.