The chilling diary entries of primary school teacher who stabbed her partner to death
A teacher who stabbed her boyfriend in ‘cold blood’ and blamed her alter ego for the killing has admitted murdering him.
Fiona Beal, 50, killed her 42-year-old boyfriend Nicholas Billingham in their bedroom after luring him there for sex.
The court heard how she had prepared for the murder inside their Northampton home by buying a knife, cable ties and a chisel – all revealed in detail in diary entries.
After murdering him, Beal pretended to be Mr Billingham as she sent messages to his friends and family for months before she was caught.
She lied they both had Covid-19 so she could hide the body in a makeshift grave without being disturbed.
Beal, of Moore Street, Northampton, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey today to the murder of Billingham more than two years after his partly mummified remains were found hidden in the garden.
She previously pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of manslaughter by reason of a loss of control, but denied murdering him between October 30 and November 10, 2021.
Jurors heard previously how the ‘highly capable and highly respected teacher’ used his phone to message Mr Billingham’s friends and relatives for months, pretending he was still alive.
She told his loved ones on November 1, 2021, and in the following days, that the couple had contracted Covid-19 and had to isolate, the court was told.
Beal then told his sister they had split up, saying in one of the messages he left because he cheated on her with another woman.
The prosecution said the narrative that Mr Billingham had ran off with someone else was ‘completely false,’ while jurors heard he appeared to have cheated on Beal previously.
Beal was eventually arrested in March 22 after police found Mr Billingham’s body in a ‘grave’ made of concrete she had mixed and inside a ‘de facto coffin’ comprising of breeze blocks, timber and sheets.
But in the months before she was caught, she returned to her job as a Year 6 teacher, receiving a ‘sympathetic response’ from people who heard about her alleged break-up.
Diary entries revealed her ‘darker’ side
Beal’s disturbing diary entries revealed a ‘different and darker’ side than her ‘public persona’ as a primary school teacher led on, the court heard.
Her mental health started to deteriorate in late February 2022 months after the killing.
In March of that year, she rented a cabin for herself in Cumbria and sent messages to family members which gave them cause for concern over her wellbeing.
The prosecutor said they were so worried they called the police to check up on her.
In the cabin, police found journals ‘written in her hand’ that showed ‘a wholly different side to her personality.’
One of the entries detailed the events leading up to the killing: ‘Everything changed last year. There’s a quote from ‘Thelma and Louise’ that feels appropriate, “Thelma: ‘You be sweet to them, especially your wife. My husband wasn’t sweet to me.”
‘I suppose I ought to explain what happened to get me to this point. My mental health had been deteriorating. Whenever he was cheating he would up the ante on belittling, moaning and criticising.’
‘I have to confess. Ok here goes. October 2021. He spat on me and threatened me during sex. I thought about leaving but the things he said and did fuelled my dark side – I call her Tulip22, she’s reckless, fearless and efficient. Ruthless.
‘I started plotting as Tulip22 after he’d gone to bed. I could no longer sleep in the bed due to my breathing being too loud or I moved too much or I was snoring or etc etc.’
Another note book entry referred to ‘him’ being mean and cruel for 17 years, adding that it was him being ‘vile’ at Halloween that made her decide she ‘couldn’t let him get away with it.’
A diary entry said: ‘That night I planned. Covid rules meant I had a guaranteed 10-day isolation period from positive symptoms.
‘I called [Beal’s headteacher] on the Monday and said we’d tested positive and had symptoms. He went to work. Tulip22 smoked and planned. I’d planned it mentally so many times before.
‘I had a bath. I left the water in. I encouraged the bath with the incentive of sex afterwards.
‘While he was in the bath I kept the knife in my dressing gown pocket and then hid it in the drawer next to the bed. I brought a chisel, bin bag and cable ties up too.’
The note revealed she got him to ‘wear an eye mask’ before stabbing him.
Hugh Davies KC, prosecuting, said: ‘They certainly do contain some unambiguously clear declarations of what she had done. These parts were not just her truth, but the truth. What was this?
‘The short answer is that she had planned to, and had, killed him in cold blood. She had purchased a forged handled utility knife in the days before. She had a chisel and cable ties.
‘Promising sex after a bath, she stabbed him in the neck when he was wearing a sleep mask and was probably cabled-tied on their bed.’
Mr Davies said her diary revealed her split personality and attempts of trying to justify the killing: ‘Stated shortly, in all these documents Fiona Beal introduces themes of her having been controlled and manipulated in the relationship; of her insecurities having been exaggerated rather than helped by his attitude; of unpleasant things he had done… and this explaining why she killed him as she did.
‘She introduces her insight into her own split personality, and an alter ego – i.e. her ‘second self’ – she calls Tulip 22, who is capable of wholly different and darker conduct than her public persona of committed teacher.’
Jurors heard what the diary entries said: ‘Still my actions haunt me. I sometimes have to catch myself and remember what I did and then remember my cover story – neither seem convincing.’
Beal also wrote that the attack was ‘harder than I thought it would be.’
She continued: ‘Hiding a body was bad. Moving a body is much more difficult than it looks on TV.’
The journal entries led to a police probe, which soon discovered that the 42-year-old had not been seen or spoken to by telephone since the afternoon of November 1, 2021, the court heard.
Mr Davies told jurors: ‘Having manufactured and sustained a cynical lie to everyone she messaged or spoke to about isolating for Covid, Fiona Beal had planned and ensured that she had the house to herself for at least 10 days after the killing.
‘She used this time to purchase multiple items to enable her to dispose of his body.
‘Acting throughout on her own, she wrapped her dead partner up and dragged him down the stairs, destroying the banister rails upstairs in order to do so. He was 5ft 11in and weighed some 14 stone – even when recovered months later.
‘She buried him in the side return of her garden.’
The police visited Moore Street on March 16, 2022, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary during a first search.
But they returned the next day when they found items including a mattress in the cellar which, when moved, was seen to be heavily bloodstained.
On March 19 the police returned and discovered more, the court heard.
Mr Davies told jurors during the trial that building the grave and coffin was a ‘major job’ which required planning.
‘Planning, executing, deceiving: a habitual pattern,’ he added.
The court heard how Beal started the clean-up in the early hours of November 2, buying cleaning products on her own and Mr Billingham’s Amazon accounts.
She had also ‘manufactured’ a positive Covid test result, showing ‘considered, controlled conduct that is on the one hand intrinsically practical, and on the other indulgent,’ Mr Davies told the court.
He continued: ‘There is no evidence she ever did a PCR test. Her actions in the next 10 days are wholly inconsistent with having the exhausting effects of Covid which she was claiming to be experiencing.’
A jury at the Old Bailey heard today that she had changed her plea.
Judge Mark Lucraft told Beal: ‘You have this morning pleaded guilty to murder, which as you have no doubt been told, carries a sentence of life imprisonment.’
He confirmed he will determine the minimum term at a two-day sentencing hearing starting on May 29.
As the jury left the courtroom, a tearful Beal wiped her eyes with a tissue.
The original murder trial collapsed after more than four months into proceedings when it emerged that a key defence witness was a court custody officer who had conducted welfare checks on Beal in the cells, PA reports.
DCI Adam Pendlebury, senior investigating officer at Northamptonshire Police, said: ‘We are pleased Fiona Beal has now taken the decision to admit she did indeed murder Nick Billingham and hope that it brings the start of some closure to his family who have faced a torrid time for more than two years, including sitting through the original trial in Northampton in 2023.
‘Today’s news will have come as a great relief as they await her sentencing next month.’
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