Murder victim wrote love letters to killer before death

Primary school teacher Fiona Beal stabbed partner of 17 years

- AMY-CLARE MARTIN

A murder victim penned love letters calling a killer primary school teacher with a dark alter ego the “perfect woman” before she stabbed him in the neck and buried his body in their back garden.

A court heard that Nick Billingham, 42, vowed “My body, my heart, my love has been yours since the day I met you and will be yours until the day I die”, as he tried to win back Fiona Beal following an affair.

“You are the most beautiful woman in the world,” he gushed in letters read to the Old Bailey. “You are so kind-hearted in every single way and if there were more people like you around, the world would be a better place.”

The couple reconciled in 2020, but Beal, 50, murdered him “in cold blood” less than two years later. His mummified body lay undiscovered in a “de facto coffin” in their back garden for more than four months while she told friends and family her partner of 17 years had left her for another woman.

Chilling photographs shown to the court revealed the makeshift grave where she entombed Billingham in the side return of their home under layers of sheeting, badly mixed concrete, breeze blocks and compost.

The Year 6 teacher had initially pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of manslaughter by reason of a loss of control but denied murdering Billingham between 30 October and 10 November 2021 at their terraced home in Northampton. She changed her plea part way through a trial last month, admitting his murder.