CESSPIT JUSTICE - The Ian Stewart case

Ian Stewart was a widower whose fiance, authoress Helen Bailey, in whose domicile he was residing at Royston in Hertfordshire, went missing after going out for a walk with her dog having left a written note to this effect. After a protracted while, and having attempted to investigate her whereabouts, he became concerned and called in the authorities, and the police became involved.

They were suspicious because he had not preserved the note that she had left, which had stated that she was feeling depressed, although he would not have been aware at this point that there might be police interest in it.

The mystery of her disappearance became apparent when, several weeks later, her body and that of her dog were found in the cesspit below her garage. Her death was one that no fiance could have conceived, for it was apparent that she and her dog had drowned in the cesspit.

Police suspicion was aroused by her having recently proposed to a company of friends including Ian Stewart that her cesspit might be a suitable place for the disposal of a dead body in a murder, but Ian Stewart's being present at this gathering would exclude his using this method since he would expect the company to remember it if a murder was suspected.

The key to her fate is apparent in this suggestion and her close relationship with her dog, and the evidence suggests that having made this proposal to her company of friends, she had investigated her cesspit while out with her dog and her dog had been drawn to the scent and fallen in, and in attempting to save it she had fallen in herself.

A fiance would not be capable of conceiving or accepting such a fate for his love

To compound his conviction, two years later, he was prosecuted and convicted again for the murder of his previous wife, whose death at the time was deemed by medical experts to be due to a history of epilepsy, and Stewart had consented to her brain being donated to medical science, which belies the police premise that she had been cremated to hide evidence relating to epilepsy.

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