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_ 'I'm not a monster': Self-justifying plea of killer teacher who brutally murdered serial cheat partner who called her 'fat' and threw tantrums if his dinner wasn't ready when he got home from work
_ 'I'm not a monster': Self-justifying plea of killer teacher who brutally murdered serial cheat partner who called her 'fat' and threw tantrums if his dinner wasn't ready when he got home from work
Lying on the bed, his eyes covered with a sleep mask, his hands bound with cable ties, Nicholas Billingham never stood a chance.
He was expecting sex with his partner of 17 years. What he got instead was a knife plunged into the base of his neck with such force and accuracy that it almost instantly severed his jugular vein.
Fiona Beal, the mother of his child, had hit her target.
'Left to right,' she had coached herself ahead of the attack, concealing the weapon in her dressing gown. 'Down, slight right…left to right, down, slight right.'
Despite the wound's severity, 42-year-old Mr Billingham did not die instantly.
And, in the minute that medics say he would have had left to live, Beal claimed in her journal that her partner had found the strength to ask one question: 'Why?'
It is a question that went to the very heart of this deeply troubling case.
Why did Beal - a mother and primary school teacher with no criminal record - act as she did on that November night in 2021?
Because there was never any dispute that 50-year-old Beal killed Mr Billingham. After all, she admitted it.
What two separate juries would be asked to decide was what motivated the killing – was it murder or manslaughter?
Was this a 'broken' woman driven to kill a controlling, abusive, serial love cheat?
'Everyone has a breaking point, a button that can never go back again,' Beal would subsequently write, referring to how her partner had apparently bullied her the day before she killed him.
Or was this a woman, as the prosecution put it, of 'cunning, cruel, deceptive and devious nature?'
The lawyers claimed Beal killed out of revenge, believing her partner was having yet another affair. And that not only had she meticulously planned the murder, she had also worked out how to get away with it.
In the days and weeks that followed the bloody act, Beal successfully convinced colleagues, friends and family that her partner had simply run off with another woman. She even wrote messages on his phone and sent them to his elderly mother.
Meanwhile Beal got on with her life, attending a Christmas party, using his phone to view online pornography and changing her council tax status from double to single occupancy.
Nine days after she stabbed him to death, she had the wherewithal to use his credit card to renew her TV licence.
All the while, Mr Billingham's decaying corpse was lying buried in a handmade grave Beal had dug in the back garden of their Northampton home.
His 'coffin' was made of breeze blocks, timber and sheets. On top of it was a pile of wood chippings purchased from B&Q and a plant pot placed for decorative effect.
Four months later, when she feared the game was up, Beal set about preparing the way for when she was eventually caught, writing a journal in which she detailed the abuse she claimed to have suffered at her partner's hands. She even compared her situation to that portrayed in the hit 1991 film Thelma & Louise, starring Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon, saying she had changed from being a 'doormat' to someone who stood up for herself.
'There's a quote from Thelma & Louise that feels appropriate,' Beal wrote. 'Thelma: 'You be sweet to them, especially your wife. My husband wasn't sweet to me'.'
In the end, there was no need for a jury to sift the fact from the fiction.
Beal's first trial last summer at Northampton Crown Court collapsed after the court heard 17 weeks of evidence following an issue with a defence character witness.
Then, last week, the case re-started at the Old Bailey in London.
But today, Beal dramatically changed her plea – and admitted murder.
She will now be sentenced at the end of May with the Recorder of London, Judge Mark Lucraft, KC, telling her: 'You have this morning pleaded guilty to murder and as no doubt you have been told the sentence for murder is life imprisonment.'
This evening Mr Billingham's mother, Yvonne Valentine, accused Beal of lying about the abuse she'd claimed to have suffered.
'She never gave the impression of being mistreated or being unhappy with him,' Mrs Valentine said. 'To me, whenever I saw them they seemed like a normal couple. I didn't recognise what she was saying about him.'
She also revealed that Beal had on one occasion invited her over to their house, claiming that her son had left her - when his body was in fact buried in the garden.
'She'd said Nick had gone up to Essex,' Mrs Valentine said. 'I noticed she'd moved some furniture – it was to block access to the back garden – and when I commented on it she said, 'Oh, I'm glad you like it'. Fiona offered me a Christmas drink and I said 'Thank you'.
'So I sat there with this drink but it always gets to me because Nick was buried in the garden just a few feet away and I didn't know he was there. I try not to think of it.'
It is clear Beal and Mr Billingham's relationship had its ups and downs. Mr Billingham was a serial cheat, as many people in his life knew.
And yet every time he strayed, Beal took him back, persuaded that he would change his ways.
For most of her life, Beal struggled with depression and anxiety. After studying English at Luton University she qualified as a teacher, and became popular with both staff and pupils. Colleagues described her as 'amazing' and 'one of the best'.
She was 30 when she met Mr Billingham in a nightclub. He was four years her junior and not long after they met, their only child was born.
Raised in Northampton, Mr Billingham had moved from job to job, firstly on a fruit and veg stall, then working in a garage and finally in a duct cleaning firm. When the pandemic hit, he was made redundant, instead picking up work as a cash-in-hand builder. While he only had a handful of friends, those who knew him described him as a hard-working man with a 'heart of gold'.
But he never endeared himself to Beal's family, to whom he was often rude and abrupt at get-togethers and Christmases. He also gambled; in the year before he was killed, he lost £25,000 on three gambling websites. It meant he struggled to pay his way.
But the recurring problem in their relationship was his infidelity. During their time together, Mr Billingham was said to have cheated on his partner four times.
He first walked out on Beal for another woman when their child was three years old. Although he would subsequently return, it was a pattern that would be repeated throughout their relationship.
In 2011, the court heard that he met barmaid Andria Farden at a pub in Earls Barton, Northamptonshire, where they lived. After a brief relationship, he broke it off but then reunited with her in 2018 after messaging her on Facebook.
The following October Ms Farden discovered she was pregnant. When she told Mr Billingham the news, he made it brutally clear that he did not want to have a child with her.
Soon after, he informed Beal about what had been going on. She was 'devastated' and Mr Billingham moved out of their home, bombarding her with letters promising to change his ways and begging her to have him back.
'You are the most beautiful woman in the world, let's get that straight,' he wrote. '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. Did I ever make you think that you weren't the perfect woman for me? I miss waking up with you and falling asleep with you. I miss relaxing with you, watching films with you and cuddling you, holding you tight with my strong arms.'
Beal yet again relented, insisting on a fresh start and a new home in Kingsley, Northampton, to put distance between him and his lover.
But the strains in their relationship quickly re-emerged during the Covid lockdown.
Giving evidence in her first, aborted, trial, Beal said that Mr Billingham had changed from a 'loving and caring' partner to one who became 'obsessive' about keeping the house clean and who constantly ran her down.
She told jurors that he expected dinner to be ready for him when he arrived home from work and if the plate was not heated up or the food was not up to his standards, he would refuse to eat.
Beal said: 'There were a couple of occasions where he threw the plate of dinner at the wall. I left the house the first time it happened but it was still there when I came back so I had to clean it up.'
She also claimed he would check the mileage on her car, questioning where she had been, and that he would be rude about friends and family, so that she stopped seeing them.
Beal added that Mr Billingham sometimes made comments about her being 'fat' or said: 'You're not going out like that, are you?'
Their sexual relationship also deteriorated, she claimed, with Mr Billingham on one occasion allegedly holding her down on the bed and forcing her to perform oral sex.
What actually happened on the night of November 1, 2021 can only be inferred from the forensic investigation by the police and the limited versions of events given by Beal, who claimed to be unable to remember much of the incident or its aftermath.
Asked if she could recall anything about stabbing her partner, Beal stated: 'No - I thought that I had hit him over the head and that it happened in the bath.'
She told jurors that her only memories of burying his remains were 'a dragging sensation' and 'seeing what would have been the body wrapped in the dining room'.
Blood spatters subsequently found by police at the carefully cleaned scene of the stabbing show that Mr Billingham died lying in his bed, his eyes covered with a sleep mask bearing the words: 'This is my morning after face.'
To give herself time to dispose of the body, Beal claimed that she and her partner had Covid. As she would later confide to her journal, moving the body was 'much more difficult than on TV'. Mr Billingham was nearly 6ft tall and weighed 14st.
She then wrapped his corpse in bin bags, sheets and cable ties before burying it in the back garden. The jury was shown footage of Beal at B&Q purchasing ten 50-litre bags of bark chippings, as well as ten large bags of Cotswold stone.
The next stage of the cover-up included persuading anyone who knew the couple that Mr Billingham had left her for another woman.
Given his past behaviour it was not a particularly hard sell. Beal sent messages to friends and family from Mr Billingham's phone pretending to be him and informing him they had split up and he had moved away. To make it look like he had moved out, she disposed of his clothes and even a sandwich-maker he liked to use.
She repainted the bedroom, attended a Christmas work do with colleagues, and travelled to London with her class of ten-year-olds on a school trip to the Royal Ballet. Friends say she lost weight and was 'bubbly and cheerful'.
Notes made by her before and after the murder reveal her thought process. The defence claimed they were not a 'confession' so much as evidence of a disturbed mind.
On October 9, 2021, Beal wrote in a subsequently deleted note on her phone: 'I have been gradually getting more depressed and suicidal ever since you came back…there have been some lovely moments but for the last six months-plus I have been in a very dark place. You're mean. You moan constantly and criticise everything. It's exhausting.'
She went on to describe an argument over some spilled food. 'You go to the shop while I clean the mess up,' she wrote. 'No. There should be consequences.'
The following February, Beal wrote in a notebook: 'I suppose I ought to explain what happened to get me to this point. My mental health had been deteriorating. He was f****** around again. Whenever he was cheating he would up the ante on belittling, moaning and criticising.'
Beal, who says she was smoking up to ten cannabis spliffs a day in the run up to the killing, also referred to her alter ego – Tulip22.
The journal continued: 'OK here goes. October 2021. He spat on me and threatened me during sex. 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. I would have to go downstairs after sex and even when I was unwell. I got used to sleeping downstairs and waited for him to go to bed and then got high and let Tulip22 out. I knew I couldn't let him get away with it.'
In March 2022, five months after the murder, Beal disappeared. Concerned relatives alerted the police who traced her to a holiday lodge in the Lake District. She was found in a bath suffering from superficial, self-inflicted injuries and with what appeared to be a suicide note. Interviewed by police, she claimed, conveniently, to have no memory of the killing – or her actions in its aftermath.
But in another note found by police, Beal spoke of the guilt which had been 'strangling' her. She wrote: 'I am sorry I didn't leave him... I am sorry I am weak. I am sorry for what I did… do I regret what I did? Of course I do, I'm not a monster.'
It is a claim that - in the light of her admission to the cold-blooded murder and the chilling cover-up that followed - now rings hollow.
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