Teacher murdered boyfriend and invited his worried mother over as body lay in garden

A woman murdered her boyfriend then invited his worried mother over as his body lay in a makeshift grave in the back garden.

As Fiona Beal entertained her guest, Nicholas Billingham’s body was lying just a few feet from where his mother Yvonne Valentine was sitting.

Beal pleaded guilty mid-trial at the Old Bailey on Friday to the murder of Billingham, 42.

She had earlier admitted manslaughter, claiming that she had experienced a “loss of control” when she killed Billingham, adding that they had a “coercive” relationship.

The Old Bailey heard that the 50-year-old had lured Billingham into the bedroom with the promise of sex, tied him to the bed with cable ties and stabbed him in the neck. She then hid his body and told friends and family that he had left her for another woman.

On the day of the killing, the “highly capable and respected” primary school teacher told colleagues that her and Billingham had tested positive for Covid and needed 10 days to isolate. This excuse allowed her to be undisturbed while she built a makeshift grave and repainted her Northamptonshire home to hide the blood.

Shortly before Christmas 2021, Beal told Mrs Valentine that her son, a builder, had left and moved to Essex to “start a new life”. But in fact his body was lying buried in the garden of the home they shared.

Despite this, Beal invited Mrs Valentine to the house to wrap presents and have a drink.

Mrs Valentine told The Telegraph: “She’d said Nick had gone up to Essex. 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’.”

The month after the murder, Beal began an elaborate hoax to make people believe Billingham was still alive.

Using her dead partner’s phone, Beal wrote a text message to Mrs Valentine on Dec 30 2021 saying he had gone off to start a new life with a fictional woman called “Faye”.

It stated: “All good. We’re in Manchester for New Year. Just watched Utd beat Burnley at Old Trafford. Back to Essex Sunday.

“I know what you think of me but I felt like a prisoner and then I met Faye. I’m back selling cars and happy. I’ll let u know my address when things calm down. Happy 2022 xx.”

Mrs Valentine said: “After Christmas, I sent him a message asking if he was alright and how he was doing because I didn’t feel it was like him to go off like that and I was a bit worried. So when I got that message back I believed it.

“It was incredibly evil of her to do that. Bless him, Nick didn’t deserve what she did to him. She stabbed him after he’d fallen asleep. It was horrible.”

Following the murder, Beal, who was smoking up to 10 joints of cannabis a day before the killing, returned to work behaving completely normally and took pupils on a school trip to London.

Police believe the killing took place on Nov 1 2021 and records from Beal’s school showed she had been absent between Nov 1 and Nov 12, using the excuse that she had Covid-19.

On Nov 1, she manufactured a positive Covid test result by completing the NHS self-report questionnaire online and there was no evidence she did a PCR test. At the time, people were required to isolate for a period of 10 days if they tested positive.

The head teacher of the school had been in regular contact with her during this period, and when she returned to work she said her partner had left her.

In March 2022, Beal called in sick but told her family she was away on a residential work course. That month, she was arrested after being discovered at a holiday property near Kendal, in Cumbria, where she had attempted to take her own life.

After police recovered a notebook giving a chilling account of how she had planned and then carried out a killing, they went to her Northampton home where they discovered a blood-stained mattress in the basement.

They then excavated the garden and after four days of digging found Billingham’s “partially wrapped and partially-clothed” remains, buried in a makeshift grave filled with compost and ten 22.5kg bags of Cotswold Stone that Beal had bought from B&Q and topped off with a plant pot for decorative effect.

Prosecutor Hugh Davies, KC, told the trial: “This was a major job, requiring her to plan what was needed, order it, collect it, burn other incriminating material in an incinerator in the garden and carry on throughout as if nothing remarkable was occurring.”

The court heard Billingham had affairs during his relationship with Beal, and at one stage moved out of the home before the couple reconciled.

In the notebook recovered by police, Beal claimed she had decided to act because of Billingham’s cheating.

It read: “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 it fuelled my dark side – I call her Tulip22, she’s reckless, fearless and efficient. Ruthless.”

‘Moving a body is much more difficult than it looks on TV’

It went on: “I knew I couldn’t let him get away with it. Halloween sealed it. He was vile. That night I planned. Covid rules meant I had a guaranteed 10-day isolation period from positive symptoms.

“I called [Beal’s school’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.

“I got him to wear an eye mask. It was harder than I thought it would be. Hiding a body was bad. Moving a body is much more difficult than it looks on TV.”

Beal’s original murder trial collapsed after more than four months in June last year, when it emerged that a key defence witness was a court custody officer who had conducted welfare checks on her in the cells.

Appearing at the Old Bailey again on Friday for what would have been the third day of her trial, Beal, wearing glasses and a black cardigan, finally admitted murder. The jury was directed to confirm a guilty verdict and Beal will be sentenced on May 29 and 30.

Judge Mark Lucraft told her she faces a sentence of life imprisonment.

Following Beal’s guilty plea, Det Ch Insp Adam Pendlebury, from 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.”

Mrs Valentine told The Telegraph she can never forgive Beal.

She said: “Nick was a hard-working, house-proud young man. He was always proud of the home improvements he did. She made out he just sat there doing nothing.”

Mrs Valentine rejected Beal’s claims that her son had been abusive to her.

“She never gave the impression of being mistreated or being unhappy with him. To me whenever I saw them they seemed like a normal couple. I’m Nick’s mum, I loved him. He was my firstborn. To me, he was a lovely boy. He was a lovely cheeky boy,” said Mrs Valentine.

“What she said about Nick was just a lie. I didn’t recognise what she was saying about him. He wouldn’t have been like that.”

Mrs Valentine’s husband Russell added: “When Nicholas was found the following March [2022] it was just so shocking. He’d been missing a while by then so we knew it was bad news when the police said they had something to tell us.

“We thought that perhaps he’d gone back to the house to pick up some possessions and they’d had an argument and something had happened in the heat of the moment. But when they said he’d been killed in November we just reeled. We had thought he was still alive up until that point.”

‘Callous and cruel’

Speaking about her son’s last moments, Mrs Valentine told Northamptonshire Police: “How could you hate somebody that much to do what she did? I can’t believe it. Apparently his last word was ‘why?’ when she stabbed him in the neck.”

Mrs Valentine told this newspaper that Beal has deviously presented herself as a victim, when in fact she was a callous manipulator.

“All the life Nick had ahead of him was taken away so cruelly and callously,” she told The Telegraph.

“I just don’t believe her excuses about mental health problems. They were just excuses.

She had gone back to work with young children with no suggestions of the mental health problems she later claimed she had,” said Mrs Valentine.

“When we got together for family events Fiona always seemed friendly and OK, she always came across as a nice person, but now I look back and I think that I didn’t really know her at all because of what happened. I obviously didn’t know her.”

Mr Valentine added: “If anyone was controlling it was her. At one stage she stopped him from going to the pub with his mates on their regular night.

“If she couldn’t stand it any longer she had plenty of opportunities to go her own way. The answer wasn’t to murder him.”

Mrs Valentine said she wished her son had never moved back in with Beal after leaving her for another woman, with whom he had a baby boy.

“He should never have gone back to her really. If only he’d stayed with [the other woman],” she said.