Mersea poison murder accused found guilty of killing couple

By Lewis Adams

BBC News, Essex

A man has been found guilty of murdering a married couple he worked for by drugging them with the opioid painkiller fentanyl.

Stephen Baxter, 61, and his wife Carol, 64, were found dead at their home in West Mersea, Essex, in April 2023.

Luke D’Wit, 34, had rewritten the couple’s will so he could seize control of their business after their deaths, Chelmsford Crown Court heard.

D’Wit, of Churchfields, West Mersea, will be sentenced later.

The trial heard that D’Wit had poisoned Mr and Mrs Baxter by lacing their medication with fentanyl to benefit financially from their deaths.

He first met the Baxters between 2012 and 2013 after he was asked to build a website for their shower mat company, Cazsplash.

Over the years he became more involved in family life and helped Mrs Baxter manage her thyroid condition, Hashimoto’s disease.

The couple’s daughter Ellie, 22, said her parents became “irritated” that D’Wit was so frequently at their home in Victory Road and they thought the computer-science graduate was “nerdy weird”.

Tracy Ayling KC, prosecuting, told jurors that D’Wit had 80 electronic devices and some of them had been used to create false personalities “to manipulate” Mrs Baxter.

She said D’Wit posed as a doctor on one of the devices and offered her advice “with no clinical basis”, while also pretending to be fellow Hashimoto’s sufferers.

“There was just this set of rules we had to follow,” Ellie Baxter told the trial.

“I think mum got a bit desperate and she got to a point where she would do anything to get better.”

The court heard how D’Wit had photos on his phone of Mr and Mrs Baxter dead in their armchairs in the conservatory of their home.

Ms Ayling said they were taken by D’Wit who had installed a “mobile security surveillance application” on his phone.

This allowed him to monitor a camera from another device where, at some point between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, he was “watching them die”, she said.

Ms Ayling said following his arrest, a bag containing both opened and unopened fentanyl patches was found at Mr D’Wit’s home, which he shared with his mother.

“There can only be one purpose for having these and that’s to fool someone into believing they were taking a proper dose when they were actually taking four times the amount,” she added.

Ellie Baxter arrived at the property on Easter Sunday and found her parents dead inside the conservatory.

Toxicology reports later showed fentanyl was a factor in both deaths.

In a statement following D’Wit’s conviction, she said: “My mum and dad are dead. But they didn’t just die. They were taken from me and my young children.

“My mum lost her freedom, her will, her ability to function two years prior to her murder due to her illness.

“An illness no-one could help with or understand because it was contrived by Luke D’Wit.

“Mum felt so alone and lost and there was nothing I could do other then give her my shoulder to cry on and cuddle her.”

During his defence, D’Wit claimed the fake personalities that were messaging Mrs Baxter were an idea Mr Baxter invented.

The defendant said: “The actual mechanics was me, but it was instructions from Stephen.”

D’Wit denied there was a “sinister” motive for the false identities, and said they were used by Mr Baxter to improve his wife’s health and their relationship.

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