Episode Details

Three months after Helen Bailey vanished, a search team lowered themselves into a hidden cesspit beneath her luxury home. What they found there ended a twelve-week missing-person search — and led to Ian Stewart being exposed  as a calculating, money-driven killer who had drugged his fiancée with his own sleeping tablets, dumped her body, and then spun a defence about phantom blackmailers. In the conclusion of this story, forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes follows Stewart’s trial, conviction and sentence – then rewinds to 2010 as police begin investigating the mystery of his first wife’s death.  Listen now to The Profiler with Kerry Daynes

Key psychological themes

This episode explores: psychopathy and the absence of empathy • the financial motive and the 'serial widower' pattern • the construction and collapse of an alibi • coercive control culminating in homicide • the role of forensic preservation in cold-case justice 

Contributors featured in this episode

•     Kerry Daynes — Forensic psychologist, presenter, and author

•     Colin Sutton — Former Senior Investigating Officer, Metropolitan Police

•     Jack Hardy — Press Association journalist who covered both the Helen Bailey and Diane Stewart trials

•     Kate Bradbrook — Journalist who covered the 2022 trial for the murder of Diane Stewart.

•     Mavis Drake — Helen Bailey's neighbour in Royston, whose intervention proved crucial.

What you'll learn in this episode

•     What was found in the converted well beneath the garage at the Royston house — and how a 48-hour excavation finally ended the search for Helen.

•     How Hertfordshire Police pieced together Stewart's 'phantom blackmailers' defence and demonstrated that it could not be true

•     The forensic significance of Zopiclone in Helen's hair — and how it linked her, chemically, to her killer's own prescription

•     Why police were drawn back to the death of Stewart's first wife, Diane — and what one hospital had quietly preserved that made a second prosecution possible

•     The 999 call from June 2010 that’s been described as 'a complete sham from start to finish'

•     Kerry's psychological assessment of why the label 'psychopath' — so often over-used in true-crime — applies to Ian Stewart with unusual precision

Relevant links and further reading

•     Kerry Daynes — Dark Side of the Mind (Endeavour, 2019)

•     Kerry Daynes — What Lies Buried (Endeavour, 2021)

•     Faking It: Tears of a Crime (Warner Bros. Discovery) — some interviews in this episode were originally featured in the series. Watch on discoveryplus.com.

•     https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/feb/16/ian-stewart-guilty-of-murdering-first-wife-diane-stewart — The Guardian: 'Ian Stewart found guilty of murdering first wife Diane Stewart'

•     https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-60413716 — BBC News: full coverage of the Diane Stewart trial and verdict

•     https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/what-happened-helen-baileys-beloved-12646909 — Cambridge News: aftermath of the Helen Bailey case

•     Support for those bereaved by homicide — Victim Support • AAFDA (Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse)

Subscribe & follow

If you're gripped by The Profiler, with Kerry Daynes, follow the show in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. A rating or review takes thirty seconds and genuinely helps new listeners find us.

Visit theprofiler.co.uk

For Kerry’s in-depth notes accompanying each episode in