Horrific murder in Britain: Teacher admitted to killing her partner – she had buried him in the garden

A primary school teacher has admitted murdering her partner, whom she had buried in the garden.

The partially mummified remains of the unfortunate man were discovered four and a half months after he was last seen before he disappeared.

Fiona Beal, 50, has been accused of stabbing her 42-year-old boyfriend Nicholas Billingham to death “in cold blood” before burying his body in their garden, SkyNews reports.

At the start of her trial last week, jurors at the Old Bailey in central London heard that Beal had pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of manslaughter by loss of control – but denied murdering Billingham between October 30 and November 10, 2021.

However, today – she pleaded guilty to the charge of murder.

How the police discovered the body – The fatal diary of the teacher

Beal, from Northampton, was arrested in March 2022 after police discovered the body of her 42-year-old partner.

That same month she had rented a house for herself in Spain and sent messages to relatives who raised concerns for her welfare and called the police to see if anything was wrong. In the house, the police found diary entries in which she revealed her actions.

Jurors heard an entry which read: “My actions still haunt me. Sometimes I have to catch myself and remember what I was doing and then remember my cover story.”

Another entry detailed her planning for the attack, with Beal writing: “It was harder than I thought it would be. Hiding a dead body was bad. Moving a dead body is a lot more difficult than it looks on TV.”

The diaries prompted a police investigation, which soon found that Willingham had not appeared or spoken on the phone since the afternoon of November 1, 2021, the court heard.

“Split personality”

Opening her trial, the prosecutor told jurors: “There is no doubt that she killed Nick Billingham, hid his body where it was found and acted alone throughout. There is no doubt that she intended to kill him.”

She had also sent messages from her partner’s phone pretending to be him, the court heard, in a move the prosecutor said was “both heartless and self-serving”.

The prosecutor said of the diary entries: ‘They certainly contain some unmistakably clear statements about what he had done. These pieces were not just her truth, but the truth.’

“The short answer is that he had planned to kill him in cold blood and had done so. He had bought a knife in the previous days. He had a scythe and wire ropes.’

“Promising sex after a bath, she stabbed him in the neck while wearing a sleep mask and possibly wired to their bed.”

The prosecutor continued: “In short, in all these documents Fiona Beal introduces themes that he controlled and manipulated her in their relationship, that he had done unpleasant things … and that explains why she killed him the way she did.”

“She features insight into her own split personality and an alter ego—her ‘second self’—she calls Tulip 22, who is capable of completely different and darker behavior than her public persona of the devoted teacher.”

The prosecution even said the allegation that Billingham had run off with another woman was “completely false”. But jurors heard the victim appears to have cheated on Beal in the past.