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Helen Bailey and Boris
Helen Bailey with her dog, Boris. Photograph: Mary Turner/Rex/Shutterstock
Helen Bailey with her dog, Boris. Photograph: Mary Turner/Rex/Shutterstock

Helen Bailey's mother 'uneasy' about murder suspect, trial hears

This article is more than 7 years old

Eileen Bailey tells court she worried about deterioration of her daughter’s memory and state of mind before the children’s author disappeared

The mother of children’s author Helen Bailey had become “uneasy” about the man accused of killing her and said her daughter felt “panicked” in the weeks before she disappeared.

The writer’s mother, Eileen Bailey, broke down in tears as she gave evidence on Monday in the trial of the man accused of drugging and killing the popular author.

Ian Stewart, 56, is accused of murdering the writer after gradually doping her with sedatives in a financially motivated plot last year.

Bailey was reported missing on 15 April 2016, along with her pet dog, Boris. Their bodies were found in a cesspit under the garage at the home she shared with Stewart three months after he had reported her missing.

The writer’s mother, Eileen Bailey, told the trial at St Albans crown court that her daughter “panicked” about her deteriorating state of mind and repeated forgetful incidents. She had become “highly anxious” and felt “spaced out” all the time, jurors were told.

Asked about her views on the couple’s relationship, her mother said: “Well, I felt uneasy about it, latterly I was quite unhappy – mainly because of Helen’s state of mind.”

Stewart denies charges of murder, preventing a lawful burial, fraud and three counts of perverting the course of justice.

In the weeks before Bailey vanished, she confided in her mother about inadvertently leaving her dog on the beach, taking an item scanner from a supermarket and not being able to recognise her hands on a computer keyboard.

Speaking to the court via videolink, with a framed picture of the author visible behind her shoulder, Bailey said: “That really worried me. … She just had such a good memory beforehand.”

A week before her alleged murder, the 51-year-old phoned her mother, deeply worried after falling asleep for five hours – despite having had a full night’s rest.

Bailey told the court: “I picked the phone up and she said: ‘Hi Mum, it’s me,’ and I said: ‘Hello you.’ And then, in this panicked voice, she said: ‘I just slept five hours.’ That took me by surprise and I said: ‘You must have needed it,’ and she said: ‘What, after a night’s sleep?’”

She added: “I feel I was dismissive.”

The author’s mother told the court she thought Stewart had cooked her daughter breakfast that morning but, on cross-examination, she said she could not be sure.

The court has previously heard that traces of an anti-insomnia drug prescribed to Stewart were discovered in Bailey’s system during a postmortem examination. Episodes of dizziness and tiredness were also reported to Mrs Bailey by her daughter about a month before she went missing in April 2016.

She told the court: “Particularly when she was shopping and wanting to reach up for something from the shelf – she would fall to the floor. I suggested she went to the doctor’s.”

Bailey was said to have forgotten her beloved dachshund several weeks later. Her mother said: “She said that she had come away from the beach and gone home and Ian had said he would go and get the dog, but she was almost traumatised by that, repeating: ‘You know, Mum, I would never have done that.’”

In the wake of his fiancee’s disappearance, Stewart behaved in an erratic manner, jurors were told.

DC Hollie Daines said the defendant had told police he “must be” a suspect. She told the trial: “I found his behaviour generally quite unexpected at times: he had already snapped at me a couple of times when I was asking him to do an interview. I found him rude, temperamental, uncooperative and dismissive of us.”

The trial continues.

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