IT worker Luke D’Wit found guilty of murdering Essex couple with Fentanyl

Published

1 year ago

March 20, 2024

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An IT worker has been found guilty of murdering a couple with strong opioid Fentanyl.

Luke D’Wit was accused of killing Stephen Baxter, 61, and his 64-year-old wife Carol and rewriting their will to take charge of their shower mat and bathroom company.

The 34-year-old from Mersea worked for the couple and is said to have described himself as “almost like a son” to them.

The Baxters were discovered at their home by their daughter on Mersea Island in Essex on Easter Sunday last year.

Harry Baxter, their son, said D’Wit played “foul games torturing and drugging” his mother in the lead-up to his parents’ deaths.

Mr Baxter said in a statement released through Essex Police that he had already lost his mother “a long time ago” before his parents were found dead.

“I refer to the day Luke began his foul games torturing and drugging her,” he said.

“Unbeknownst to me, I had already lost my mother a long time ago.

“I feel great sadness looking back on the videos of her when she was acting strangely and seeing him in the background giggling and smiling knowing he’s the one inflicting this pain as we were all dolls in his dollhouse, victim to his manipulation.

“Our life will forever be punctured by the gravity of his actions.”

The Baxters’ daughter previously told Chelmsford Crown Court they “got on” with D’Wit, but all thought he was “weird”.

Ellie Baxter said he was brought in to help build a website but ended up visiting the house “every day”, eventually helping her mother take her medication.

She told the jury that D’Wit knew the pin code to the gate of their home and the location of a key safe.

The trial heard that two days before the bodies were found, doorbell camera footage captured him walking towards the Baxters’ house and looking at a phone.

“Was he watching them die?” prosecutor Tracy Ayling asked the court.

She added: “Was this when Mr D’Wit made everything pristine, cleaning up the cups and not leaving any trace?”

Fentanyl – an extremely strong opioid about 100 times stronger than morphine – was found in the bodies of Mr and Mrs Baxter.

The trial had lasted more than a month and D’Wit, who had denied murder, was convicted by unanimous verdict of the jury on a third day of deliberations on Wednesday.

The defendant, who used a wheelchair throughout the trial, did not appear to react in the secure dock of the court.

The judge, Mr Justice Nicholas Lavender, said he would sentence D’Wit on Friday.

‘He would have committed further murders’

Detective Superintendent Rob Kirby, of the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate, said in an interview outside court that D’Wit was “without doubt one of the most dangerous men I’ve ever experienced in my policing career”.

He said: “I have absolutely no doubt that had he not been caught, he would have gone on to commit further murders.”

Mr Kirby said that “justice has been served today”, adding that D’Wit “rightly belongs behind bars”.

The defendant “fooled everyone”, he added.

“He befriended people, came across as a very amenable, helpful person but in the background he was a cool, calculated killer who spent years planning the demise of Carol and Stephen Baxter.”

He described D’Wit as a “loner” who “spent hours of his time creating false personas, all there to create control over the Baxters”.

“The level of deviousness he went to was phenomenal,” Mr Kirby said.

Asked about a possible motive, Mr Kirby said it was “unclear what was going on in D’Wit’s mind”.

“Certainly, he stood to benefit financially from the death of the Baxters and we believe that certainly this played part of the role in his motive,” he said.

UK

Diogo Jota: Liverpool players join mourners as Premier League star and his brother Andre Silva buried in Portugal

Published

16 mins ago

July 5, 2025

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Diogo Jota: Liverpool players join mourners as Premier League star and his brother Andre Silva buried in Portugal

Liverpool players past and present have joined the family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva for their funeral in Portugal.

A service was held in the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in their hometown of Gondomar near Porto in northern Portugal on Saturday morning.

Mourners lined the streets and some in the crowd clapped as the brothers’ coffins were carried into the church.

The funeral – in pictures

Jota, 28, leaves behind his wife of only 11 days, Rute Cardoso, and three young children.

His younger brother, 25, was an attacking midfielder for Penafiel in the second tier of Portuguese football.

Liverpool manager Arne Slot, captain Virgil Van Dijk and teammates including Andy Robertson, Conor Bradley, Ryan Gravenberch, Cody Gakpo, Curtis Jones, Darwin Nunez and Joe Gomez were seen at the service.

Former teammates Jordan Henderson, James Milner and Fabinho were also there.

Van Dijk carried a red wreath with Jota’s number 20, while Robertson had a wreath featuring number 30, Silva’s number at Penafiel.

Some of Jota’s teammates in the Portuguese national side also attended, including Bruno Fernandes, of Manchester United, Ruben Dias and Bernardo Silva, of Manchester City, Joao Felix and Renato Veiga, of Chelsea, Nelson Semedo, from Wolves, Joao Moutinho and Rui Patricio.

Ruben Neves was one of the pallbearers after flying in from Florida where he played for Al Hilal in the Club World Cup quarter-final on Friday night.

‘More than a friend’

In a post published on Instagram before the service, he told Jota he had been “more than a friend, we’re family, and we won’t stop being that way just because you’ve decided to sign a contract a little further away from us!”

Jota’s fellow Liverpool midfielder, Alexis Mac Allister, said on Instagram: “I can’t believe it. I’ll always remember your smiles, your anger, your intelligence, your camaraderie, and everything that made you a person. It hurts so much; we’ll miss you. Rest in peace, dear Diogo.”

Porto FC president Andre Villas-Boas and Portugal national team manager Roberto Martinez were also in attendance.

‘With us forever’

Speaking after the ceremony, Martinez said the period since their deaths had been “really, really sad days, as you can imagine, but today we showed we are a large, close family.

“Their spirit will be with us forever.”

The service was private, but the words spoken by the Bishop of Porto, Manuel Linda, were broadcast to those standing outside the church.

He told Jota’s children, who were not at the service, that he was praying for them specifically, as well as their mother and grandparents.

“There are no words, but there are feelings,” he said, adding: “We also suffer a lot and we are with you emotionally.”

The brothers died after a Lamborghini they were travelling in burst into flames following a suspected tyre blowout in the early hours of Thursday morning.

No other vehicles are said to have been involved in the incident.

Liverpool have delayed the return of their players for pre-season following Jota’s death and players past and present paid tribute to him and his brother on social media.

Flowers have been left outside Anfield, where flags have been lowered to half-mast and all club shops, museums and tours have been closed until Monday.

UK

Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Published

3 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Rachel Reeves has hinted that taxes are likely to be raised this autumn after a major U-turn on the government’s controversial welfare bill.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill passed through the House of Commons on Tuesday after multiple concessions and threats of a major rebellion.

MPs ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to universal credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.

Initially aimed at saving £5.5bn, it now leaves the government with an estimated £5.5bn black hole – close to breaching Ms Reeves’s fiscal rules set out last year.

In an interview with The Guardian, the chancellor did not rule out tax rises later in the year, saying there were “costs” to watering down the welfare bill.

“I’m not going to [rule out tax rises], because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that,” Ms Reeves told the outlet.

“We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement.

“So we’ll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.”

Meanwhile, The Times reported that, ahead of the Commons vote on the welfare bill, Ms Reeves told cabinet ministers the decision to offer concessions would mean taxes would have to be raised.

The outlet reported that the chancellor said the tax rises would be smaller than those announced in the 2024 budget, but that she is expected to have to raise tens of billions more.

It comes after Ms Reeves said she was “totally” up to continuing as chancellor after appearing tearful at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Criticising Sir Keir for the U-turns on benefit reform during PMQs, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the chancellor looked “absolutely miserable”, and questioned whether she would remain in post until the next election.

Sir Keir did not explicitly say that she would, and Ms Badenoch interjected to say: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”

In her first comments after the incident, Ms Reeves said she was having a “tough day” before adding: “People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday.

“Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”

Sir Keir also told Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby on Thursday that he “didn’t appreciate” that Ms Reeves was crying in the Commons.

“In PMQs, it is bang, bang, bang,” he said. “That’s what it was yesterday.

“And therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber, and that’s just a straightforward human explanation, common sense explanation.”

UK

Diogo Jota and Andre Silva’s funeral in pictures

Published

5 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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Diogo Jota and Andre Silva's funeral in pictures

The family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva have been joined by Liverpool stars past and present and other Portuguese players at the pair’s funeral near Porto.

The Liverpool forward, 28, and his brother died in a car crash in Spain on Thursday.

Pictures below show the funeral at the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in the town of Gondomar near Porto. Click here for our liveblog coverage of the day’s events.