Helen Bailey was a British author born
in Newcastle-upon-Tyne who wrote the books in the Crazy World of Electra Brown
with her target audience is aimed at
teenagers. In her home, there was a note
found stating she will be staying at the couples family home in Broadstairs but
the police later established that this was not the case. Her husband, Ian Stewart
was arrested on the 11th July 2016 on the suspicion of murder and
disposal of the body by he never spoke in the interview and was then released
on bail. He was then arrested again on the 16th July 2016 and
charged for preventing the course of justice and preventing a lawful burial after
remains of a human were found in a
cesspit on the 15th July in the authors home and were kept in custody until he appeared at St.
Albans crown court on 19th July. In 22nd January 2017,
the jury found Ian Stewart guilty of Helen Bailey’s murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment with a
minimum term of 34 years in prison.

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The officers started their
investigation by asking individuals who were close to the victim information
about her and where she was last seen. The investigators were told by her mother
and brother, Eileen and John Bailey that her disappearance is out of character.
They also received information on several sightings Bailey was seen by other
individuals such as neighbours and friends. on the 15th July 2016,
four days after the first arrest, police investigators searched the home of
Helen Bailey in Royston and reported remains of a human and a dog found in a
cesspit in the couples home. Ian Stewart was then arrested for the prevention
of the course of justice as hiding the body will result in delaying the body
recover and forensic investigations which will occur to find any evidence of
the individual who killed Helen Bailey (Beauregard and Martineau 2014) and
preventing a lawful burial for Helen Bailey.
One key challenge the agencies may
have to face whilst the investigation is ongoing is determining the type of
response of the missing persons call out. When a missing person is reported the
police is to decide on which risk
identification does the report fall under, either low, medium, high or no risk
at all. If the risk is low, police are sent to the home of the individual who
filed the report for a routine check to make sure the person reported missing
has not been harmed, if the risk is medium “the earliest available resource”
will be sent out to respond to the call and other agencies may be used to find
the missing person and if the risk is high then there is an immediate response
sent out to deal with the report. If there is no risk at all, the police aim to
locate the individual and agree on a time to reassess the risk [College of
Policing, 2016]. In the Helen Bailey
case, the missing person response was identified as a medium risk at the start
and the first available police went to support the person reporting as Ian
Stewart reported she was “missing since Monday and not contacted anyone…she
left a note, she said.. she said in the note something like I need space and
time alone, I’m going to Broadstairs, please don’t contact me in any way” [The Guardian, 2017] because she has been missing
since Monday and no one has been in contact with her since then and her husband
is worried about her after their alleged
argument made the risk identification level was medium. This risk
identification level may have had an impact on the investigations on the house
as the investigation team did not search the house thoroughly, it was only three
months after when they searched the house again three months after and found
the remains of Bailey and her dog in the cesspit of the home.
Another challenge which the agencies
may have to face whilst investigating was the gathering of the information and evidence
to find the suspect and convict them. This would have been a challenge as Ian
Stewart was hiding key evidence in this investigation which was: the remains of Helen Bailey and her dog,
not giving the investigators Bailey’s mobile phone and refusing to give his own
phone to her “in case she contacts him” and clearing the history of her web
searches on her laptop. Stewarts failure to cooperate with agencies involved in
the investigation fall under preventing the course of justice because the
investigators have minimal evidence to use when convicting the suspect. Helen
Bailey’s phone connected to the Wi-Fi home router in their holiday home in
Broadstairs around the same time Stewart visited the house which made the
police aware that Bailey’s phone was with
Stewart and after taking Bailey’s laptop
as evidence, the investigators found that the web search history tampered as they were deleted but was managed
to be restored. The searches consisted of Helen asking questions on google as
to why she was always feeling tired. Stewart also gave false information in the
court claiming that two men named Joe and Nick had kidnapped Bailey, asked for
a ransom of £500,000 and left Bailey and her dog in the cesspit of the couples
home.
A national charity named Women’s aid
published a ‘femicide census, profiles of women killed by men’ in December 2016
which collected information on women aged 14 or over who have suffered fatal
violence from a male individual ending in a result of the death of the female. The census collected
incidents which occurred at the beginning of 2009 and the end of 2015. This
census found that 936 women in England and Wales were murdered by men. 64% of
those women were murdered by males who were known to be the females current or
former partner, 152 women were killed by their former partners within the first
year after their separation and most cases, the murder weapon was a sharp
object. This census was carried out to analyse how many women are killed by men
within England and Wales and highlight the threat women may have in their
everyday lives, for example, domestic abuse and intimidation by men (could be a
partner of a family relative). With Helen Bailey adding to the total of women
being abused and murdered by men there were
no laws which were changed because of the death of Helen Bailey. There are
policies already implemented by the government such as ‘the code of practice
for victims of crime’ which was enforced 10th December 2013 which
helps the victims of abuse to get the support they need at the right time
however, this policy only helps once the abuse is taken place and wouldn’t help
the reduce the number of men killing
females in the UK. A law should be enforced in every country to help reduce the
killing of women but only a few countries have these laws for example Tunisia.
Tunisia had one of the highest rates of domestic abuse in the world but has
recently had a law put in place to protect
females from any abuse from a male individual making it easier to prosecute an
individual who abuses women.
Another policy improvement which could
have occurred after this case was close is
the proximity of the owner of the home
whilst having their house searched. When the house
was first being searched, Stewart first refused to allow the investigators of
the case to search their home. He then allowed them to enter the home of the
couple and then said “If searches are going to take place, you wouldn’t find
anything in the garage. If anything, the devices will be in the house” [The Guardian, 2017]. In this search, the investigators did not thoroughly
search the garage as they did not find the remains of Bailey until the second
search of the home. Because Stewart was behaving aggressively when first asked
to allow the investigators to enter and search the home, the reason why the
garage was not thoroughly search may have been because they thought they would
be stepping over any boundaries as Stewart made it known he doesn’t want them
to search the garage is it would a ‘waste of time’. A law which could then be
implemented could be the owner of the home is only allowed to speak to the head
of the search team only. This law could then reduce the chances of the
investigators being misled by homeowners
and they can entirely concentrate on the task at hand which is finding any
evidence which could be at that home.
References