‘He watched them dying on his phone’: Alleged fentanyl killer used app to watch couple die, court told

For free actual time breaking information alerts despatched straight to your inbox join to our breaking information emails

Sign up to our free breaking information emails

A person used an app on his telephone to watch a married couple dying after he allegedly poisoned them with opioid painkiller fentanyl, a court has heard.

Luke D’Wit, 34, rewrote a will for Stephen and Carol Baxter making himself the beneficiary a day after they had been found slumped in armchairs of their conservatory, Chelmsford Crown Court heard.

He denies murdering the couple, who owned a successful bathtub mat firm, at their residence in Mersea Island, Essex, final Easter. 

Tracy Ayling KC, prosecuting, stated D’Wit had labored for the couple and befriended them, later claiming he was “like an adopted son to both of them” in a police assertion.

Jurors had been told on Thursday that D’Wit had put in a “mobile security surveillance application” on his telephone which allowed him to monitor a digital camera from one other gadget.

Ms Ayling stated that police evaluation of his telephone revealed photos of Mr and Mrs Baxter “in their armchairs” on the afternoon of April 7 final yr, with one timed at 5.14pm. Two days later, their our bodies had been present in the identical chairs by their daughter Ellie.

“The prosecution case is that he was looking at these images of the Baxters in their conservatory sitting in their armchairs,” the prosecutor stated.

“The same chairs they were discovered in by (their daughter) Ellie (Baxter) two days later.”

She stated that the couple “did not move at all” after the pictures had been taken, whereas doorbell digital camera footage captured D’Wit strolling in direction of the Baxters’ deal with “looking at a phone” that day.

The trial was earlier told that Mrs Baxter had a thyroid situation and a pacemaker.

“If she had moved after those… images were taken, the pacemaker would have recorded it,” Ms Ayling stated.

Addressing the jury, she added: “Why was Mr D’Wit watching Mr and Mrs Baxter in the conservatory? Was he watching them die? Both were already incapacitated.

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

She stated D’Wit didn’t go away the Baxters’ residence till 7.55pm on April 7, when he was once more captured by a doorbell digital camera.

“He was the last person to see them alive,” added Ms Ayling. “He watched them dying on his phone.”

Their our bodies had been finally discovered on 9 April, which was Easter Sunday, when their daughter Ellie arrived and noticed them useless contained in the conservatory.

In a panicked 999 name performed to the court, she wept and told a name handler: “I need an ambulance right now.”

She stated “I need to get inside” and is heard banging on the glass of the conservatory, swearing and saying that she thought they had been useless.

D’Wit, who lived close by, is later heard taking up the decision, telling the handler: “I’m a friend.”

The court beforehand heard that Mr Baxter, 61, and his 64-year-old spouse ran an organization known as Cazsplash, after Mrs Baxter designed a kind of bathmat to go round a nook bathe.

D’Wit was the “beneficiary of a very odd will”, allegedly created on D’Wit’s telephone the next day.

The phrases included that “our dear friend Luke D’Wit is to be the director and person with significant control” for Cazsplash, including that “all business making decisions are down to him,” jurors had been told.

“He had rewritten their will and stolen Carol’s jewellery, among many other things, to benefit from their deaths,” Ms Ayling told the court.

The prosecution additionally allege D’Wit created a number of false identities, together with a solicitor who tried to persuade relations that the need he had written was actual.

Before the couple died, he additionally posed as a physician from Florida to give Mrs Baxter recommendation on how to cope together with her thyroid situation Hashimoto’s.

The prosecutor stated D’Wit made suggestions to Mrs Baxter with “no clinical basis”, including that the identities had been “created by Luke on his phone to manipulate Carol Baxter”.

The trial, estimated to final six weeks, continues.