Luke D'Wit speaking to police outside the Baxters' house.
Luke D'Wit speaking to police outside the Baxters' house.
An IT worker befriended a married couple and created 20 fake identities to manipulate and drug them before killing them with a fentanyl overdose.
Luke D’Wit, 34, was found guilty of the murders of Carol and Stephen Baxter at Chelmsford Crown Court today NZT.
On April 9 last year, the couple were discovered by their daughter slumped in armchairs in the conservatory of their detached home in the seaside town of West Mersea, Essex.
Over the course of a five-week trial, it emerged that D’Wit had spent months “torturing, drugging”, and manipulating the couple before giving them a fatal dose of the synthetic opioid fentanyl.
As they lay dying in their home, D’Wit monitored their passing via remote cameras installed in the property.
He had created an “elaborate” network of up to 20 fake identities, which he used to give Carol Baxter misleading advice about how to manage a thyroid condition she had called Hashimoto’s.
On one occasion, D’Wit pretended to be a woman called Jenny, and sent her a voice note saying: “Oh so nice to finally speak to you after all these messages we’ve been doing”.
Stephen Baxter, 61, and his 64-year-old wife Carol. Photo / Essex Police
Carol Baxter believed that “Jenny” was a friend of a woman named Cheryl, who claimed to have the same disease – except “Cheryl” was another of D’Wit’s inventions.
D’Wit created “Jenny” as a theatre producer who said she could help boost the singing career of the couple’s daughter.
When the recording of D’Wit posing as Jenny was played in court, some jurors deemed it so ridiculous they laughed.
Tracy Ayling, KC, prosecuting, said that while the impression was ridiculous, it hid a “sinister intent” to make Carol Baxter more sick.
‘We were all dolls in his dollhouse’
Speaking after the verdict was returned, the couple’s son, Harry Baxter, said: “We were all dolls in his dollhouse, victim to his manipulation”.
He said D’Wit got pleasure from playing “foul games” with his parents and appeared to enjoy his mother’s declining health. “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,” he added.
His sister, Ellie Baxter, said: “My mum lost her freedom, her will, her ability to function two years prior to her murder due to her illness. An illness no-one could help with or understand because it was contrived by Luke D’Wit.
“Mum felt so alone and lost, and there was nothing I could do other than give her my shoulder to cry on and cuddle her.”
Detective Superintendent Rob Kirby, of Essex Police, said the murders were “cold, calculated acts”.
“In all my years in policing, Luke D’Wit is one of the most dangerous men I have come across. I have absolutely no doubt that had he not been caught, he would have gone on to commit further murders,” he said.
The case bears similarities to the Maids Moreton village murder in 2015. Benjamin Field, a church warden, was convicted after he seduced and murdered Peter Farquhar, 69, in order to inherit his wealth.
Field also admitted defrauding Ann Moore-Martin, 83, with whom he had started a sexual relationship, and was jailed for life in 2019.
Fentanyl clue
The Baxters were self-made millionaires who had been looking forward to taking early retirement and were planning on downsizing to a bungalow. Carol Baxter, 64, wanted to take up art classes and Stephen Baxter, 61, was enjoying the prospect of being able to play more golf.
“They were going to retire early and live,” their daughter said.
After the Baxters’ bodies were discovered, their deaths were treated as unexpected, but not suspicious, with investigators considering a possible carbon monoxide leak alongside other innocent explanations.
Just over two months later, following a post mortem investigation, it emerged that the couple had been poisoned with fentanyl.
Ellie Baxter was initially arrested on suspicion of their murder as detectives pursued a number of lines of inquiry.
She was discounted as a suspect after a new will, written the day after the couple died, and empty packets of fentanyl were discovered in the Baxters’ home.
The fake will named a close friend of the couple as the “director and person of significant control” of their company. That individual, who was described as being like an “adopted son” to the couple, was D’Wit.
Ring doorbell-camera footage played to the jury showed D’Wit leaving the couple’s home (below) at 7.55pm on April 7 last year - making him the last person to see them alive.
The couple ran a company called Cazsplash, with Carol Baxter having designed a type of bath mat to go around a curved corner shower.
Baxter was also global lead, operational risk and assurance, for the multi-billion pound transnational real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle, which was founded in the UK but has its headquarters in Chicago.
The couple, who married in 2000, had two children together. Carol Baxter, a former adult educator, had two more children from two previous marriages. They were social members at West Mersea Yacht Club which flew its flag at half mast after their deaths.
Luke D'Wit speaking to police outside the Baxters' house
The fake doctor and the ‘potions’
D’Wit first met the Baxters in 2014, after the couple advertised for help with IT for the business. He got the job by fraudulently claiming he had an MSc in computer science from the University of East Anglia.
After working for them as a consultant, he befriended them, and in court he claimed he had been Carol Baxter’s “closest friend”.
He portrayed himself as a slightly weird, geeky, but ultimately harmless friend. He lived at home, shared a bedroom with his mother, Janatha, showed little interest in careers or relationships, played video games and occasionally attended Comic Con, a comic book fan convention.
Numerous friends gave evidence saying he “had a good sense of right and wrong” and often helped out at a local soup kitchen.
In the months before he murdered the Baxters, D’Wit created numerous false identities, including a doctor, which he used to manipulate the couple and separate them from their relatives.
D’Wit put Carol Baxter in touch with a “Dr Andrea Bowden”, who he claimed was a specialist from the United States who could help advise her on how to manage her thyroid condition.
He also created fake aliases for the imaginary patients, including “Cheryl” whom Carol Baxter talked to about her health fears.
Another identity, “Linda”, encouraged Carol Baxter to take the remedies offered by “Dr Bowden”. One message from Linda read: “Do what Andrea says or you will have other problems”.
Dr Naveed Younis, an endocrinologist who gave evidence in court, described the treatments and remedies as “utter rubbish”.
The couple described D’Wit as their “mixologist” and Carol Baxter told Dr Bowden he always made “all of her potions”.
Stephen Baxter also exchanged messages with Dr Bowden, and would complain about D’Wit and the fact he never left them alone.
In one message, he said: “When he’s in the house he doesn’t recognise that it’s time appropriate for him to leave. On some days, Carol thought Luke was following her. She got a bit fed up with him.”
D’Wit, posing as the fake doctor, replied: “I’m aware of his faults, but he does seem like a lovely lad”.
Solicitor Christopher Andrews said that the Baxters created and wrote their will which was approved and signed in September 2021, and he was never contacted about updating it before their deaths.
The couple’s original will had stated that the Baxters’ money would be left to their four children.
Discussing the fake will, which had been created on D’Wit’s phone, Andrews said it didn’t “read as a legal document”. He added: “It appears whoever drafted this document has no idea how a business is run”.
D’Wit was arrested on July 6 after the will was discovered and it became clear that he had been the last person to see the couple before they died.
When their bodies were found, D’Wit was called over to the house by Ellie Baxter, and on police bodycam footage he is heard saying: “Unfortunately with Carol, you don’t know what she’s taken … sometimes she forgets and she can take it six or seven times. She doesn’t know.”
As police arrested him, he was found to have both unopened and opened packs of fentanyl patches in his rucksack. He was also found to have a number of metal tacks alongside pill casings.
During the trial it emerged that Carol Baxter had been admitted to hospital after complaining of severe pain and where X-rays showed a number of identical tacks in her stomach.
Detectives “strongly believe” she had been secretly fed the tacks by D’Wit. In court, when questioned, he maintained he was innocent but admitted creating the fake identities.
He said he had only done so however, to help the couple. Kirby said that D’Wit had purported to be an “upstanding, helpful and kind member of the community”.
He said: “The reality is far more sinister. He is a cold, calculated murderer”.
“D’Wit went to great lengths to cover up his tracks. He deceived everyone who knew him, who welcomed him into their family homes and who relied upon him for help, or at least what they believed was help.
“Thankfully, the jury saw through his fantasies and gave guilty verdicts.”
In her final remarks to the jurors before they went out to consider their deliberations, Ayling said D’Wit had “coolly and calmly” executed the murders.
She added: “He has called witness after witness saying how good, quiet and kind he is. You may be tempted to be beguiled like others. There are legions of people that have fallen for his manipulation and lies.”
As the verdicts were returned, Ellie Baxter wept in the public gallery. D’Wit, who used a wheelchair throughout the trial, did not react. He will be sentenced at Chelmsford Crown Court on Saturday NZT.
