The daughter of a couple murdered by an IT worker who poisoned with fentanyl has revealed the horrifying moment she found them ‘stone cold’ dead at their home.
Luke D’Wit, 34, of West Mersea, Essex, befriended and worked for Stephen and Carol Baxter before changing their will to make him a director of their shower mat firm.
D’Wit – who was jailed for life at court today with a minimum term of 37 years – then created a series of fake online personas to manipulate them before he killed them.
He had pretended to be a doctor from Florida and members of a fake support group for the thyroid condition Hashimoto’s, which Mrs Baxter suffered from.
Mrs Baxter, 64, and her husband, 61, were found dead at their West Mersea home by their daughter Ellie on Easter Sunday 2023. D’Wit arrived soon after and described himself as a ‘friend’ to a 999 call handler, before calmly giving a false account.
Today, in an emotional victim impact statement, Ellie described how she ‘found both my mum and dad stiff, stone cold, blue and leaking from their mouths’.
Luke D’Wit, 34, of West Mersea, created a gallery of online personas to manipulate the couple
D’Wit befriended and worked for Stephen Baxter, 61, and his 64-year-old wife Carol (pictured)
Ellie Baxter, the daughter of Stephen and Carol Baxter, leaves Chelmsford Crown Court today
Ellie (left) and Harry Baxter (right), children of the Baxters, at Chelmsford Crown Court today
D’Wit’s murder of Stephen and Carol Baxter (pictured) followed ‘quite an extraordinary long-term case of manipulation’, the court was told
She said: ‘I have never known an emotional pain to physically hurt so much. It was like my insides were on fire. I screamed and screamed but nothing I done was helping.
‘I pleaded for them to wake up. I begged them. But of course they could not wake. The next time I saw mum and dad they were in body bags.’
Ellie added that she stroked her mother’s hair and cried, as well as kissing both of their heads.
She also said: ‘I just wish I had known. I wish I had done more and that is something I will forever have to live with.
‘I took peace in knowing that mum’s pain was over until I learnt the reality of the situation – of how my parents and I were manipulated and how someone we had loved, trusted and looked after for many years could do something so nefarious.
‘The stress of this day caused me to have a bleed. I genuinely thought I had lost my daughter as well as my mum and dad.’
Ellie also described how she had struggled to adjust to life without her parents, something she still found ‘very hard’.
She continued: ‘We would see them all the time then suddenly there were just empty days I could not fill. Nothing could fill them. I should have still been with my mum and dad.
A grab of Ring doorbell footage from April 7, 2023 showing D’Wit leaving the home in Mersea
Bodycam footage from April 9, 2023 of Luke D’Wit providing statements to police in Mersea
A grab from an undated video issued by Essex Police from booking in footage of Luke D’Wit
Stephen Baxter, 61, and his 64-year-old wife Carol, who were poisoned with fentanyl in Essex
Harry Baxter, the son of Stephen and Carol Baxter, leaves Chelmsford Crown Court today
A will shown to the jury during the trial of D’Wit which the prosecution said was created by him
‘Many times I have silly questions and look for guidance and I have no one to turn to now. I have no family left around me that I can trust.
‘Mum and dad being murdered has destroyed everything they had spent years nourishing and cherishing.
‘Everything they had built smashed into pieces and now I am alone, still trying to find them pieces to start piecing them together again for the sake of my children.
‘I still text their phones. I still wish them happy birthday and merry Christmas. I messaged to tell them about my beautiful little girl and it still hurts when I don’t get a reply.’
Ellie also said D’Wit had ‘completely brainwashed’ her mother by posing as a fake doctor, adding that Mrs Baxter ‘felt so alone’ as she lost her function in the two years before her death.
‘I tried to push her to go to the doctor’s, which she did but she was completely brainwashed by Dr Andrea Bowden,’ Ellie said.
She continued: ‘Luke D’Wit, who was behind the persona Dr Andrea Bowden, thought sending videos of my mum for Andrea to see would be a good idea.
‘But in reality Luke just wanted to see and watch the outcome of his twisted, abominable actions. Sometimes even filming my mum himself and laughing.’
Ellie also said the killer ‘lied his way into our lives’.
She described D’Wit as a ‘man so manipulative he hacked his way into our lives over a decade ago, schemed and thoroughly planned my parents’ demise’.
She said her parents had ‘looked after Luke’, adding: ‘They just decided he was lonely, especially after Luke’s dad died.
‘They took him under their wing and would let him join in.’
D’Wit denied their murders but was found guilty by unanimous verdicts at Chelmsford Crown Court on Wednesday, following a trial that lasted more than a month and on a third day of jury deliberations.
He was sentenced at the same court today by judge Mr Justice Nicholas Lavender, who said D’Wit ‘ended their lives and brought grief and misery to the lives of others’.
Mr Justice Lavender did not accept the prosecution’s assertion that D’Wit’s behaviour was sadistic, because his victims were sedated when they died.
But he added: ‘I consider it was possible that what motivated you was the desire to exert control on others… deciding whether someone lives or dies is the ultimate form of control.’
The judge also told D’Wit: ‘It’s distinctly possible what motivated you was a desire to control others.’
The defendant, who wore a patterned blue short-sleeved shirt, appeared to show no reaction as he sat in a wheelchair in the secure dock.
The judge said he was sure that D’Wit ‘extracted the fentanyl from patches which had been originally prescribed for your father, who died in 2021’.
He said these were crushed into a powder and given to the Baxters in a drink, which they took as they trusted D’Wit to prepare ‘supposed health drinks’.
Also today, prosecutor Tracy Ayling KC said D’Wit’s murder of the Baxters followed ‘quite an extraordinary long-term case of manipulation’.
She told the court that D’Wit created seven fake personas, ‘each with extra people, family members as well’, and started this in 2021.
The barrister said D’Wit was drugging Mrs Baxter, causing her to appear as if she had dementia or a stroke, and that the pain he was inflicting on her ‘was for Luke D’Wit’s own satisfaction’.
She said D’Wit had previously tried to harm Mrs Baxter by giving her a pill with a tack inside it.
Adam Davis KC, mitigating for D’Wit at, said the defendant knew he faced a lengthy sentence for the murders of the Baxters.
He said: ‘The defendant knows, given the conviction of the jury, that he faces a very long time in prison.
‘He accepts that.’
On Wednesday, Ellie was in the public gallery and wept when the two guilty verdicts were returned, as she was comforted by her brother Harry.
The defendant, who used a wheelchair throughout the trial, did not appear to react in the secure dock of the court.
Detective Superintendent Rob Kirby addressed media outside court afterwards on Wednesday, as Ellie and Harry Baxter stood by his side, along with members of the wider family.
‘In all my years of policing, Luke D’Wit is one of the most dangerous men I have ever come across,’ he said. ‘I have absolutely no doubt in my mind had he not been caught he would have gone on to kill further people.’
He said that D’Wit ‘disgracefully … based his defence on collusion between himself and Stephen Baxter’.
‘Stephen is tragically not here to defend himself but from everything we knew about him we know this could never have been the case,’ said Mr Kirby, of the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate.
‘Thankfully, today the jury have seen through D’Wit’s fantasies and delivered guilty verdicts.’
D’Wit denied murdering the pair and claimed in court that he created fake identities on the instructions of Mr Baxter and to give Mrs Baxter ‘someone to talk to and air all her grievances to’.
Prosecutors said D’Wit created a fake will on his phone the day after the Baxters were found dead, making him a director of their shower mat company Cazsplash.
Another fake persona – a solicitor – was used in connection with the new will, prosecutors said.
Tracy Ayling KC said in her prosecution closing speech that D’Wit murdered Mr and Mrs Baxter ‘calmly, coolly and in a way which had been entirely planned, maybe for some while’.
The couple’s daughter said in evidence that her parents believed D’Wit was ‘weird, but nerdy weird’.
She said he had initially been brought into their shower mat business in about 2012 or 2013 to ‘help build the website’ before eventually coming round to their house ‘every day’.
She said afterwards, in a statement released through police, that her mother ‘lost her freedom, her will, her ability to function two years prior to her murder due to her illness’.
She said that ‘no-one could help with or understand’ her illness ‘because it was contrived by Luke D’Wit’.
‘Mum felt so alone and lost, and there was nothing I could do other then give her my shoulder to cry on and cuddle her,’ said Ellie Baxter.
Their son Harry Baxter said D’Wit played ‘foul games torturing and drugging’ his mother.
‘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,’ he said, in a statement released through police.
Stephen Baxter, 61, and his 64-year-old wife Carol (pictured) were found dead at their home
Ellie Baxter, the daughter of Stephen and Carol Baxter, leaves Chelmsford Crown Court today
The home of the millionaire tycoon husband and wife in Essex where their bodies were found
An undated grab of video footage issued by Essex Police from arrest footage of Luke D’Wit
An undated photo issued by Essex Police of officers at the home on Mersea Island in Essex
Stephen and Carol Baxter’s children, Ellie (left) and Harry Baxter, look on as Detective Superintendent Rob Kirby speaks outside Chelmsford Crown Court on Wednesday
Mr Kirby said in an interview outside court that D’Wit ‘fooled everyone’.
‘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 said.
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.
He continued: ‘D’Wit’s downfall was the arrogance that existed within him.
‘He didn’t cover his tracks properly and he was deluded in thinking that he could use fentanyl to kill two people and that wouldn’t be found to be suspicious.’
D’Wit was arrested at his workplace and his bag contained fentanyl patches, opened and unopened.
Prosecutors questioned his claim that he was taking these back to a pharmacy following the death of his father in 2021.
Speaking after the sentencing, Detective Inspector Lydia George, senior investigating officer in the case, said: ‘It is simply impossible to put a number on the lives of Carol and Stephen. They were loving, generous parents. They helped people and touched the lives of many.
‘They were entering a period in their lives where they should have been able to enjoy precious time with their grandchildren.
‘They should have been planning holidays, looking forward to spending Christmases with family and living their lives to the full.
‘Luke D’Wit took all that away in April 2023. He tried to cover it up. He went to great lengths to blame others who we know were not involved in any way.’
She said D’Wit ‘clearly enjoyed the control he exerted over people, especially Carol and Stephen’.
DI George continued: ‘Ultimately, the only person in this world who knows why he acted this way is Luke D’Wit – and he has proven time and time again to be a manipulator.
‘What we do know is; the significant sentence handed down today is entirely fitting for the pathological liar that he is.
‘For almost a year, we have been determined to secure justice in its entirety. Today marks the conclusion of one of the most complex investigations undertaken at Essex Police.’
Concluding, she said: ‘Today, though, is not about Luke D’Wit. And it’s not about Essex Police. It’s about Carol and Stephen and it’s about their family.
‘We know nothing will bring Carol and Stephen back. We know nothing can give the family back their loving mother, sister and grandmother or their generous father, brother, son and grandfather.
‘However, I truly hope this sentence is of some comfort to the family as they move forward.’