AS she pulled into the drive of her parents’ home and rang the doorbell, Ellie Baxter’s nightmare began.
Getting no answer, she walked around the back of the house and peered through the window.
PALoving couple Stephen Baxter and wife Carol[/caption]
Luke D’Wit drugged the couple with a powerful opioidPA
Ellie Baxter last year outside Chelmsford Crown CourtAlamy
She saw her mum Carol, 64, and 61-year-old dad Stephen sitting motionless in their armchairs.
Frantically banging on the glass and door, she let out a scream that sent her partner Marcus rushing with their young son in his arms.
“They’re dead! They’re dead!” she shouted.
Of that Easter Sunday in 2023, Ellie recalls: “I was hysterical at this point.
“My brother Harry turned up pretty quickly and then my friend Luke.
“Having Luke there was helpful as he could talk to the police calmly.”
After hugging Ellie, Luke D’Wit told police Carol took a lot of medication, which he helped her with, and sometimes she would forget how many times she had taken it.
They thought him a nice, helpful man, as did everyone in the tight community of Mersea Island, Essex.
But the police probe into the mysterious deaths of Carol and Stephen Baxter revealed an extraordinary tale.
D’Wit had played mind games with the family for years, inventing fake online personas, including doctors, giving dangerous medical diagnoses and secretly filming the couple in their home before murdering them — all for his own sadistic pleasure.
The story is told in a two-part ITV documentary, Essex Millionaire Murders, starting tonight, which includes harrowing footage from a front door security camera.
It shows Ellie making the gruesome discovery, her distraught screams and police bodycam footage of her arrest for the crime.
Here, she reveals why she wanted to make the documentary and talk to The Sun.
Ellie says: “I have had to move from Mersea, which is very cliquey.
‘We were his little pieces to play with’
“Even now, after Luke is serving a life sentence, there are those who say, ‘Oh, it couldn’t have been nice Luke.’ I know that a lot of people think I had something to do with it.
“We would go into a shop and people would look away from us. They have made up their own stories that Luke was my mum’s love child or that I had a relationship with him.
“My aunts, uncles and cousins have said that I was in a relationship with him and that I had something to do with the murder.
“I’ve lost my mum and dad, but I’ve also lost the rest of my family and so have my kids.
PAPolice bodycam footage of D’Wit after the two bodies were found[/caption]
PAMore bodycam footage of D’Wit, who spoke ‘calmly’ to police[/caption]
“I feel this is an opportunity for me to clear my name and get the truth out there.
“Mum was very bubbly and loved a laugh. My parents loved each other.
“Dad was an engineer who would monitor safety in buildings.
“Mum was a maths teacher who was always full of ideas, and one of them was designing curved bath mats that turned into a successful business called Cazsplash.
“She had a thyroid condition called Hashimoto’s disease but it was only years after we moved to Mersea from London that it became such a big thing.
“Mum would get up at six o’clock and do 50 to 60 lengths in the pool, but suddenly she couldn’t do that.
“If she did, she would need a nap in the afternoon. That was hard for her to take.”
Shocking discovery
Carol experienced so much fatigue, memory loss and confusion that she put bleach in the kettle and food on an iPad. She sought medical advice which ruled out anything to do with her thyroid or her brain.
The only diagnosis they could come up with was a form of anxiety. But Carol was convinced there was something physically wrong.
Luke D’Wit, originally employed to help with IT for Carol’s business and who became a close friend of the family, was at the house almost every day, effectively acting as Carol’s carer, keeping an eye on her medication. “We were all very grateful to him,” says Ellie.
D’Wit suggested she should get in touch with an American Hashimoto expert he had found online named Dr Andrea Bowden, and they were soon exchanging hundreds of emails.
Andrea asked Stephen to send twice-daily videos of Carol so she could observe how she deteriorated through the day.
And she sent strict rules to follow, which she said would cure Carol. They included rest, exercise and medicinal remedies “that your good friend Luke can make up”.
East Anglia News ServiceThe couple’s Essex home where they were found dead[/caption]
ITVDet Insp Lydia George, who led the mysterious case[/caption]
Ellie says: “When Dr Andrea got involved, Mum saw it as some hope.”
Andrea also suggested to Carol that she should talk to other women in the UK that she was helping. Keen to do so, she set up a WhatsApp group where she met the likes of “Linda” and “Cheryl”.
She later introduced “Jenny”, who worked in the theatre and promised to sign up keen singer and pianist Ellie to her new artists agency.
As Easter approached, Carol’s health continued to fade.
Concerned that her parents were not answering her phone calls, Ellie and Marcus turned up at their house to make their shocking discovery.
Det Insp Lydia George of Essex Police, the senior investigative officer of the case, says: “People don’t die like that at the same time.
“I initially thought that it might be carbon monoxide poisoning but this was not detected and it was a big, open-plan house.”
DI George tried to get in touch with Dr Andrea but got no reply.
Meanwhile, going through paperwork, Ellie found a typed note, supposedly from her parents.
I was seven months’ pregnant and I was just trying to stay calm to protect my body and child
Ellie Baxter
It said in the event of their deaths, she should be sole shareholder and owner of Cazsplash, and the directorship must be split 50-50 between her and “our dear friend, Luke D’Wit”.
DI George says: “It was strange that there was nobody else mentioned because Carol had two children from a previous relationship.
“The original solicitor who handled Carol and Stephen’s formal will said it was not a document from his company.” And it wasn’t legally valid.
During house-to-house enquiries, police found many people who saw Ellie in an unfavourable light.
Police had been called to the family home on several occasions after fiery arguments between her and older brother Harry, and sometimes the pair of them against their parents.
By contrast, no one had a bad word to say about Luke D’Wit, who was always caring and helping out at fetes, Scouts and a soup kitchen.
After 12 weeks, toxicology results on the bodies of Carol and Stephen revealed both had been poisoned with the powerful opioid Fentanyl.
Carol also had a double dose of the sedative drug Promethazine.
‘Complete shock’
This was now a double murder — and with both Ellie and Luke named to benefit from their deaths, they were arrested and questioned at Chelmsford police station.
Ellie recalls: “I was in complete shock.
“I was seven months’ pregnant and I was just trying to stay calm to protect my body and child.
“I didn’t want to get hysterical like when I first found my mum and dad, because that shock caused a bleed.”
Luke D’Wit remained calm during his arrest and interview — and Ellie could not believe it when she heard he was being questioned.
She says: “I just thought he was a really nice, genuine guy, so it had to be a mistake.”
But in a carrier bag he had with him, police discovered pills and medication including Fentanyl and Promethazine, which he first said was his grandad’s and later his dad’s.
Both had recently died and he was going to hand them in to the pharmacist to dispose of.
With no evidence or reason to suspect Ellie, she was released.
At the home where D’Wit lived with his mum, police found copious amounts of drugs scattered around — empty capsules that were split in half, syringes, a makeshift pestle and mortar which had remnants of crushed tablets and Fentanyl patches.
A mobile phone had been set up in the kitchen to record and monitor them. He had watched them die
DI George
More shocking finds were to come – 18 mobile phones and ten laptops that showed the emails and texts from Dr Andrea and all the women in the WhatsApp group were coming from D’Wit’s devices.
He had been posing as them all, tricking the Baxter family. D’Wit used another online persona, Dr Alan Mandell, to fool Carol into signing up to a liver-cleansing programme.
Stephen, who had a problem with his liver, agreed to do it too.
DI George says: “Luke D’Wit visited Carol and Stephen on Easter Friday and was messaging them as this fake doctor while he was in the house with them, helping to make a ‘medicinal drink’ using a fatal dose of Fentanyl, before leaving at 8pm.
“A mobile phone had been set up in the kitchen to record and monitor them. He had watched them die.”
In March last year, D’Wit, 34, was sentenced to life for the murders, with a minimum of 37 years.
“I think it was all about control with him,” says Ellie, who is expecting her third baby in August.
He played a lot of computer simulation games at home and I think that we were a real-life version for him. He held the remote control and we were his little pieces to play with.”
Two years on and Ellie is still haunted by the events but trying to carry on with her own family.
She says: “Some days are better than others. From Mother’s Day to the end of this month is a very hard time because Luke drugged my parents on April 7 and took me for an early birthday meal the following day to Frankie & Benny’s.
“My birthday is on April 13 and I feel guilty celebrating it now, so I’ve moved it to May.
“It is a really difficult time, but my kids keep me going.”
Essex Millionaire Murders is on ITV1 at 9pm.
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