Teacher admits to killing and burying her boyfriend

Fiona Beal hid body in garden and faked breakup, court told

- AMY-CLARE MARTIN

A primary school teacher accused of stabbing her boyfriend and burying him in their garden wrote a journal entry saying moving a body is “much more difficult than it looks on TV”, a court heard.

Year 6 teacher Fiona Beal, 50, admits killing her 42-year-old boyfriend Nicholas Billingham, whose partly mummified remains were discovered four-and-a-half months after he was last seen. A jury at the Old Bailey heard yesterday that Beal pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of manslaughter by reason of a loss of control – but denies that she murdered Mr Billingham in 2021.

Opening the case, prosecutor Hugh Davies KC said: “There is no dispute that she killed Nick Billingham, concealed his body where it was found and acted alone throughout. There is no dispute that she intended to kill him. She has accepted that she is guilty of the lesser offence of manslaughter. She has pleaded guilty to that offence. She does not accept she is guilty of murder.”

She was arrested in March 2022 after police discovered Mr Billingham’s body concealed in a “de facto coffin” made of breeze blocks, timber and sheets in the garden of their Northampton home, the court heard.