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

A man used an app on his phone 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 were discovered slumped in armchairs in their conservatory, Chelmsford Crown Court heard.

He denies murdering the couple, who owned a successful bath mat company, at their home in Mersea Island, Essex, last Easter. 

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

Jurors were told on Thursday that D’Wit had installed a “mobile security surveillance application” on his phone which allowed him to monitor a camera from another device.

Ms Ayling said that police analysis of his phone revealed images of Mr and Mrs Baxter “in their armchairs” on the afternoon of April 7 last year, with one timed at 5.14pm. Two days later, their bodies were found in the same 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 said.

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

She said that the couple “did not move at all” after the images were taken, while doorbell camera footage captured D’Wit walking towards the Baxters’ address “looking at a phone” that day.

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

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

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 said D’Wit did not leave the Baxters’ home until 7.55pm on April 7, when he was again captured by a doorbell camera.

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

Their bodies were eventually found on 9 April, which was Easter Sunday, when their daughter Ellie arrived and saw them dead inside the conservatory.

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

She said “I need to get inside” and is heard banging on the glass of the conservatory, swearing and saying that she thought they were dead.

D’Wit, who lived nearby, is later heard taking over the call, telling the handler: “I’m a friend.”

The court previously heard that Mr Baxter, 61, and his 64-year-old wife ran a company called Cazsplash, after Mrs Baxter designed a type of bathmat to go around a corner shower.

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

The terms included that “our dear friend Luke D’Wit is to be the director and person with significant control” for Cazsplash, adding that “all business making decisions are down to him,” jurors were 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 also allege D’Wit created multiple false identities, including a solicitor who tried to convince family members that the will he had written was real.

Before the couple died, he also posed as a doctor from Florida to give Mrs Baxter advice on how to cope with her thyroid condition Hashimoto’s.

The prosecutor said D’Wit made recommendations to Mrs Baxter with “no clinical basis”, adding that the identities were “created by Luke on his phone to manipulate Carol Baxter”.

The trial, estimated to last six weeks, continues.