Unraveling the Fiona Beal Murder Case

The story began four months earlier, with a simple text message about COVID isolation. By the time it ended, investigators would uncover a hidden persona, a carefully crafted plan, and a primary school teacher’s secret journals that contained dark confessions written under the name “Tulip22.”

The Couple: Fiona Beal and Nick Billingham

Fiona Beal was a respected Year 6 teacher at Eastfield Academy in Northampton. To her colleagues and students, she was professional, placid, and reliable. At 50 years old, she had built a strong reputation in her field, known for her dedication to teaching.

Nicholas Billingham, 42, worked as a builder. Friends described him as passionate about cars and “flirty” in the workplace, though they insisted it was just playful banter. Behind his charming exterior, he struggled with gambling problems and a pattern of infidelity that would strain his relationship with Beal.

The couple had been together for 17 years, their relationship marked by betrayals and fresh starts. In 2019, one of Billingham’s affairs resulted in a pregnancy, a revelation that shattered what trust remained between them.

In February 2020, they moved into the Moore Street house in Northampton. It was meant to be another fresh start, another chance to rebuild what had been broken. From the outside, they appeared to be working through their problems. Beal continued teaching, Billingham kept working, and life seemed to move forward.

Those who knew Fiona Beal noted how she “always put up with everything that Nick Billingham had done and never even snapped at him.” But beneath this patient exterior, something else was taking shape. In her private writings, Beal described a relationship filled with belittling comments, cruel behavior, and mounting resentment.

By October 2021, Halloween approached, and with it, the final fracture in their troubled relationship. But no one who knew them could have predicted how catastrophically it would end.

The Planning

Halloween 2021 marked a turning point. In her journal, Fiona Beal wrote that Billingham had been “vile” that night. But what happened next wasn’t a crime of passion. It was calculated, methodical, and executed with precision.

In the pages of her notebook, a new voice emerged. “Tulip22” she called it, describing this alter ego as “reckless, fearless and efficient. Ruthless.” Through this persona, Beal detailed her dark thoughts:

Her plan hinged on Covid-19 restrictions. She knew a positive test meant mandatory isolation for 10 days. No visitors, no questions, and most importantly, no witnesses.

On November 1st, she called her headteacher reporting that both she and Nick had tested positive for Covid. Nick Billingham went to work that day. It would be the last time anyone saw him alive.

While he was at work, “Tulip22 smoked and planned.” At 1 AM that morning, she had already begun preparing, making multiple Amazon purchases across both her account and Nick’s: venetian blinds, a mop and bucket, heavy bin bags, a new mattress, bedding, clothing.

She gathered her tools carefully: a forged handled utility knife, a chisel, cable ties. Each item chosen with purpose. Each step mapped out in her mind and on paper.

In her journal, she wrote: “I’d planned it mentally so many times before.” That night, she ran him a bath, promising the reward of intimacy afterward. While he bathed, she kept the knife hidden in her dressing gown pocket, later transferring it to a bedside drawer.

The stage was set. Ten days of isolation lay ahead. Ten days to complete her plan and cover her tracks.

The Disappearance

The first sign something was wrong came through a series of text messages. On November 8th, Beal messaged her sisters saying she and Nick had split up, claiming he’d had another affair. The story seemed plausible given his history.

Days later, on November 13th, security cameras at B&Q captured Fiona Beal purchasing ten 50-liter bags of compost and ten 22.5kg bags of Cotswold stone. She also bought a grey plastic trough. These mundane items would later take on a sinister significance.

As weeks passed, Nick’s friends tried reaching him by phone and messenger. Their calls went unanswered. When they asked Beal about his whereabouts, she maintained he’d left her for another woman.

Then came the text messages from Nick’s phone. On December 30th, his mother Yvonne Valentine received messages saying he’d moved to Essex to start a new life with a woman named Faye. He promised to contact her again when “things had calmed down.”

Perhaps the most chilling moment came during Christmas 2021. Yvonne visited the Moore Street house, where Beal offered her a festive drink. They sat in the living room chatting, Yvonne could never have imagined the awful truth.

By early 2022, cracks began to show. Beal’s mental health deteriorated. She told her employer she had Covid again. She told her mother she was attending a residential course for work. In reality, she had booked herself into a remote lodge in Cumbria, taking with her the notebooks that contained her dark secrets.

The Unraveling

In March 2022, Beal travelled to High Borrans Lodges near Kendal, Cumbria. When her mother grew concerned about her daughter’s behaviours and messages, police conducted their first welfare check at the lodge.

Beal assured them she just wanted peace and quiet, admitting she’d been feeling suicidal since her partner had left. She asked them not to tell her family where she was.

Days later, Fiona Beal sent a message to her family’s group chat: she was sorry and she loved them all. Alarmed, her family contacted police again. When officers returned to the lodge, they found a note warning them not to enter the bathroom.

Inside, they discovered Beal in the bathtub with self-inflicted wounds to her wrists. As paramedics rushed her to Royal Lancaster Infirmary, officers searched the lodge. Among her belongings, they found notebooks containing chilling confessions.

The writings detailed the planning and execution of a murder, though the victim remained unnamed.

While Beal lay sectioned under the Mental Health Act, Northamptonshire Police began their investigation. At the Moore Street house, they discovered a bloodstained mattress in the basement. Luminol revealed blood spatter on the bedroom walls, hidden beneath fresh paint.

For four days, forensic teams excavated the garden. On March 19th, they found Nick Billingham’s body wrapped in sheeting, entombed in concrete, breeze blocks, and timber. The autopsy revealed a single fatal stab wound to his neck, severing his jugular vein.

The quiet, respected teacher now faced a murder charge. But the path to justice would prove anything but straightforward.

Justice

A year later, on March 13, 2023, Fiona Beal’s first trial began at Northampton Crown Court. Her defense team acknowledged she had killed Nick but claimed years of coercive behavior had “worn her down until she was quite literally broken.” They argued for manslaughter, not murder.

The prosecution painted a different picture. They described a “controlled exercise” and a “chilling execution,” highlighting how Beal had used Covid isolation rules to ensure she had ten undisturbed days to dispose of Nick’s body and clean up evidence.

But the trial collapsed unexpectedly. A key defense witness, who testified about witnessing abuse in Beal and Billingham’s relationship, was revealed to be a court custody officer who had conducted welfare checks on Fiona Beal in her cell. The judge, concluding this compromised the possibility of a fair verdict, dismissed the entire trial.

The second trial began at the Old Bailey in April 2024. This time, prosecutors presented the methodical planning evident in Beal’s journals, the calculated deception of Nick’s family, and the elaborate steps taken to conceal the crime.

Then, on April 26, 2024, midway through the trial, Beal suddenly changed her plea to guilty of murder. The teacher who had maintained her innocence for over two years finally admitted to the premeditated killing of Nicholas Billingham.

The court heard how she had lured him to bed, convinced him to wear an eye mask, then stabbed him in the neck. How she had dragged his body downstairs, breaking the banister in the process. How she had buried him in their garden, using materials bought specifically for that purpose.

Prosecutor Hugh Davis KC summarized: “This was not a spontaneous reaction but rather a chilling execution.”

The judge sentenced Fiona Beal to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 20 years. The seemingly ordinary primary school teacher would now face the consequences of her extraordinary deception.

While the sentencing brought some closure, many questions lingered. As Detective Sergeant Spencer Bailey of Northamptonshire Police reflected:

The Aftermath

The Fiona Beal case left those who knew her struggling to reconcile two opposing images: the dedicated primary school teacher and the methodical killer who wrote as “Tulip22.”

Her journal entries revealed someone who felt trapped and broken by years of infidelity and emotional abuse. Yet these same writings exposed the calculated nature of her revenge, planned meticulously under the cover of a global pandemic.

For months, she had maintained a perfect facade. She taught her Year 6 students, accepted sympathy from colleagues over her partner’s supposed abandonment, and even shared Christmas drinks with the mother of the man she had killed. All the while, his body lay feet away buried in the garden under concrete blocks. Each act of deception was performed with the same precision she had used to plan the murder itself.

The case highlighted how appearances can mask dark realities. A respected teacher could harbor a secret persona. A Covid isolation period could provide cover for murder. A garden could conceal its grim secrets for months.

In the end, it wasn’t detective work that broke the case. It was Beal’s own words, written compulsively in notebooks she carried with her to Cumbria, that revealed the truth behind Nicholas Billingham’s disappearance and brought his family the answers they deserved.