Luke D’Wit: The Essex Millionaire Murders

Stephen Baxter, 64, and his wife Carol, 61, lived in West Mersea on Essex’s Mersea Island. Carol had built a profitable business, Cazsplash, selling curved shower mats. Luke D’Wit, a computer science graduate with family ties to the island, built the company’s website in the early 2010s and became a close family friend. Carol had Hashimoto’s disease, and D’Wit turned her illness into a way to control her.

Using more than 20 invented online personas, including a fictitious Florida specialist called “Dr. Andrea Bowden” and a circle of fellow patients, he steered Carol toward bogus cleanses and drinks that made her sicker. An X-ray once found metal tacks in her stomach. He visited the couple on Good Friday, April 7, 2023, and their daughter found them dead in their armchairs on Easter Sunday. Toxicology showed fatal levels of fentanyl. Detectives then found a fake will, made on D’Wit’s phone after the deaths, that gave him the business, and traced every persona back to his devices. He had hidden a camera in the house to watch the couple die.

D’Wit was arrested in July 2023. At Chelmsford Crown Court he claimed Stephen had helped create the personas, but in March 2024 a jury convicted him of both murders. Mr. Justice Lavender sentenced him to life with a minimum term of 37 years, saying control, more than money, had driven him.