A British IT worker who befriended and worked for an elderly couple, poisoned them with fentanyl and watched their deaths via mobile phone was sentenced Friday to a minimum of 37 years in prison.
Luke Dewitt, 34, was sentenced in connection with the deaths of Stephen Baxter, 61, and Carol Baxter, 64, at their home in West Mersea, 110 miles east of London, in April last year. The sentence was handed down two days after he was found guilty of murder.
During the six-week trial at Chelmsford Crown Court, jurors heard that Dewitt also used his mobile phone to create a fake will to install him as director of a shower mat company the day after he murdered the two men. heard. He even remotely watched them die from his deadly concoction.
An elderly man in Washington state reportedly developed symptoms of fentanyl poisoning from a man he met on a dating app.
The court also heard Dewitt had been manipulating the couple using a series of personas since 2021. Among other things, he pretended to be a doctor from Florida and a member of a fake support group for the thyroid disease Hashimoto’s disease that Carol Baxter suffered from.
Judge Nicholas Lavender called DeWitt’s actions “cruel and foolish” and sentenced him to life in prison, with no parole eligibility for at least 37 years.
He said he believes Dewitt extracted the fentanyl that killed the couple from a patch originally prescribed to his father, who died in 2021.
Ellie and Harry Baxter, son and daughter of Stephen and Carol Baxter, stand outside Chelmsford Courtroom on March 22, 2024 in Chelmsford, England. Police read a statement after Luke Dewitt’s sentencing. (via Stéphane Rousseau/PA)
“It’s clear that what motivated you may have been a desire to control others,” he says.
The judge said Dewitt spiked the drinks he gave the couple on April 7, and the couple took them trusting Dewitt to prepare the “purported health drink.”
The judge said the defendant had cleaned up afterwards, adding: “When Mr and Mrs Baxter were unconscious, you said you would use applications on two mobile phones to monitor them while you were temporarily away from home.” “We have taken some creepy measures,” he added.
DeWitt, who was sitting in a wheelchair in the safety of the dock, showed no reaction as the verdict was read.
The couple was found dead by their daughter two days after the poisoning.
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She told the court that Dewitt had “come into our lives with lies” for more than a decade.
In a shocking statement to the court, Ellie Baxter said: “I have never known that emotional pain can be so physically damaging.” “It felt like my insides were on fire. I kept screaming.”
Prosecutor Tracy Eyring said Luke DeWitt’s murder of the couple followed a “highly unusual and prolonged incident of manipulation”.
