Mother shared drinks with main college trainer who murdered her son in ‘intercourse recreation’ whereas his physique lay simply metres away

The mother of a man stabbed to death by his partner has revealed she visited their home for pre-Christmas drinks without knowing he was ‘buried a few feet away’.

Primary school teacher Fiona Beal, 50, fatally stabbed Nicholas Billingham, 42, in an apparent sex game before burying his body in the garden of their Northampton home.

The victim’s partly mummified remains were found four-and-a-half months after he was last seen on November 1, 2021 – and Beal was later jailed for at least 20 years.

Now, Mr Billingham’s mother Yvonne Valentine has told an ITV documentary how she received a text appearing to be from him to say he had left Beal for another woman.

Just weeks after the couple’s ‘split’, Ms Valentine said she visited Beal at her home on December 23, 2021 to drop off some Christmas gifts and everything seemed normal.

She said: ‘I felt bad because Nick had gone off and it was Christmas. I had been trying to message Fiona to ask whether it was okay to come round to bring presents.

‘I wouldn’t say there were any concerns. I drove round and she just seemed the same as she usually did. Gave me a hug, said “come in and have a drink”.

‘I walked into the living room and I said “oh, you been decorating?”. And she said “yeah, I have”. And I said “oh it looks okay, quite good”. So she said “yeah”.’

Speaking on ‘Killer in the House: The Murder of Nicholas Billingham’, airing on ITV1 at 9pm tonight, Ms Valentine revealed she had no idea her son was already dead.

She said: ‘I spent about an hour there and had a Christmas drink. It walked in and it was hugs, kisses. Little did I know that my son was buried in the ground a few feet away. I still can’t get my head round it.’

Ms Valentine had not seen her son since the apparent separation from Beal, but had received messages sent from his phone saying he had moved to Essex with a new girlfriend called Faye and was happy.

It later turned out that ‘Faye’ was an invention by Beal, who was also sending messages from Mr Billingham’s phone despite having already killed him.

Speaking about Beal, Ms Valentine added: ‘I always remember going round to meet her for the first time. I remember she just seemed quite friendly. I would say that I liked her but I don’t think I ever really got to know her that well.’

Beal had texted her school on November 1, 2021 to say she and Mr Billingham had both caught Covid-19 and would have to self-isolate. She also sent a similar message to Mr Billingham’s employer on his phone, posing as him.

Days later Beal texted her sister to say she and Mr Billingham had split up. Ms Valentine also received a text appearing to be from her son, saying he had moved to Essex with ‘Faye’.

Ms Valentine then texted Mr Billingham on Boxing Day to check if he was okay, and received a message from his number saying he was at Old Trafford watching Manchester United play Burnley, before heading back to Essex where he was selling cars.

But suspicions were first aroused when a householder said a van parked in the street was blocking them from cutting down a tree that had suffered storm damage – and this was identified as belonging to Mr Billingham.

Police visited Beal and she claimed Mr Billingham had left her for his new partner with whom he was living in Essex, but officers failed to find him and told Ms Valentine that he was missing.

Speaking about her reaction to this news, Ms Valentine told the documentary: ‘I do remember the day when I received a message from the police: “Your son Nicholas is a missing person”.

‘And it just took me ages for it to sink in. Because I thinking what, how can he be a missing person? I went bananas.’

On the day of his death, Mr Billingham had worked on a house renovation before returning to the home he shared with Beal. That evening, she killed him by stabbing him in the neck before disposing of the body in the side return of their home.

She then covered her tracks with a false story that they had Covid and needed to isolate. Similar messages were sent from Mr Billingham’s phone from November 2 in which Beal pretended to be him.

On November 8, Beal sent messages to her sisters saying she and Mr Billingham had split up, with one message saying he left because he had had an affair with another woman.

On her return to work, she received sympathy from those who had heard about the apparent break-up. But her mental health started to deteriorate in late February 2022.

In a journal entry dated February 12, she wrote: ‘I’m not a total monster. I know what I did.’

The following month, she rented a cabin in Cumbria and sent messages to family members which gave them cause for concern over her wellbeing, prompting them to call police to check on her.

Officers found her wrist-slashed in a bathtub, but she survived. Also in the cabin, police found Beal’s journals containing a confession to the killing.

They also included reference to her having a split personality and an alter ego she called Tulip 22.

She wrote: ‘I had smoked all day. I had a bath, I left the water in. He had been pushing for sex. I encouraged the bath with the incentive of sex afterwards. While he was in the bath I kept the knife in my dressing gown pocket and then I had it in the drawer next to the bed.

‘I brought a chisel, bin bag and cable ties up too. I got him to wear an eye mask.’

She went on: ‘My last words to him when he asked why was that he was not going to do to (another female) what he had done to me.’

The journals triggered a police investigation, which soon established Mr Billingham had not been seen or spoken to by telephone since the afternoon of November 1 2021.

Beal was arrested in March 2022 after police discovered his body. 

Police had visited her home on March 16 but found nothing out of the ordinary. The next day, officers found a bloodstained mattress in the basement and returned on March 19 and discovered more.

Mr Billingham’s mummified body had been buried in makeshift layers of sheeting and concrete.

Speaking about the murder, Ms Valentine said: ‘Nick wasn’t perfect, I don’t know who is, but why would you put somebody through what Beal put him through? There’s just no answer.

‘I still think that Nick’s going to come and walk through the front door one day and say ‘hello mum’. But it’s not going to happen, is it?’

Beal pleaded guilty to murder in April 2024 during a retrial at the Old Bailey, after her earlier trial at Northampton Crown Court collapsed on its 64th day.

During a sentencing hearing in the May, prosecutor Hugh Davies KC read out a letter Mr Billingham had written to Beal after he had an affair during their 17-year relationship.

In the letter, Mr Billingham accepted his faults and described Beal as ‘the most beautiful woman in the world’ before promising to never ‘belittle’ her again and declaring he loved her ‘with all my heart’.

‘Killer in the House: The Murder of Nicholas Billingham’ on ITV1 at 9pm tonight