Barbara Daly Baekeland was a stunning former model who married into the Bakelite plastics fortune – but allegations of a twisted relationship with her mentally ill son Tony ended in her brutal stabbing
Barbara Daly Baekeland, who wed into the plastics dynasty, was 52 when she met a brutal demise at her opulent London residence, murdered by her infuriated son. The young man was nonchalantly ordering a takeaway when police arrived at the crime scene.
Her 25-year-old son Tony was found looming over her blood-soaked body. He was the sole offspring of Barbara and Bakelite heir Brooks Baekeland’s tumultuous marriage.
Barbara, a former model once ranked among New York’s top 10 beauties, met Brooks, a trainee pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force and grandson of Leo Baekeland, the inventor of the world’s first synthetic plastic. Their first and only child Antony was born in 1946.
Whispers hinted at an unnerving closeness between Tony and his mother. Tony had begun a relationship with a bisexual Australian man, leading his mother to journey to Spain to take him home.
She subsequently coerced her son into interactions with sex workers in an attempt to “cure” his sexuality. When these attempts proved futile, accusations arose that she began sexually abusing him herself, as reported by Crime and Investigation.
Their relationship descended into terrifying violence, with Tony even trying to murder his mother by shoving her into oncoming traffic. Whether their relationship was genuinely incestuous remains uncertain.
Barbara had attempted suicide upon discovering her husband’s infidelity during their marriage. Brooks subsequently remarried, fathered another child, and deserted both Tony and Barbara.
Tony was subsequently diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Despite their affluent lifestyle in London, Barbara’s increasingly volatile son would menace her with blades and strangle her. Barbara’s allegations regarding incest stunned those in her circle, although she was also recognised for her desperate attention-seeking behaviour.
On the evening Barbara was murdered, Tony confessed they’d rowed about a friend he’d invited round but whom Barbara refused to meet.
The dispute escalated violently, with Tony attacking his mother before fatally stabbing her, later confessing to police: “My mind was slightly wacky and I was very much under my mother’s influence. I felt she was controlling my mind.”
Tony couldn’t comprehend that he’d murdered his mother and enquired of officers whilst in custody whether she remained alive. Tony was convicted of manslaughter and committed to Broadmoor.
His paternal grandmother Nini Daly rallied supporters, including Hugo Money-Coutts, to lobby for Tony’s repatriation to America. However, Brooks remained resolute that Tony represented a deadly danger, branding him as “evil”.
In 1980, Tony was released into the care of his 87-year-old grandmother Nini in New York. His Broadmoor consultant admitted that releasing his patient had been a grave error, and shortly after Tony arrived in New York, he constructed a chilling shrine to his deceased mother and obsessively muttered over her ashes.
Merely six days post-departure from Broadmoor, Tony had a violent altercation with his grandmother over a phone call he wished to make to England, resulting in him stabbing her eight times. When the police arrived, a distressed Tony informed them “she won’t die”.
He confessed to having sexual intentions towards the 87-year-old and believed it would be “kinder” to end her life. Astonishingly, she survived.
Tony received a life sentence at Rikers Island, where his substantial family wealth afforded him numerous sexual partners and protection.
On 20 March 1981 at 3.30pm, Tony was discovered dead with a plastic bag tightly secured over his head – the authorities have never determined whether it was a case of murder or suicide.
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