This is the moment a daughter’s ‘visceral’ screams after discovering the bodies of her parents could be heard in a chilling 999 call made by their killer .
Pregnant Ellie Baxter had gone to check on her parents Carol, 64 and Stephen, 61, on Easter Sunday last year, having not heard from them at all over the weekend and becoming concerned about their safety.
After noticing the blinds were still down and the lights were on in the middle of the day, she knew something was wrong and walked round to the conservatory – where she was confronted by the horrific sight of her dead parents.
The expecting mother was soon joined by her parents’ IT worker Luke D’Wit, 34, who – unknowingly to Ellie – had poisoned the couple with a deadly dose of fentanyl just hours earlier.
D’Wit, who was jailed for life in March after being found guilty of murder, had attempted to change their will to make him a director of their shower mat firm.
A new documentary, which has since been released on Discovery+, sheds a light on some the most harrowing details about the horrific case, including the chilling 999 call made moments after the gruesome discovery.
Ellie dialled emergency services before D’Wit took the phone from her, telling the operator he was a ‘friend’ and providing a false account of what had happened.
As D’Wit continued to calmly chat on the phone, Ellie can be heard crying and screaming hysterically in the background, begging the operator to send an ambulance ‘right now’.
Stephen Baxter, 61, and his 64-year-old wife Carol, who were poisoned with fentanyl in Essex
Luke D’Wit, 34, was jailed for life in March after being found guilty of murdering the couple
Pregnant Ellie Baxter had gone to check on her parents on Easter Sunday last year, when she discovered their bodies
D’Wit lived nearby and was quickly on the scene when Ellie found her parents. He told the 999 operator: ‘We’ve just turned up at the house and we haven’t really heard from anyone for a day and half.
‘So we came round and their daughter got here first and they came round the back, looked in the conservatory window and they were sitting in their arm chairs not moving. We smashed the window to get in but they’re both stiff and cold.’
As D’Wit continued to speak on the phone, Ellie is heard in the background saying: ‘We need an ambulance right now, she’s been poisoned.
‘My mum’s not very well. They’re poisoned, they’re dead. They’re frozen. They’re so cold.’
When D’Wit was asked if the couple were beyond help, he replied: ‘Yeah. There’s some blood on her mouth. She has yellow, blue fingers.’
The defendant appeared to be ‘very calm and plausible’ during the call, the prosecutor said.
ITV journalist Hannah Pettifer described the trauma of having listened to the phone call several times, as she appeared in a scene for the Discovery+ documentary 999 Murderer Calling.
She said: ‘I’ve heard that phone call now countless times and it doesn’t get any easier listening to it.
D’Wit befriended and worked for Stephen Baxter, 61, and his 64-year-old wife Carol (pictured)
Stephen Baxter, 61, and his 64-year-old wife Carol, who were poisoned with fentanyl in Essex
‘It just goes through you, you sense her agony, her pain.
‘It’s proper anguish, raw human emotion that you know it can’t leave you. You can’t not be affected.’
D’Wit, of West Mersea, Essex, befriended and worked for Stephen and Carol before changing their will to make him a director of their shower mat firm.
He then created a series of fake online personas to manipulate them before he killed them.
He had pretended to be a doctor from Florida and members of a fake support group for the thyroid condition Hashimoto’s, which Mrs Baxter suffered from.
The judge said he was sure that D’Wit ‘extracted the fentanyl from patches which had been originally prescribed for your father, who died in 2021’.
He said these were crushed into a powder and given to the Baxters in a drink, which they took as they trusted D’Wit to prepare ‘supposed health drinks’.
D’Wit denied murdering the pair and claimed in court that he created fake identities on the instructions of Mr Baxter and to give Mrs Baxter ‘someone to talk to and air all her grievances to’.
A grab of Ring doorbell footage from April 7, 2023 showing D’Wit leaving the home in Mersea
Bodycam footage from April 9, 2023 of Luke D’Wit providing statements to police in Mersea
Speaking outside the court following D’Wit’s sentencing in March, Ellie said: ‘I have never known an emotional pain to physically hurt so much. It was like my insides were on fire. I screamed and screamed but nothing I done was helping.
‘I pleaded for them to wake up. I begged them. But of course they could not wake. The next time I saw mum and dad they were in body bags.’
Ellie added that she stroked her mother’s hair and cried, as well as kissing both of their heads.
She also said: ‘I just wish I had known. I wish I had done more and that is something I will forever have to live with.
‘I took peace in knowing that mum’s pain was over until I learnt the reality of the situation – of how my parents and I were manipulated and how someone we had loved, trusted and looked after for many years could do something so nefarious.
‘The stress of this day caused me to have a bleed. I genuinely thought I had lost my daughter as well as my mum and dad.’
Ellie said D’Wit had ‘completely brainwashed’ her mother by posing as a fake doctor, adding that Mrs Baxter ‘felt so alone’ as she lost her function in the two years before her death.
She described D’Wit as a ‘man so manipulative he hacked his way into our lives over a decade ago, schemed and thoroughly planned my parents’ demise’.
She said her parents had ‘looked after Luke’, adding: ‘They just decided he was lonely, especially after Luke’s dad died.
‘They took him under their wing and would let him join in.’