Police probe whether fentanyl double murderer also killed father and grandfather

Detectives are reviewing whether an IT worker who was jailed for the fentanyl murders of a married couple may have also killed his own father and grandfather and avoided detection.

Luke D’Wit, 34, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 37 years for the murders of Stephen and Carol Baxter when he was sentenced at Chelmsford Crown Court in March.

Mrs Baxter, 64, and her 61-year-old husband were found dead at their home in West Mersea in Essex by their daughter Ellie on Easter Sunday last year.

It was later discovered that they had been poisoned with the powerful synthetic painkiller fentanyl.

The sentencing judge, Mr Justice Nicholas Lavender, said D’Wit “made some attempts to secure an indirect gain” for himself, but it was “distinctly possible that what really motivated you was a desire to control others”.

D’Wit’s trial was told that he created a gallery of fake personas to manipulate them in the two years before their deaths.

The defendant, of West Mersea, had pretended to be a doctor from Florida and members of a fake support group for the thyroid condition Hashimoto’s, which Mrs Baxter had been diagnosed with.

He later changed their will to make him a director of their shower mat company.

Detectives are reportedly reviewing the death’s of D’Wit’s father and grandfather in case the defendant killed them and avoided detection.

In his sentencing remarks, the judge said D’Wit “extracted… fentanyl from patches which had originally been prescribed for your father, who died in 2021, but which you retained in abundance”.

An Essex Police spokesperson said: “Up to the conviction and sentence of Luke D’Wit, our determined focus has been securing justice in relation to the murders of Carol and Stephen.

“As with any investigation of this magnitude, everything we have uncovered is being reviewed and should anything suggest this has been the case we will not hesitate to act.”