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Stuart Forsyth |
Killer launched knife attack on the couple who offered shelter
As she lay sleeping in bed, ‘supermum’ was murdered in act that ‘destroyed’ loving family
THE many friends of Miriam and Maurice Baldock knew they always left unlocked the back door at the Camden Town home where they and their family had lived for 30 years.
It was through that door that neighbours and family came every day, and through which troubled Foreign Legionnaire Stuart Forsyth had walked more than 20 years ago, when he was offered shelter by a couple who were a byword locally for sympathy and welcome.
And it was through the same door he came, high on drink and drugs, to turn the Maiden Lane estate maisonette that had become the second home of his children into the scene of a bloodbath in August last year.
His frenzied knife attack on the sleeping Baldocks left Maurice, a 62-year-old retired builder, fighting to survive three stab wounds.
Miriam Baldock, described as her husband’s “queen” and “the heart of our family”, died in the savage assault.
On Friday, Forsyth, 41, went impassively to the cells at the Old Bailey to serve two life sentences. Judge Martin Stephens, QC, had told him: “The effect of your atrocious action has been devastating. Nothing can begin to excuse or explain the enormity of your actions – the gross abuse of trust, the killing of an elderly lady as she lay asleep in her bed.”
But the last words he heard before beginning his minimum 19-year sentence came from Maurice Baldock.
“You’re a coward, Stuart,” he called, as Forsyth passed within feet of him.
In a two-day hearing at the Old Bailey, the court was offered no explanation for the ferocity of Forsyth’s attack.
Not only had the Baldocks taken him in during his time of trouble, they had become surrogate grandparents for his daughters, with Miriam’s daughter Stephanie, who lived yards away in Maiden Lane, becoming their carer as Forsyth’s relationship with the
girls’ mother spiralled into drink-fuelled chaos.
According to witnesses who saw Forsyth in the Mornington and Old Axe pubs during his last drinking and cocaine spree on the night of the attack, it was the subject of the care of the two girls which obsessed him. But while the cause of the attack remains a mystery, the effect was devastating. The presence of hundreds of mourners at Miriam Baldock’s funeral demonstrated how she had become the centre of her community in Maiden Lane and Kentish Town.
She was known to two generations of young people as a firm but fair “supermum” who had kick-started the Maiden Lane youth club and taken in dozens of troubled neighbours over the years.
Her cortege was honoured by a full parade of firefighters as it passed Kentish Town fire station, where she had worked.
As Maurice Baldock said of her killer after Friday’s hearing: “He has crucified a hell of a lot of people. She didn’t deserve anything that happened at all. She was a
duchess, she was my life – the other half of me.”
Mr Baldock’s moving statement, read to the court after Forsyth pleaded guilty to murder and attempted murder, described how they had first met in a pub when Forsyth was AWOL from the Foreign Legion.
It read: “I felt sorry for him and he came to live with us at 92 Maiden Lane.
“Over the years Stuart became like a son to us. He would call Miriam and I mum and dad. When he had children of his own we were their grandparents. Although we had our problems, we were a family.”
Describing the murder, he said: “Although Miriam died he took my life away. It has destroyed me and all my family, reaching as far as Miriam’s sister in Australia.
“We were a loving family who did everything together. Now I can’t stand being with people. I have changed totally as a person. I have pushed away the people I love, feeling that my pain was worse and they didn’t understand.
“So many times I have wished I had died and Miriam lived or we had both gone.”
Before the convictions, prosecutor Jonathan Rees described the events of the morning of August 11.
He said: “At about 5.30am Maurice and Miriam were asleep in their bed. Their 14-year-old granddaughter was asleep in another bedroom.
“Mr Baldock awoke to find the defendant standing by the bed.
“He asked him what he was doing there, whereupon the defendant attacked him. At first [he] thought the defendant was repeatedly punching him but when he saw blood spurting from his body he realised he had been stabbed. He became aware the defendant had stabbed his wife because at one point she had been screaming the defendant’s name.”
Terribly wounded, Maurice Baldock found his wife lying silent by the bed and called 999. Neighbour David Shepheard heard his shouts and saw Forsyth casually walk away from the house. With another neighbour, he ran in.
Maurice Baldock spent four days in University College Hospital in Bloomsbury, having his chest drained.
Forsyth hitch-hiked to Cornwall, and, according to his lawyer, woke in a field with no recollection of the attack.
He went to a police station in Bodmin on August 14, where an officer found him in the car park. Mr Rees told the court: “He was asked if he was all right. He said… he had been on coke and speed for the last two days and thought he may have done something terrible. He was arrested.”
Forsyth, who gave his occupation as crane driver and his address as Caledonian Road, Islington, accepted full blame for the attacks through his lawyer, defence counsel Thomas Forster.
Mr Forster said: “He destroyed the very woman he loved and his own life has been destroyed.” Although he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his military service, Mr Forster said, he accepted “it is not something that can excuse these acts”. |
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