The killer of a murdered midwife left her engagement ring and wedding dress on her bed as a ‘false trail’ for detectives investigating her disappearance, a court has heard.
Married Michael Stirling had an affair with Samantha Eastwood, who had been due to marry his wife’s brother.
But during a row at her home in Stoke-on-Trent this summer, he killed Ms Eastwood, before dumping her body in a shallow grave on the edge of the Staffordshire Moorland.
Stirling’s sentencing hearing this morning heard that he had laid out items from her cancelled wedding on her bed to make it look like she was depressed and had ‘gone away’.
He then texted her sister, saying: ‘Please leave me alone x’, which prosecutors said was meant to suggest she was having some kind of breakdown.
Michael Stirling (left) murdered Samantha Eastwood, the former fiancee of his wife’s brother, after they had an affair. He then left a ‘false trail’ for detectives, a court heard today
Ms Eastwood had been due to marry her killer’s brother-in-law, John Peake. The two couple’s are pictured together
The court heard her killer laid out her wedding dress on her bed to suggest she was depressed about the cancellation of the ceremony. Pictured: The wedding dress when Ms Eastwood tried to sell it on Facebook for £400. She described the Alfred Angelo garment as ‘not worn apart from being tried on in the shop’.
It also emerged today that:
- Stirling had an evening meal with his family while his victim’s body lay in his van outside.
- He went back to his victim’s house under the guise of appealing for information, while secretly checking he wasn’t on neighbours’ CCTV footage.
- The killer accidentally gave away the location of her body by returning to check it was undisturbed, while being followed by police.
- He hugged the victim’s sister after the murder of the midwife, as he pretended to offer her family support.
Stirling’s wife Katie is the sister of John Peake, the man Miss Eastwood had been due to marry in the summer of this year.
The two couples regularly socialised together and were pictured together at the wedding of one of Mr Peake’s relatives.
But Miss Eastwood suddenly called off the engagement in January, leaving friends baffled as to what had gone wrong between the pair.
Stirling, a fencer and landscape gardener, had been in a ‘long-standing but not particularly intense’ affair with Miss Eastwood, his barrister has previously said.
Samantha Eastwood was killed after arguing with Stirling when she returned home from work
The midwife was last seen driving away from the hospital in her Volvo XC60 just after 7.30am on July 27. The alarm was raised that night when she failed to return for her next shift.
Her body was found during a search of a disused salt quarry in remote woodland in Caverswall, near Cheadle, Staffordshire
Describing the murder at a previous court hearing, Stirling’s lawyer said: ‘On the afternoon of the killing, various things were said between the defendant and Samantha Eastwood which led to him becoming very angry.
‘There was an argument… After a struggle, and while she was on the floor, he put his hands over her throat, her mouth and nose. As a result of that she died.’
The barrister added: ‘During his intense rage, he originally intended to cause her really serious bodily harm, but matters escalated and he carried out the intention to kill her.
‘He panicked afterwards and buried her in an area of which he had some knowledge.’
Today’s court hearing was told that a neighbour heard a woman shouting ‘get off me’ around 3pm on the day she died. The shouting then stopped, StokeonTrentLive reported.
Stirling was later seen maneuvering a van outside her house, thought to be when he removed her body, the court heard.
He then drove to his parents’ house and he and his parents, along with his wife and daughter, had a meal together while his victim’s body lay in his van outside.
Miss Eastwood’s body was later found in a disused quarry at Caverswall. Her face and eyes had been bound with masking tape and her body wrapped in a duvet in the shallow grave eight miles from her home in Baddeley Green, Stoke-on-Trent.
The prosecutor say the tape was used to suffocate her, but Stirling’s lawyer said he did it because he ‘he didn’t want to see her like that’.
Stirling, pictured being led away after a previous hearing, has shown little emotion in court