Marie Stewart | Truth About My Murder | FilmRise True Crime | Forensic Files

[dramatic music] [gunshot bangs] - When a murder's committed, it's always a race against time
to find the truth, to separate fact from fiction, to catch the killer, and to make sure that justice is served.
But what happens when the truth vanishes with the victim? I'm Dr. Richard Shepherd
and I've spent my entire career as a forensic pathologist performing nearly 23,000 autopsies.
I've learned that the dead don't hide the truth and they never lie. Through me, you'll be hearing directly from the victim.
With the aid of a state-of-the-art laboratory using groundbreaking technology, I'll be investigating a series of intriguing crimes
where, from the victim's bodies, I'll reveal to you the truth behind these murders.
[camera clicking] [dramatic music] On the day before Valentine's Day 2011, West Yorkshire police searched a house
in the village of Holmfirth. It was the home of missing mother of two, Marie Stewart,
and what they found was truly shocking. The sleepy Yorkshire town of Holmfirth was home to 30-year-old Marie,
who lived in a quiet cul-de-sac. But police had been tipped off, that she hadn't been seen for some time.
[intense music] - To start with, this is a welfare check. She's been missing nearly two months.
No one seems to know where she is. Last seen early December and we're now in February the 13th.
- [Richard] In December, Marie had unexpectedly told people she needed time alone
and was going to the Canaries for a break. - Marie has had two babies in a very short period of time.
One's 1-year-old and one's 3-year-old, and she's keeping home. She's very, very busy.
Her work life balance was difficult. Marie was possibly suffering from postnatal depression.
[dramatic music] - [David] The family had started to receive text messages on Facebook,
telling the family that she'd gone off abroad and was very happy having fun in the sun.
- [Richard] But something seemed amiss. - Marie's sister had found her passport in the address.
So if she'd gone abroad, how could she do that without her passport? - Some of the messages, you know,
"Go away, I'm enjoying herself." That was a catalyst for people to start thinking this is not right.
[intense music] Where is this lady? - [Richard] When Marie failed to make contact at Christmas
or on her son's first birthday in January, the family raised their concerns with the police.
- Marie loved her children, so it would've been very out of character for her to have missed her child's first birthday.
Such a family loving mother, why would she not be around at Christmas to be with her children?
Why had she not been in contact with them at all? [intense music] - There's something really not right here.
That was what prompted the welfare check. The police were generally going because they had a real concern about her welfare,
not just that, how are you doing? You know, it was a real concern about her welfare.
- I think they probably had suspicions that maybe this wasn't your usual kind of,
maybe missing person case. - The neighbors had been reporting some smells coming from the address
and this would probably have led them straight to the garage area. - When the police went round there
and they went into the garage, they found a body in a bag. - A body was found. It was in a Virgin Atlantic flight bag
with a carpet tucked over the top of it. And now we have a murder investigation.
[intense music] Police would've then withdrawn, cordons would be put into place,
front and rear of the house. This is now a major crime scene. - [Richard] Forensic teams rushed to the home.
- All we know at this point is we've got a body. We don't know whose body it is,
but obviously the family needs to be outta the house and an examination can then begin.
So we do an initial crime scene assessment of the house, just, but bearing in mind,
this is seven, eight weeks down the line just to see what looks out of place. Are there any signs of any cleanup of blood?
Anything along those lines? - It's the pain staking examination to say what happened here.
You would be looking at the scene, you know, what is the evidence in the top floor, the middle floor,
the bottom floor, the garage. It's the bit which is the hardest part, which is the really methodical
going through every part of that house. What's it telling you? What is this scene telling me?
- [Richard] Both house and garage appeared clean, tidy, and normal, but experts were looking for potential clues
invisible to the naked eye. - People think that they can cover up a crime scene,
but it's very, very difficult. - The next stage to deal with the garage area and removal of the body
is a record photography of the garage area. [camera clicking] We don't know if this is the attack site,
deposition site, or what's gone on. The carpet over the bag would be exhibited and then we'd have to deal with the bag
before moving it to the mortuary. So probably do some contact swabs around the handles for DNA.
We need to identify as soon as we can who that person is, and obviously what the cause of death is.
- Though the body was badly decomposed, dental records confirmed it was that of missing mom of two, Marie Stewart.
[intense music] One of the main tasks of the pathologist is to determine the time of death,
and that gets increasingly difficult the longer a body lies undiscovered. Marie's body showed advanced decomposition
and the rate a body decomposes is influenced by many factors including temperature, humidity, insects.
When someone dies, each of our cells goes into self-destruct mode. They're full of enzymes that destroy proteins
and break down the structures of the body from the inside out. Determining the exact time of death is almost impossible,
but it is always possible to give a window for the likely time of death. And in Marie's case, it was possible to say
that she had been dead for about two months. Crucially, for the investigation, this matched the timeframe for Marie going missing
and her body being found in the garage. The race was now on to work out Marie's movements leading up to her death.
So her life was put under the microscope. [gently eerie music] - Marie was an incredibly kind woman,
loved her children, lots of friends, very popular, very friendly lady, great mother, just generally a very nice person.
- She'd worked with children with special needs, worked in a care home with children,
and then became a teaching assistant where she was very valued, very good, and the children really loved her.
- [Clive] Now her life seemed to be a giving, a giving back. - She was a lovely girl.
She had all her future ahead of her and things were looking very good. - [Richard] Marie lived with her 28-year-old fiancee,
Andrew Lindo, and their two kids. - Andrew Lindo was born in Newcastle. He had a musical background, came from a good background.
Father was a property developer. - He was a music teacher. He appeared to be a family man.
He was in a band. - He was a very bright fella, very popular with friends. [dramatic music]
[gentle music] - [Richard] Andrew and Marie met at Huddersfield University where they became friends.
- He was studying music, she was doing healthcare, childcare, but it appears that she already
was in a fairly steady relationship and went on to marry the gentleman. - [Richard] Marie's husband
and Andrew Lindo were close friends. Despite this Lindo pursued Marie romantically
after graduating. She turned him down, but Lindo remained close mates with the married couple.
[dramatic music] - They referred to him as a womanizer in university. - Lindo was very friendly with Marie's husband.
There was jealousy involved there. He would perhaps have been jealous of the husband
and wanted what he had, and he set out to get it. - [Richard] As their friendship deepened,
Marie opened up to Andrew about her marriage frustrations and unspoken desires. He offered a shoulder to cry on.
- She said, oh, he made me feel wonderful and he made me feel like I was the only person in the world.
- [Richard] It led to a passionate moment between them, which left her marriage hanging by a thread
and Andrew's pursuit of Marie intensified. - Very soon the two became involved. He'd kind of worked his charm on Marie
and she was very taken with him, completely falling in love with him. And when he suggested them moving in together,
she left her husband to the shock of all family and friends because she was a very reliable,
very honest, very kind young person. She set up home with Lindo and moved away. - [Richard] In 2007,
after moving in with Lindo, Marie divorced her husband. - It seemed to be very quick and very intense
and very passionate, and she appeared to make almost an instant decision to end the one relationship
and move everything in with Lindo. [dramatic music] - Together they began a family,
and within a few years they had two babies. - In 2010, they moved into an address
in Holmfirth, West Yorkshire. They seemed to live a perfect life. Marie and Lindo seemed totally happy and in love.
She wore his engagement ring and Lindo even went as far as asking her father for permission to marry her.
And why wouldn't he give it? - [Richard] But by the time they moved house, another side to the seemingly happy couple was emerging.
- Marie started becoming suspicious of some of the things that Lindo was saying.
He'd been caught out cheating. Quite correctly, Marie was actually asking difficult questions.
Marie suddenly realized that all was not right. [intense music] [dramatic music]
- [Richard] In Holmfirth, West Yorkshire police had uncovered the badly decomposed body
of missing 30-year-old Marie Stewart at the home she shared with her fiance, Andrew Lindo, and their two children.
Police forensics confirmed Marie's body had been kept in a flight bag under a carpet
in her garage before she was found. - This will now lead to house to house inquiries
being made by the neighbors. See when they'd last saw Marie, had they seen anything else going on,
CCTV inquiries. Ring doorbells, they'd be looking at just to see other comings and goings there might have been.
- The first suspect when a woman is killed, especially in her own home, is going to be the partner or the ex-partner
because statistically they are more likely to have done it than anybody else, probably in 80% of cases.
- This will now lead to Lindo being arrested and questioned as to his possible involvement in this murder.
- But police in that kind of inquiry will look at all reasonable lines of inquiry.
They will look at other potential suspects as well. So it's not just about, was it him,
but he would have been the number one suspect until they could eliminate him. - [Richard] The race was on to find Marie's killer.
[intense music] So police first needed to establish what exactly had happened to her.
And in the pathology lab, her body started to provide answers. - There was extensive bruising around Marie's head,
evidence of some blunt force trauma. But had she fallen and hit her head or was she hit with something?
Now the bruising extended to the deep tissues and revealed a number of separate heavy blows.
You wouldn't get injuries like this from a simple fall, and this proves she was attacked.
The pattern of injuries on Marie's body revealed that she'd been struck repeatedly
by a complex object. Injuries caused by a stick will produce parallel linear bruises.
Objects like the head of a hammer produce a circular bruise, but patterned bruises shaped like a T
or a right angle indicate a more complex object that has different parts that have been joined together.
A fingertip and forensic search of the family home was already underway. - At the back of the premises there's a chair,
child's chair, Winnie the poo chair, found. They'd all be submit fingerprints, DNA, blood, hairs, fibers.
- [Richard] The chair looked clean to the naked eye, but forensic analysis found otherwise.
- On the leg of the chair there had been blood. - The pattern of bruising on Marie's body
showed that she'd been repeatedly hit by a small chair, one that had belonged to her daughter.
[dramatic music] But the attack with the chair hadn't killed her. It was one part of a sustained attack.
- She'd had her throat cut. She had blunt false trauma injuries and she'd been stabbed.
She must have been so frightened, it's unbelievable. [dramatic music] - [Richard] One by one suspects were eliminated.
Marie's ex-husband had an alibi. Inquiries with friends, family, and neighbors, along with CCTV analysis ruled out an intruder or stalker.
The only consistent person going in and out of the family home around the time of the murder
was Andrew Lindo and an unknown woman. - Obviously Lindo is a person of interest,
lives at the address. Their phones would've been seized and downloaded and searched, along with laptops
and any other electronic devices they owned. - [Richard] And police made a shocking discovery
on Lindo's devices. - It was found out Lindo was having a number of affairs with a number of different women.
[intense music] - He had two going on at the same time at the school that he was teaching at.
- Multiple relationships, multiple women. And he managed to keep, for the best part,
these women from knowing about each other. - [Richard] These affairs had started
when Marie was pregnant with her second child in 2009, and at the time she was blissfully unaware.
- Lindo is very much a high risk taker, and he's gambling with these women. [upbeat music]
He's still able to continue living this lie and doing exactly what he wants to do,
which is to have all these women pandering to this massive ego. [gentle music] While Marie was away,
going to visit her parent and her friends, he would bring some of these women back
that he was having relationships with. But he would obliterate every sight or sound
of Marie from that house so that when they came round they would think it was the bachelor pad.
- He was clearing out the premises as though no one else lived there and he was on his own,
giving a sob story about being single parent. His wife had gone off with somebody else.
- So having picked up different lovers, he didn't ever give them his address, but he would take them to the house
and simply drive around very long routes to completely disorientate them so that they wouldn't know where he lived.
They would arrive there, presumably not knowing where they were and not find their way back,
which gave him sort of carte blanche to do what he wanted while Marie was away, knowing that they wouldn't come round when she was back.
He was a fantasist and a liar. - He was actually, he was living, I'd say a double life.
He's probably leading a treble and a, you know, quatro life. [dramatic music] - [Richard] Months before Marie's murder,
Lindo, the seemingly respectable school teacher, even had an illegal relationship with a 15-year-old pupil.
- That's reckless. That's reckless and it's ego driven. He was, you know, probably trying to make her think
that he was some kind of rock star musician and she was just a young girl. - This is very much indicative of a narcissist.
Everything is about him. Me, me, me, see me, attention, wanting to be the center of attention.
- [Richard] But it was one other illicit romance in particular that caught the police's attention.
[intense music] - Lindo had met his next lover in a shop when he'd gone to cash a works check
and soon they were chatting. He said he was a single father. He was giving her such a story about the children
and how awful his previous girlfriend had been. - [Clive] He was a bachelor doing his best with two children.
And it's a hook line almost, isn't it, to get people to feel sorry for you. - [Richard] Under police questioning,
the woman revealed she was suspicious that Lindo hadn't actually left Marie and wouldn't be convinced
until she spent a night in the house. - Lindo took the children and went to pick up a woman
that he was having an affair, a relationship with, and brought her back to the house.
- He was reinventing life. He was started up with this new female, he was almost grooming his children
to have this new female in their life. [dramatic music] - When his new girlfriend was there at Christmas day,
firstly, he said, "This is the best Christmas ever." And then, when she commented on the nice Christmas tree
with the decorations and the little girl said, "Oh, mommy helped me with that", Lindo jumped in and said,
"Don't be silly, I helped you do that." What must have that felt like for that little girl?
But clearly he has no care for anybody else's feelings, even his own children. It shows the kind of mindset of this man
that he's prepared to lie in front of his children and play with their mind, really.
[intense music] - Lindo carried on inviting Marie's father and sister over for Christmas dinner,
acting as if nothing untoward had occurred. - [Richard] Lindo had told the family
Marie had left him for another man, but when they phoned her over Christmas, she never answered.
She only ever sent texts and did so for the next two months. - Why had she not been in contact with them at all?
The family were becoming more and more suspicious about what had gone on. Also, Lindo claimed to be the only person
who was still speaking to her. And if she'd gone off, why would she not speak to her family?
Why speak to him? So things weren't adding up whatsoever. - [Richard] Police analyzed local phone masts
and mobile phone activity around the time of Marie's disappearance. - We learnt through phone work that both phones
had actually been more or less at the same address at the same time, rather than her phone being abroad.
It was determined, obviously, that Lindo was sending these messages on Marie's phone from the home address
and not coming from abroad whatsoever. - He was making a trail of deceit with text messages and a Facebook page.
He fundamentally made some errors there because people know people, don't they? Parents know their daughters,
friends know their friends. - He was posting messages on Facebook acting as Marie
and sending texts to the family saying that she was having fun, but it was using a language that Marie wouldn't use.
- He's supremely confident that he's not going to get caught. - [Richard] The only people at the house
on the suspected night of the murder were Lindo and his new girlfriend. But forensic evidence eliminated her from the investigation.
And during questioning, she revealed why she hadn't suspected anything sinister in the weeks that followed.
- He'd actually placed candles, aromatic kind of candles, to kill the smells in strategic places
and one over the garage, which presumably he would've been lighting quite often when he had women round
because the body remained in the flight bag zipped up for the next seven weeks. [dramatic music]
- [Richard] Under arrest and confronted with the evidence, Lindo confessed to killing Marie.
- When the police found Marie's body, there is no way that Lindo would've been able to explain that.
- He came clean to the police in admitting what had gone on to a point, admitted to manslaughter and not murder.
- [Richard] But would Marie's body reveal a different story? [intense music] The sleepy village of Holmfirth,
scene of a brutal crime in December, 2011. Police in Yorkshire suspected Andrew Lindo
of murdering his fiancee, Marie Stewart. He had already confessed to hitting her
over the head with a child's chair. But Lindo claimed it was spur of the moment,
manslaughter, not murder. [dramatic music] - They'd had an argument one night and he just lost control, were his words.
Basically it just went from there. [chair banging] - It was a sustained attack over three floors of a house,
which certainly started on the top floor, the bedroom area. - And all this is going on
while their own children are asleep. - [Richard] The postmortem revealed Marie had been repeatedly beaten
with a child's chair. And despite efforts to clean the scene, forensics proved this happened upstairs.
Lindo's girlfriend corroborated this. - She noticed like stains and like Vanish or some product had been used to sort of clear these stains.
- [Richard] But this violent beating didn't account for all the injuries on Marie's broken body.
The postmortem revealed more of the horror of that night. As well as the blunt force injuries to her head,
there was also evidence that Marie had been strangled. Evidence of strangulation
is found in the larynx in the neck. The larynx is a group of three cartilages that form the Adam's apple,
and they provide the structure for the muscles of speech and swallowing. When force is applied to the neck,
the delicate spikes get broken and evidence of strangulation can be identified. Below the larynx is the windpipe,
and this is kept open by hoops of cartilage so it's very strong and very difficult to compress,
to stop air passing through it. More usually, strangling compresses the vagus nerve in the neck
and the vagus nerve passes from the brain to the heart and helps control the heartbeat.
So compression of the neck compromises that nerve, making the heart slow down and beat irregularly
and can cause people to lose consciousness. So he may have thought he killed her, but he hadn't.
Under police interview, Lindo gave his version of events. - He was sitting on top of her, she spat in his face.
He got incredibly angry and just started to manually strangle her. - Strangulation is very, very common in controlling people.
It's very personal. It's very stare into your eyes. I'm doing this to you and I want you to know I'm doing this to you.
It's an incredibly personal violence, but it does take a little bit of time. It's not quick, and Marie would've fought.
[dramatic music] - He had rendered her unconscious, wrapped her into a rug, put her into a suitcase,
started to take her downstairs, but she started making the noise in the suitcase.
Got her out again, attacked her with a Winnie the Pooh chair, causing injuries to the head
and used his belt to try and strangle her again. Again, rendered her unconscious.
- [Richard] Police recovered the suitcase and rug and forensics found Marie's blood and DNA on them.
But it took further analysis of Marie's body to lead them to the belt. - At the post-mortem,
Marie's neck was clearly had bruising on it from fingers, and then we know that a belt was used.
The markings may not have been totally clear at the time, but you can use something called light source,
which is a spectrum of light, which enhances what the naked eye can't see. This can then be photographed, measured,
and then you've got an idea of the width for the belt that you'd be looking for in the address.
They found his DNA, her blood on it. - [Richard] The evidence against Lindo was strong and building.
- The attack came as a total shock to Marie. She was not expecting this level of violence.
Cannot imagine what she must have feeling like at this time to be attacked in the bedroom.
She's put up an incredible fight to be attacked twice there. She must have been so frightened,
but she was still alive at this point. Took her down three flights of stairs. Next thing she finds herself in the garage,
fighting for her life, fighting for her children. It's unbelievable. In the garage, he wrapped her head in bubble wrap,
stabbed, slit her throat and stabbed her 12 times. - The most ferocious attack, you could argue,
with the bubble wrap and then the knife was downstairs. So you know, this was like the end of a sustained attack.
- [Richard] After the attack, evidence from Lindo's phone and new girlfriend revealed his next calculating steps.
- After the attack, Lindo has text his current girlfriend that he may be a little bit late picking her up,
which is absolutely so cold and calm in his manner about this. He then wakes up his two children who are fast asleep,
puts them in the car to go and get his girlfriend who stays the night three floors up from where the body is.
- This is some person that could actually kill the mother of his children while the children are asleep in bed,
go and pick up his latest lover, take her to his house, and have sex with her. - His behavior tells us quite a lot about him.
He's somebody who doesn't suffer with shame or remorse or guilt. He doesn't question his own behaviors.
[dramatic music] - [Clive] It's macabre. [intense music] - [Richard] The two month gap
between the murder and the discovery of the body gave Lindo plenty of time to try and cover his tracks.
- He's had seven weeks now to clean up nothing obvious in blood maybe, but so hard to clean every piece of blood.
With the action of a knife constantly stabbing, you're gonna have blood flicking off the knife
landing on items, whether it be the wall, the ceiling of the garage, other items that are in there.
May have been quite a bit on the floor that he has tried to clean. - [Richard] What's known as luminol examination
took place in the garage. - Luminol is a chemical that reacts with blood spray it along all items and walls
and in a dark area it fluoresces blue. This can then be photographed and tested to see if it is blood.
- [Richard] This confirmed the garage as the final murder and deposition scene. [intense music]
But despite having admitted to manslaughter, Lindo kept lying to the police, trying to justify the murder of Marie.
- He's got to do anything, say anything, that's going to mitigate him being found
with the body in the house. He's really in a difficult place. So he starts to denigrate Marie.
All he can say really is, I was annoyed with her about the way she treated the children.
Let's try and blacken her character in any way that we can. - The fact that he could kill her,
deprive the children of their mother, shows the kind of person we're dealing with,
as well as the method that he used. And then the victim blaming and shaming, which he did all the way along.
Oh, she belittled me, you know. And that in itself, you know, picking on flaws in her,
is kind of like dehumanizing her before he actually murders her. So he doesn't see her as this person anymore.
- It could be he enjoyed violence, he actually enjoyed meting out the violence. You know, a lot of these type of people
will strangle and then let you breathe again so they can do it all again. - So this was like the work of a psychopath, basically.
How could he do this? Well, that's exactly why I've said, he could only do that because he was able to do that,
and that says a lot about his psychopathology. Clearly he has no care for anybody's else's feelings,
even his own children. [intense music] - [Richard] Andrew Lindo was charged with killing his fiancee, Marie.
But was this really manslaughter or could Marie's body prove it was cold blooded, calculated murder?
- He was absolutely determined that Marie was going to die. [dramatic music] - [Richard] In 2011, Yorkshire police had arrested
and charged 28-year-old Andrew Lindo with the brutal murder of his fiancee and mother of their two young children, Marie Stewart.
Her body revealed she'd been beaten, then strangled and more. Her body showed multiple stab wounds
suggesting a sustained attack. - He wanted her dead and he was going to achieve that.
- [Richard] Marie's decomposing body was found in a flight bag in the garage seven weeks after the murder.
Evidence proved that Lindo had created a false digital trail to throw people off the scent.
- I can't imagine how cruel and how awful this must have been for the family sending text messages and Facebook messages
to try and back up his tissue of lies. - [Richard] The truth was that Lindo was a serial cheat
who'd had a string of illicit affairs. - He's somebody who doesn't suffer with shame or remorse or guilt.
He doesn't question his own behaviors. - [Richard] Police believed he'd killed Marie
to carry on a new life with a new partner. - He probably would've presented to other people
during that time as perfectly normal. - But Marie's post-mortem showed his actions had been anything but normal.
In the garage, Lindo stabbed Marie 12 times. But the blow that killed her was this stab wound to the neck.
The neck is a very complex area of the body, full of major blood vessels and nerves and other structures.
The carotid arteries pass up carrying blood to the brain and the jugular veins pass back down,
returning that blood to the heart. Severing any one of these major blood vessels,
causes immediate severe blood loss. And within minutes, the heart will be unable
to pump enough blood around the body to sustain life. After everything her body had been put through and survived,
it was this stab wound to the neck that finally sealed Marie's fate. Lindo had confessed to the killing,
but claimed it was spur of the moment manslaughter, not murder, which carried a much higher sentence.
- If you look at the way that she died, it seems completely disorganized. That doesn't mean it wasn't planned in some way.
- [Richard] It would now be for a court to decide. Seven months after his arrest,
Lindo finally faced justice in Bradford Crown Court. He pleaded not guilty to Marie's murder.
- He showed absolutely no remorse at all in court and the family had to sit and listen to everything that had gone on in that case
because he didn't plead guilty. So they were forced to sit through it and then he would come on
with these mock crocodile tears as if he was really upset. Sympathy, sympathy, look at me,
while all the time putting her family through the awful detail of what had happened
of her murder, was utterly sickening. - [Richard] The prosecution team put forward their theory that Lindo had killed Marie
after she uncovered his infidelity. - She was thinking about leaving him and she probably told him that.
And we know that in most intimate partner homicides, that is the trigger. You know, over 90% of cases, that is the trigger.
Unlike the other women in Lindo's life, Marie was living with him. She was the mother of his children.
And that puts her in a much more dangerous position than them because he thinks he actually owns her.
At the point that Marie says, "You don't own me, I'm leaving', that's when she is in
the most danger she's ever been in her life, but she probably didn't know that. [intense music]
And when he realized she was not budging, that's when he would've killed her. - [Richard] In court, Lindo didn't take the stand,
but his defense argued he'd lost control after being provoked by Marie. - This chap's saying that this was just a one-off really.
Don't know, lost me temper for about 10 seconds and well now, hold up. That evidence shows a sustained, a very planned,
a very cold, a very methodical attack. - At the trial Lindo's fighting for his life.
He's trying, at the very least, to get a manslaughter charge rather than a murder charge.
So he's just throwing everything at this now, everything. It's really, really common.
How do I get out of this? This is survival now. - [Richard] Lindo claimed he was acting to protect his daughter.
- Lindo basically tried to put up a defense that he was worried about Marie attacking his daughter.
- So he starts denigrating Marie and saying she's a bad mother and that, you know, she's this flaky person
and she couldn't be trusted. - Lindo's basically blamed Marie for her own death because he said she was being very cruel to their daughter,
which was completely untrue. She was a very, very good mother. - [Richard] There was no physical evidence of child cruelty,
no reports to social services. And everyone who knew Marie could testify that this was a wicked lie.
- Everyone who knew her knew that she would never do that. If he was cleverer, if he was more intuitive,
he would've chosen an explanation that actually fitted with Marie's personality.
He couldn't do that, and he dug his own grave, as it were. [dramatic music] - [Richard] Marie's battered body
proved this was no flash of anger. He'd planned to kill her, strangling, beating, suffocating, stabbing.
At each stage he could have stopped and saved her life, but he didn't. - That's where the pathology report
basically becomes very important, It's the powerful evidence that this wasn't just a one-off attack.
[intense music] - [Richard] After a two week trial, the jury took just 55 minutes to return their verdict.
Lindo was found guilty of Marie Stewart's murder. [gavel thumps] - Lindo was sentenced to 22 years in prison
before parole could be considered. It was a sustained, brutal, terrible attack on a kind, loving woman.
- I really hope that Marie will be remembered for what she was, which was a very kind, loving person
who was a credit to our society. And I hope that Lindo will be condemned forever
as the wicked manipulator that he is. - There are eight stages in this journey towards an intimate partner homicide.
So the first stage is about the controlling person, 'cause this is all about control.
Second stage is when this person meets somebody they want to be in a relationship with.
Generally that relationship will start very, very quickly and it will be very, very intense.
Third stage is when these two people are in a committed relationship and that will be dominated by controlling patterns.
Now the next stage is where things start to get more dangerous. We call the fourth stage the trigger stage.
Something happens to make the risk suddenly shoot up. Well, this person imagines this person might leave them.
Stage five is when they escalate all of their behaviors to try and claw the control back
so that this person doesn't leave or cannot leave. Stage six, this is where they start to think,
right, I can't get the control back, so I'm gonna punish this person for daring to leave me.
Stage seven is the planning stage. How am I gonna do this? And stage eight is the homicide.
When I think about Marie and what happened to her, I can see those stages playing out in her life
and her relationship in, well, in almost the classic way. - This is clearly a very dangerous man.
If he hadn't been caught at this point, I have absolutely no doubt that he'd have been able to continue murdering.
- Lindo killed his fiancee Marie in a series of brutal assaults that began in their bedroom
not far from where their young children slept and continued down to the garage. Not only had he tried to strangle Marie
and hit her over the head with a blunt object, he'd also stabbed her multiple times
with a wound to the neck finally proving fatal. While Andrew Lindo tried to cover up this terrible crime
by hiding Marie's body in the garage, in the end, he couldn't escape justice because her body revealed the truth about her murder.
[dramatic music]

The second series of the true crime documentary concludes with Dr Richard Shepherd examining the murder of Marie Stewart whose partner left her to decompose in the garage.

In The Truth About My Murder, Dr. Richard Shepherd showcases a state-of-the-art digital autopsy table featuring digitally scanned sample bodies to investigate a series of intriguing murders where the victims' bodies help reveal the truth behind horrific crimes.

For More FilmRise Check Out Our Other Channels: FilmRise Television: https://www.youtube.com/⁨@FilmRiseTelevision⁩ FilmRise Movies: https://www.youtube.com/@FilmRiseMovies Highway to Heaven - Full Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@HighwaytoHeavenFullEpisodes

Brief Summary

Marie Stewart was murdered by fiancé Andrew Lindo, whose infidelity and deceit led to a brutal attack revealed through forensic evidence.

Key points

The Shocking Discovery. Police find a body in a bag during a welfare check on Marie Stewart.
A Race Against Time. Investigators must uncover the truth behind Marie's disappearance and death.
The Double Life of Andrew Lindo. Marie’s fiancé, Andrew Lindo, is revealed to have been living a dangerous double life.
The Brutal Confession. Lindo confessed to killing Marie, claiming it was manslaughter, not murder.
The Evidence Unfolds. Police discovered Marie's body, revealing a horrific scene of violence.
The Trial of Andrew Lindo. Lindo faced justice in court, pleading not guilty to murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

There’s something really not right here.

The police's realization during the welfare check.

3:30WatchFeb 14, 2026

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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