EastEnders actress Sian Blake, 43, as her partner Arthur Simpson-Kent pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to her murder, and their two children. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Friday June 10, 2016. See PA story COURTS Missing. Photo credit should read: Metropolitan Police/PA WireNOTE TO EDITORS: This handout photo may only be used in for editorial reporting purposes for the contemporaneous illustration of events, things or the people in the image or facts mentioned in the caption. Reuse of the picture may require further permission from the copyright holder. (Image: PA)
As Christmas was fast approaching, former EastEnders actress Sian Blake, 43 and a mother of two, received the devastating news that she had a terminal illness. Sian, who played soul singer Frankie Pierre in 56 episodes of EastEnders between 1996 and 1997, was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in December 2015, after first experiencing symptoms two years prior. However, this heart-wrenching diagnosis was merely the beginning of an unimaginable tragedy about to befall her family.
After receiving her distressing diagnosis, Sian, who had left her acting career to work as a sign language interpreter and voiceover artist, visited her mother in Leyton, East London. The former soap star asked her mother if she and her sons could move back in, contemplating selling her own home in Erith, South-East London, partly to fund her care but also due to her “unhealthy” relationship with her “controlling” partner, Arthur Simpson Kent.
Sian intended to leave Arthur, but upon returning to the home she shared with the part-time drug dealer, events took a horrific turn just a day after her visit home. Arthur discovered that Sian planned to end their relationship, taking their sons Zachary, eight, and Amon, four, with her, reports the Mirror.
Read more: Thug’s barefaced lie over attack on woman as he told 999 she slipped in shower
Arthur Simpson-Kent, who has pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to the murder of his partner, former EastEnders actress Sian Blake, and their two children. (Image: Metropolitan Police)
In the kitchen, the family kept a “small axe”, which Arthur – who later confessed that “something snapped” – seized while Sian was bent over, looking at the floor. He savagely struck her head repeatedly, brutally ending the former actress’s life. Her condition had left her with weakened arms and hands, meaning she was completely powerless to defend herself against his attack.
Arthur then wielded the same axe to murder the two young boys, whom Sian was “besotted with” and who “completed her”, according to her mother’s later testimony. The evidence revealed that Arthur “killed each of them in turn with heavy, deliberate, repeated blows with a blunt instrument not since recovered, and then by cutting and stabbing them with a bladed weapon in a way that ensured their deaths.”
Despite his claims of having “snapped”, Arthur’s actions were systematic and premeditated as he attempted to conceal his horrific crimes. He relocated all three family members’ bodies, meticulously wrapping them in plastic before interring them in makeshift graves in the garden. Arthur then thoroughly cleaned his residence to eliminate traces of his violence, even going as far as “partially painting” the property to mask bloodstains.
Amon, four, who has gone missing with their mother, Sian Blake from Erith, Kent (Image: PA)
His deception extended beyond the physical cover-up. Arthur seized Sian’s mobile phone and composed messages to her relatives whilst impersonating her, attempting to gain additional time by informing her sister Ava that she was departing for several weeks. Nevertheless, police were alerted and attended the Erith property, prompting Arthur to fabricate yet another falsehood to conceal his actions, alleging that his partner had “gone to Cambridge to see a friend” and was “fed up” with her family. Following the police departure, Arthur fled the scene immediately.
He commandeered Sian’s vehicle and abandoned it in East London, before seeking refuge at a mate’s residence where he desperately attempted to secure passage out of Britain – but failed. The former hairdresser’s acquaintance refused to accommodate him, suspecting he was embroiled in drug-related troubles. Turning to another associate for assistance, he penned a desperate message: “I can’t go into details about what I have done but I only have 2 choices. Go to Ghana one way or die.”
Using a friend’s payment card, Simpson Kent booked coach transport to Glasgow, subsequently travelling via Amsterdam to reach Ghana. By December 19, merely days after slaughtering his family, he had arrived in Accra – and witness accounts of Arthur’s behaviour there paint anything but the picture of a mourning husband.
Sian Blake (Image: BBC)
During New Year’s Eve celebrations, he was reportedly “really partying” before escorting two women to breakfast the next morning. When a Ghanaian acquaintance recognised him from news coverage, Arthur attempted to silence them with bribes including an iPad and cash. Authorities finally apprehended him on January 9, when he told Ghanaian officers his actions constituted a form of ‘mercy killing’ that Sian had consented to, claiming she had “no meaningful life” remaining.
Once extradited to Britain, Arthur admitted guilt to all three murder charges, though his legal representatives disgracefully exploited Sian’s condition as justification for his heinous crimes. The murderer chillingly recounted, “I felt as if I had just been pushed off a diving board and was falling.”
He chillingly confessed: “I grabbed hold of a small axe that was kept on a ledge in the kitchen. Sian’s head was bent low down and she was bent over looking at the floor. I approached her from the side and hit her at the back of the head as hard as I could and she fell unconscious at the first blow. After that I hit her repeatedly on the head. My mind was blank and I was focusing on doing and not thinking. It was like I was there but not there.”
He received a whole life order for his heinous acts, with the judge dismissing any claims of mental health issues as a defence. Sian’s mother expressed her enduring pain, saying he was an “evil monster” and “It’s difficult to put into words how much we have suffered as a result of their murder and how we will continue to suffer for the rest of our lives. “We are all living a life sentence, we are all living a nightmare. I would give my life for another moment with my daughter.”