Barbara Daly Baekeland was killed at her London home by her only son Antony, who was found guilty of manslaughter and sent to Broadmoor, though he would later brutally attack his grandmother
Barbara Daly Baekeland was stabbed to death by her son (Image: Provided)
Barbara Daly Baekeland, who married into the Bakelite plastics dynasty, was 52 when she was brutally killed in her luxurious London residence by her infuriated son, who was nonchalantly ordering takeout when police arrived at the crime scene.
Her 25-year-old son Tony was found standing over her blood-soaked body. He was the only offspring of Barbara and Brooks Baekeland, heir to the Bakelite fortune, whose marriage was fraught with difficulties.
Barbara, a former model once named among New York‘s top 10 most beautiful women, met Brooks, a trainee pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force and grandson of Leo Baekeland, the inventor of the world’s first synthetic plastic. Their sole child Antony was born in 1946.
Whispers hinted at an unnerving closeness between Tony and his mother. Tony had begun a relationship with a bisexual man from Australia, which led his mother to journey to Spain to extricate him from the relationship.
Barbara Daly was a make-up artist and former model in New York (Image: Mirrorpix)
She then coerced her son into liaisons with sex workers in an attempt to “cure” his sexuality. When these attempts proved unsuccessful, accusations surfaced that she began sexually abusing him herself, as reported by Crime and Investigation, reports The Mirror.
Their relationship descended into terrifying violence, with Tony even trying to murder his mother by pushing her into oncoming traffic. The true nature of their relationship, whether it was incestuous or not, remains uncertain.
Barbara had attempted suicide after discovering her husband’s infidelity while they were still married. Brooks subsequently remarried, fathered another child, and deserted both Tony and Barbara. Tony was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Barbara Daly Baekeland only had one son, Anthony, born in 1946 (Image: YouTube)
Despite their affluent lifestyle in London, Barbara’s increasingly volatile son would menace her with knives and strangle her. Barbara’s allegations about incest stunned those in her circle, although she was also recognized for her desperate need for attention.
On the evening Barbara was murdered, Tony acknowledged they’d quarreled about a friend he’d invited over but whom Barbara refused to meet.
The dispute escalated violently, with Tony attacking his mother before fatally stabbing her, later informing police: “My mind was slightly wacky and I was very much under my mother’s influence. I felt she was controlling my mind.”
Tony couldn’t comprehend that he’d killed his mother and questioned officers while in custody whether she was still alive. Tony was convicted of manslaughter and committed to Broadmoor.
His paternal grandmother Nini Daly rallied supporters, including Hugo Money-Coutts, to advocate for Tony’s return to America. However, Brooks remained firm that Tony represented a deadly danger, characterizing him as “evil”.
In 1980, Tony was released into the care of his 87-year-old grandmother Nini in New York. Tony’s Broadmoor consultant admitted that his patient’s release had been a mistake, and shortly after Tony arrived in New York, he built a morbid shrine to his late mother and mumbled over her ashes
