Alan Baker (#2)/Alex Stewart

8 years ago
Posted in:Domestic violence, Murder/ Manslaughter, Violent Offences
1
Author: melodie
Tags: 10+ years imprisonment, 15+ years imprisonment, Aged 20-29, Alan Baker, BBC, Convicted 2013, Dating website, Deadnamed, Denigrated victim, Domestic abuse/violence, Female prison, Gay victim, Gender issues cited as mitigation, HMP Greenock, HMYOI Polmont, Lied to police, Life sentence, Male victim, Mental health, Met victim online, Misgendering, Multiple victims, No GRC, No remorse, No SRS, Not segregated in showers, Offended 2013, Offended in female space, Offended while in custody, Offending coincided with transitioning, Partner victim, Police Scotland, Police/monitoring/safeguarding failure, Prison relationship, Prison transition, Prisoner victim, Pronouns, Reported as man, Scotland, Trans prisoner advantaged over female prisoners, Trans woman, Transphobia accusation, West Dunbartonshire

Alan Baker/Alex/Alexandria Stewart, a violent male who identifies as a trans woman, was jailed for life for murdering John Weir in August 2013.

Baker stabbed Mr Weir at least 16 times in the chest at his home in Bonhill, West Dunbartonshire. At the High Court in Dumbarton, Baker was sentenced to a minimum of 19 years in jail before being able to apply for parole.

Baker, 25, murdered Mr Weir, 36, after having met via an online gay dating service. It has since been revealed that Baker abused five other ex-partners, but no reports were made to the police. Judge Lord Boyd said Baker was guilty of a “wicked and brutal” attack. The jury rejected Baker’s claims that he had been acting in self defence after he lied to police that Mr Weir had “put [a knife] in the side of my neck.”.

A pre-sentencing report had stated Baker had suffered from “emotional and sexual problems” and STV reported that the prisoner grinned while being led handcuffed to the cells to begin the sentence.

Despite Pink News reporting that the court was told “Baker had been undergoing gender confirmation treatment at the time of the killing,” their coverage refers to the defendant as a man, as does The Sun’s, STV’s and the BBC’s reports. Pink News also discussed Baker’s record of domestic violence in the context of gay relationships in this article, indicating they consider Baker to be a man not a trans woman.

The Sun also quotes sources in the jail as saying that “fellow cons in the female-only wing reckon Baker took on his new identity purely to get special treatment from jail bosses” and that Baker is going by the name of Alex Stewart.

Not to be confused with a different Alan Baker (who now calls himself Sarah Jane Baker) – another male who identifies as a trans woman who was convicted of attempted murder in 2008.

In 2018 Baker/Stewart (who reportedly has not undergone any medical transition while in prison, save for a tracheal shave to reduce the size of his Adam’s apple) was reported as winning a “Miss Fitness” trophy, a coveted sports tournament within HMP Greenock where the winner receives a goodie bag of items such as chocolate, crisps, snacks, coffee and tea, juice, soap and toiletries which are valuable currency in the jail.

A source was quoted in the Daily Record as saying “The rest of [the women prisoners] shouldn’t have bothered even entering.” “It was surreal. Everybody knew it wasn’t very fair, but nobody was allowed to say it.

The source also revealed that Baker / Stewart is not segregated from female prisoners in the showers and female prisoners are uncomfortable with the policy.

“The women inmates have had to accept that Stewart is being allowed to live as a woman, despite not having had surgery.”

“That means she is in the showers at the same time as other inmates, which some have found quite awkward.”

*Update May 2018*

Baker/Stewart reportedly formed a relationship with fellow trans-identified male murderer Daniel/Sophie Eastwood who was then moved to HMP Polmont after what the media euphemistically call being “openly intimate in front of others” while outside and “letting things all hang out” i.e. subjecting female prisoners to witness them having sex in HMP Greenock – a form of sexual exhibitionism. Both must have been in the female prisoners wing of HMP Greenock as Baker/Stewart reportedly beat female prisoners in a fitness competition at the jail in February 2108.

*Update January 2021*

The Daily Record reported that child murderer Nyomi Fee proposed to Baker/Stewart in HMP Greenock (a prison housing both male and female offenders in Scotland) in December 2020 and that they are now engaged. Fee, 32, was jailed for 24 years in 2016 after she subjected her two-year-old stepson Liam to appalling abuse before murdering him in 2014.

*Update February 2023*

Baker/Stewart featured in a Times article on 15 February 2023 in which Scottish prison authorities have been criticised for endangering vulnerable women after it emerged that four of the five transgender inmates held in the female prison estate are murderers. The fifth trans prisoner is believed to be child sex offender named Harryetta Thompson who has now been segregated from female prisoners after they discovered Thompson’s offending history.

Kate Coleman, of Keep Prisons Single Sex, said: “These are violent male offenders, all four of whom have caused significant problems in the female estate . . . including sexual exhibitionism (Stewart and Daniel/Sophie Eastwood), harassment and stalking (Eastwood), sexual threats and inappropriate sexual relationships (Paris Green) and violent assault (Melissa Young).”

This post includes a list of all trans-identified male prisoners who are known to have abused fellow prisoners, prison staff and other law enforcement officers.

*Update May 2025*

On 19 May 2025, a judge at Greenock sheriff court threw out a case of transphobic harassment of Baker/Stewart that Scotland’s Crown Office brought against a female prisoner at HMP Greenock named Jayney Sutherley. The basis for this charge, the court heard, was Sutherley’s determination to refer to Baker/Stewart as “he” or “him”. A contemporaneous account, via Tribunal Tweets, of the (repeatedly delayed) court hearings in January and May 2025 is available here.

Baker/Stewart, in cahoots with the child murderer Nyomi Fee (with whom Baker/Stewart is in a relationship), alleged that Ms Sutherley had carried out a four year campaign of transphobic verbal abuse. For example, Fee alleged that Sutherley would refer to her as being in a relationship with a man and would say that it “wasn’t fair” there was a man [i.e Baker/Stewart] in the women’s hall.

Coming a month after the UK Supreme Court ruled that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex, the judge was clear that referring to a trans person by their “original biological state” was not transphobic and that the prosecution had failed to provide corroboration of Baker/Stewart’s and Fee’s allegations. The allegations had serious consequences for Ms Sutherley as the pending case prevented her from applying for parole when first eligible in 2023.

The Times also notes that in 2023 the Scottish government issued a “rule 95 order” that decreed all transgender prisoners should be subject to enhanced safeguarding checks, following the debacle after the trans-identified male rapist Isla Bryson was initially allocated to a female prison. Despite rule 95 confining prisoners to their cells and barring contact with other prisoners, Fee was apparently allowed daily interactions with Baker/Stewart, part of an ongoing pattern of seemingly preferential treatment for Baker/Stewart. Ms Sutherley’s defence team suggested Fee and Baker/Stewart used this time to concoct false allegations of transphobia to prevent Baker/Stewart being moved from HMP Greenock. It was also noticeable that the pair only made the allegations when there appeared to be a risk of Baker/Stuart being moved out of the jail rather than when the “abuse” supposedly started years previously.

Ms Sutherley is intending to sue the Scottish Prison Service for failing to provide single-sex spaces by placing her in jail with male-bodied prisoners. Murdo Fraser, Tory MSP for Mid-Scotland & Fife, commented on X/Twitter and in a later Scotsman column that “The cost to the public sector of payouts to those forced – illegally – to share facilities with men in prisons, schools & hospitals could be huge. This is what happens when supine politicians bend to lobbyists and are too afraid to speak out.” Scottish schools have recently been ordered by a judge to provide single sex toilets (at great cost to the public purse from schools that had illegally removed them) and the case that nurse Sandie Peggie brought against NHS Fife is ongoing at the time of writing – Nurse Peggie was suspended for objecting to a male doctor who identifies as trans using the women’s changing room. The cost of NHS Fife defending their policy at tribunal has cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal fees.

Jayney Sutherley was exclusively interviewed by the Sunday Mail on 25 May, 2025 and reiterated the ongoing risk for female prisoners of facing similar sanctions to her if they’re accused of being transphobic. She also highlighted that there was no segregation for safeguarding purposes in HMP Greenock so that when she was in the shower Baker/Stewart could be in the cubicle next to her.

In a further example of SPS’s dangerous and nonsensical management of this issue, The Daily Record reported that Baker/Stewart’s criminal record appeared to have been wiped after identifying as transgender. The issue came to light after Sutherley’s solicitor requested a standard previous convictions disclosure from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal’s Service (COPFS) on prosecution witnesses, including Stewart. He was provided with this information only for the witnesses who had not changed their ‘gender’ – Baker/Stewart’s name change had apparently allowed him to separate himself from his conviction for murder (as Alan Baker), as his new name wasn’t marked up with any convictions. A new search was eventually done under ‘Alan Baker’ – which revealed the murder conviction and other previous convictions. COPFS apparently blamed Police Scotland for providing the dangerously flawed information. Scottish Labour justice spokeswoman Pauline McNeill said: “The serious lapse in record-keeping risked undermining the judicial process and it must be fully investigated.”

*Update April 2026*

Police confirmed that a 38 year old transgender prisoner has been charged with the sexual assault of a fellow prisoner at HMP Greenock – a mixed prison with a women’s wing. Media reports confirmed that the prisoner is Baker/Stewart. The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) said it would be inappropriate to comment on ongoing proceedings.

For once, the BBC managed to report the story in some depth, noting that Baker is thought to be one of two “trans women” (i.e. males who identify as transgender women) still remaining in the Scottish female prison estate. The latest figures counted a total of 19 transgender prisoners in Scottish jails at the end of Q1 2025/26, indicating that the majority of trans-identified male prisoners are held in the male estate.

At the time of writing, a ruling is still awaited from court a c t i o n initiated by For Women Scotland (FWS) to challenge the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) policy of continuing to house some trans-identified male offenders in the female estate if they haven’t been convicted of a violent/sexual crime against a female victim. Coverage of FWS’ February 2026 judicial review of Scotland’s trans prisoner policy is available here via the Tribunal Tweets Substack.

All men who claim to be women must be removed from women's prisons. This is a human rights abuse for all the women forced to share space with them.

We are thinking this morning of the woman allegedly assaulted by this dangerous man. She knows that calling the man who assaulted… https://t.co/lXQfPqjmTY
— WRN Norfolk (@WRNNorfolk) April 23, 2026