FAMILY’S ANGUISH AS I’m terrified of bumping into sister’s fiancé who throttled her over the washing
KATIE Nelson was 19 when her sister was murdered and 14 years later the scars run deep.
Bodybuilder Paul Dyson strangled her beloved 22-year-old sibling Joanne and dumped her body in a ditch.
Afterwards he pretended she had disappeared and sobbed fake tears on TV as police launched a massive search.
Dyson’s charade fooled Katie at first – and she comforted him when he came round to her home and wept.
The beast was eventually turned in by his mother and ordered to serve at least 16 years in jail.
But his victim’s family are appalled to learn that Dyson, now 45, is being moved to an open prison and recommended for day release after just 14 years inside.
Katie, now 33, said: “It was a whirlwind of emotions which brought back every single bit of pain.
“We didn’t know what to say to each other or how to comfort each other.
“The pain is always there, it never goes away, but you learn to suppress it.
“This brought it all back again.
“We thought this was a ridiculously lenient sentence for what he did before the murder, during and afterwards.
“All the hiding and lying that inflicted so much stress and pain on myself and my family.
“It wasn’t an accident, it wasn’t a moment of rage, it was an awful, calculated crime he committed.
“He’s now got the chance to potentially start a new life at his age, which makes us feel sick.”
The family are terrified of bumping into Dyson when he’s allowed out – having received no assurances he will be banned from returning to Hull, East Yorkshire, where they live.
Katie said: “We don’t want him to come back to here, but we haven’t been told if there’s an exclusion zone.
“We want to make sure no one in our family puts themselves in any kind of danger. You don’t want to bump into the man who killed your family member.”
Joanne grew up in Hull with her two younger sisters, Katie and Janie, and parents Jean and Charlie.
“She was the best big sister you could ask for,” said Katie, who still lives in the city. “She was easy to talk to, friendly and considerate.
“There were so many happy, loving family memories that I have from our childhood.” Joanne worked at the Job Centre and loved helping people to improve their lives.
“She was an extremely trustworthy person which I think was maybe part of her downfall,” Katie added.
Joanne met Dyson when she was 19 and he was a nightclub bouncer nine years older than her.
They moved in together and got engaged.
But the steroid-popping kick boxer was a bully with a vicious temper who was nicknamed “Psycho” by pals.
He also had dark secrets, which were never revealed to Joanne’s family until the trial.
Dyson attacked a previous wife on their wedding night, beat her frequently and once throttled her until she was unconscious.
He boasted he could get away with murder and idolised his late father who had killed twice.
His dad Peter had stabbed a man he suspected of having an affair with his wife and left a father of seven dead in a hitand-run crash.
“I don’t believe Joanne knew any of this,” said Katie.
“I don’t think she could have accepted that in a partner that she wanted to marry and have children with.
“We heard he would always talk about how he could get away with murder and how his dad had killed two people.
“This was just another massive blow to the man that we were willing to accept into our family, to look after Joanne for the rest of her life.”
On Valentine’s Day in 2005, Dyson throttled slightly-built Joanne with his bare hands at the house they shared in Hotham Road North, Hull. He went berserk after she criticised him for being so lazy around the house that he was unable to use the washing machine.
Afterwards he calmly drove to his mother’s to borrow a garden fork, even stopping to talk to a neighbour about a cat he and Joanne were planning to buy.
Dyson wrapped her body in bin bags and covered it with tree branches in woods 40 miles away in Bransby, North Yorkshire.
That night he called police and said his fiancée had gone missing.
Dyson claimed he had left her in bed before going to work and returned home to find she had vanished.
A search was launched involving hundreds of police, soldiers and volunteers.
Her father immediately suspected Dyson but Katie could not believe it.
“It was something I strongly protested between our family, I just could not accept this,” she said.
“I couldn’t believe that anyone who knew Joanne could ever hurt her.”
VALENTINE’S DAY KILLER MOVED TO OPEN PRISON
Before Dyson was arrested, he even came around to the family home where Katie comforted him.
“He sat there, and he cried and I cuddled him,” she remembered.
Dyson went for a walk, and Katie went to look for him, worried that neighbours might think he was a murderer.
“I found him at a bus stop, and held his hand,” a heartbroken
Katie said. “At the time I didn’t register it, but he had scratch marks on his hand.
“It kills me to think about how they were probably Joanne’s defence marks. The ridiculous charade he put on is unforgivable.”
These were the marks which police used to help prove that Dyson had killed his girlfriend. Det ective Superintendent Ray Higgins, who led the investigation, spotted the crescent-shaped scratches during his tearful TV interview. They were made when Joanne tried to fight him off.
Dyson’s mother turned him in after he confessed to a friend. He admitted the killing to police but said he could not remember where he put the body.
Joanne’s remains were eventually found six weeks after her disappearance. At Hull crown court in November 2005 Dyson, then 31, was jailed for a minimum 16 years before being eligible for parole.
Sentencing him, Judge Tom Cracknell described the crime as an “unspeakable evil deed”.
But Dyson could be back on the streets in less than two years from now and Katie wants to warn women to stay away from him by publicising the case.
The primary school teacher explained: “I hope no women fall for the story that he can be rehabilitated, he can’t.
“It’s so easy to just blend back into society. But I want his face out there, I want people to know what he did.
“I don’t want Joanne to be forgotten. Any women that he meets will be in danger, people need to know this.”
Katie said that having a child herself has put a different perspective of Joanne’s death.
“At the time I wasn’t a mum, but now I am I cannot begin to imagine how my parents have gotten to this point,” she said.
“Losing my sister the way I lost her was absolutely horrendous. And the thought that that could ever happen to my child is just heart wrenching.
“I still struggle to understand Joanne’s death, because I don’t understand how she could ever bring on such an act of violence from someone.
“Knowing what kind of person she was, and knowing what kind of adult and mum she could have been is just heartbreaking. It’s devastating that she didn’t have the chance to give more to the world.”
A Parole Board spokesman said: “The Parole Board made a recommendation to the Ministry of Justice for Paul Dyson to move to an open conditions prison, after an oral hearing in October.
“We will only make a recommendation for open conditions if a panel is satisfied the risk to the public has reduced sufficiently to be manageable in an open prison.”
A summary of the hearing said Dyson “had participated in a regime to help people recognise and deal with their problems before he had undertaken an intensive programme to address relationship issues”.
She was very trustworthy, maybe that was her downfall