Dianne Douglas’s family received messages from her murderer asking to meet up on special occasions in a bid to convince them she was alive and well.
Police were told by Stuary Williamson, that he buried his victim’s body in the garden, an inquest heard, while he convinced her family that she was alive for three years via text message.
The inquest into her death heard that Miss Douglas’s concerned family called the police which led to a missing persons investigation in October 2021. The retired community psychiatric nurse was last seen in late 2018 when she was 55 or 56. A month later, her partner Williamson was arrested on suspicion of murder.
The following month, in December, Williamson killed himself while on remand in prison. The inquest heard that during the investigation Williamson told police that at the time of the incident he “must have picked up a log and hit her with it” but claimed he has no memory of the incident, only what happened after.
Norfolk’s senior coroner, Jacqueline Lake, said: “He described how he must have hit her repeatedly, such were the injuries to her skull and the amount of blood.”
In a prepared statement, Williamson said that he covered Ms Douglas’s head with two plastic bags, put her body in a wheelbarrow and moved her to the garage, and then buried her in the garden.
The inquest heard the rented home where they were both living, in Barford Road, Colton, a village west of Norwich, was “secluded” and surrounded by trees. The former couple had met around 1986, began a relationship, then moved to a house with each other and opened a joint account around 2003.
She said Ms Douglas was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease, a progressive illness of 20 to 25 years which affects walking, talking and swallowing, in 2007.
According to Ms Lake, their relationship ended in 2011 and they stopped living together after selling their home and sharing the proceeds. Ms Douglas was then told she was on the “cusp of significant impairment” after receiving results from a cognitive examination in 2012, forcing her to stop working, draw her pension and by 2016 she was living with Williamson in Colton.
In 2017 the coroner told the hearing that a family member of Ms Douglas made contact with adult social services with concerns that “her ex-partner was exploiting her capacity issues for money”. But when Ms Douglas was spoken to she did not want to raise concerns, that she was not free to talk as her partner was there, and said she was “having a bad day” when she spoke to her nephew.
The inquest heard that there were “large amounts of money being transferred each year from Diane Douglas to Stuart Williamson which continued after she would have been killed”, and that Williamson had “little of his redundancy money left” when Ms Douglas moved in.
Her cause of death was ruled as unlawful, Ms lake gave her medical cause of death as multiple blunt force head injuries. She said this could be done on the balance of probabilities, although a pathologist had given the formal cause as unascertained due to the state of decomposition of the body.
In a statement, her family said: “Diane will always be loved by us and will be missed forever. In November 2021 with great sadness and disbelief, the family discovered that Diane’s body had been found buried in the grounds of the property where she had lived with her long-term partner Stuart Williamson.
“Between 2018 and 2021 Stuart Williamson led us to believe that Diane was alive and well through his use of Diane’s mobile telephone to send text messages to different family members, especially at birthdays and Christmas and arranging meetings and then cancelling at the last minute.
“The deception also allowed the perpetrator to continue financially abusing Diane to fund his lifestyle by using her NHS pension, disability benefits, savings and the DWP allowance he was claiming as her carer. Every day we know that true justice for Diane will never happen. Stuart had been charged with her murder but the perpetrator took the easy way out and avoided answering for his evil actions. Diane’s working life was as a nurse dedicated to caring for others. She loved life and having a good time with her family, friends and her beloved dogs. We miss her.”
