By Dave Mark - Yorkshire Post

November 8, 2005

He was known as a big man with a big mouth and a history of sadistic violence towards women. Dave Mark profiles Paul Dyson, who yesterday pleaded guilty to the murder of his girlfriend at their Hull home. He drove 100 miles to dump her body in North Yorkshire – then made a tearful TV appeal for news about her.

Choking back sobs and wringing a handkerchief in his fingers, Paul Dyson looked into the TV camera and spoke of the deep bond of love he shared with missing fiancee Joanne Nelson.

He told how on Valentine’s Day morning, they exchanged cards and shared a cuddle. He had gone to work, and returned home to find her gone. He told reporters he “loved her to bits” and “could never hurt her”. He looked the ultimate broken man.

However, watching the performance, Det Supt Ray Higgins found his attention drawn to Dyson’s hands. He spotted two crescent-shaped cuts on Dyson’s thumbs. The tiny marks were textbook throttling injuries, self-inflicted during the act of strangulation.

And as Dyson stumbled over his words and poured his heart out to reporters, Joanne Nelson’s body was lying in woodland in North Yorkshire, covered with branches and hidden from view. Dyson had killed her days earlier, following a row over his not helping her around the house.

The TV performance was part of an elaborate cover-up hatched only minutes after he strangled Joanne on the floor of the home they shared in Hull. It spoke volumes about the cruel, violent and deceptive man who was Paul Dyson.

Born in Hull in August 1974 to parents Christine and Peter Dyson, with one younger sister and a half-brother, there was little in his childhood that marked him out as a future killer.

Dyson was very close to his father, who, was himself convicted of manslaughter in 1967 and spent six years in prison. Peter Dyson, who was 22 at the time, stabbed John Dickinson, also 22, with a kitchen knife during a fight over Mr Dickinson’s friendship with Mrs Dyson. The fight took place at night in a narrow passageway in Barnsley.

In a separate incident, his father was involved in a road accident which left a 47-year-old man dead. Gordon Kell was on his way home after celebrating his silver wedding anniversary with his wife and family when he was in an accident with a van being driven by Peter Dyson.

Dyson was devastated by his father’s death in June 2000. Peter Dyson had worked as a doorman in Hull’s city centre pubs, and this played a large part in influencing Paul’s later choice of career.

Dyson was educated at the Sydney Smith Comprehensive School until he was 16. He attended Hull College, where he obtained a diploma in civil engineering, and later the Bishop Burton agricultural college, where he obtained a national diploma in horticulture.

At 17, he spent several months in Saudi Arabia with his father, working in general maintenance. He also worked as a gardener for some time, and as a machinist for M&K Pine, of Hull. On December 2, 2004, he started working for Bayram Timber in Somerdon Road, as a crosscut operative, where he was working at the time of his arrest.

Despite being a hard worker, Dyson’s passion was kickboxing. At 15, he was introduced through his father to martial arts expert Colin Allen. He trained Dyson to brown belt standard, and in 1995 Dyson was a reserve for the British team in the World Kickboxing Championships. He later became equally keen on bodybuilding. He began to use anabolic steroids, injecting them straight into his system.

Dyson had a circle of acquaintances, and a handful of close friends. His bond with trainer Colin Allen was demonstrated when Dyson chose to confide in him about Joanne’s murder in the days after the crime. Mr Allen wrestled with the knowledge, before telling Dyson’s mother, who eventually told police of his admission.

Dyson fancied himself as a ladies’ man, who would use his position on nightclub doors to chat up the women who came into the venues. He is remembered by colleagues as “mouthy and loud”, and would spend much of his time talking about his athletic prowess and his physique.

Dyson’s actions after Joanne’s murder clearly demonstrated his arrogance. Closed circuit TV footage filmed at the store across the road from their home in Hotham Road North, showed him calmly buying bin bags and rubber gloves at around the time of Joanne’s death. He wrapped her body in the sacks and carried it to her car, in broad daylight, before driving into the countryside to dump her body.

The next day he went to work and behaved as though nothing untoward had happened.

The Yorkshire Post has learned that Dyson had several key relationships before meeting Joanne. In 1993, he met Kerry Thompson, while they were both attending Bishop Burton agricultural college.

She told police how during arguments he would pace up and down, hitting walls, and grabbing her to stop her leaving.

In June 1999, Dyson met his ex-wife, Jenny Marie Clarke, and proposed after two weeks. He fathered a daughter, Chloe, who was born in October 2000. The couple’s stormy relationship was marred with blazing public rows.

The two separated in 2002 and filed for divorce later that year.

Shortly afterwards, Dyson met Joanne Nelson.

Family and friends recall bright, bubbly personality

SHE was bubbly and bright, a passionate and loving young woman who lived for her family.

Joanne Nelson was her family’s darling, the most popular girl in her circle of friends, and a woman with everything to live for. She longed for a family of her own some day, and thought she had found the man to share it in Paul Dyson, the bodybuilder and big-shot who had charmed her on a night out in Hull.

But the man whom she hoped would protect and care for her snuffed out her life in a moment of violence on her kitchen floor. The wounds inflicted on Joanne Nelson’s family that day will never heal. They are mourning the slaying of a girl without malice who “touched every heart she met”.

At her funeral in May, some 200 mourners packed Hull crematorium”.

A moving tribute was given by one of Miss Nelson’s younger sisters, Katie, 19, which brought many of the mourners to tears.

“Anyone who knew Joanne knew she was a wonderful person,” she said.

“She was fun-loving, high on life and bubbly. She was always the good one, so it’s hard to understand why something like this has happened to her.

“She was my big sister, always looking out for me and taught me what was right and wrong. I didn’t always take notice of her but she was always right.” In tears she added: “I miss you so much. I wish I could give you one last kiss, one last hug, but I will be kissing you and hugging you forever.”

Joanne was a talented sportswoman who was good at netball, rounders and swimming. She had been accepted by Voluntary Service Overseas to work in Ghana, although she later took up a role at a JobCentre in Hull.

She had also spent time training to be a nurse, but found it too emotional to continue. She would return from hospital sobbing at the plight of sick patients.

At the time of her death she was working at Hull JobCentre, where she is fondly remembered. Colleagues told the Yorkshire Post she would go out of her way to do things for people, and that photographs published since her death have not done justice to her beautiful looks.

The man who murdered Joanne when she chastised him for failing to help around the house bound her body with refuse sacks, carried her to her car and drove her to the remote woodland spot, before he returned to their home and began his elaborate cover up; getting rid of her work clothes, leaving messages on her phone.

When he left for work on the day her disappearance was reported, he staged a mock conversation with her on his mobile phone for the benefit of a friend.

Then he cynically turned to Joanne’s parents for support, weeping on her mother’s shoulder and telling her how he longed for her safe return.

Man who murdered his fiancé was a killer's son