He sobbed and told lies in front of television cameras to hide the horrifying crime he had committed. Cold-blooded killer Paul Dyson even joined in on searches for his partner Joanne Nelson, giving interviews to newspapers and making emotional appeals.
Behind the act was a brutal killer who had strangled Joanne and callously dumped her body in bin bags. Now, he has been released and has a second chance to make something of his life. However, this is a chance that Joanne will never get thanks to Dyson's crime.
After 17 years locked up Dyson, now aged 47, has his freedom. Joanne's family can only look on and wonder what life she could have had if she was not taken away, Hull Live reports.
This week, the Parole Board confirmed that Dyson had been released. The killer had spent the last couple of years in an open jail and Joanne's family feared that the worst was about to happen.
Their world was torn apart on Valentine's Day in 2005. The couple were engaged and had planned to marry in the October of the following year.
Indeed, Dyson painted an idyllic picture saying they exchanged Valentine’s cards – a large Winnie the Pooh one for her and one with a cartoon girl on the front for him. He then claimed he gave 22-year-old Joanne a kiss and a cuddle, told her he would see her later and went downstairs, leaving her to have an extra hour or so in bed before she had to go to work herself.
Before he went, he left a gift bag in the front room with a surprise in it for Joanne. It was a ring she had wanted that he had convinced her was too expensive because they were saving for the wedding.
When he got home, he even rang Joanne’s parents, Charlie and Jean, to ask if she was there. Mr and Mrs Nelson rushed to the house to help look for her and Dyson pretended to be as concerned as they were. He hugged Mrs Nelson and cried with her as he promised he had not harmed her beloved eldest daughter.
In the days following Joanne’s disappearance, Dyson played the part of the distraught fiancé even making tearful television appeals. But suspicion soon fell on Dyson and he was arrested less than a week after her disappearance.
On the day when love should be celebrated it was hate that got the better of Dyson as he killed his fiancée on February 14, 2005 in cold blood after a row about washing. He strangled Joanne to death before burying her lifeless body and then callously called police to report her missing.
The tragedy of Joanne's disappearance and murder captured Hull and it has stayed in the minds and hearts of the city ever since. The news of his release will open up old wounds and spark anger across the city.
Joanne was popular, caring and loving. There was no reason for her to seemingly vanish without a trace. This was completely out of character and her family feared something was very wrong.
The then Prime Minister Tony Blair even commented, telling the Hull Daily Mail: “I extend my profound sympathy to the family for the terrible, traumatic time they have been through.” Joanne’s murder came at a time when the Humberside area had the highest homicide rate in the country outside of London.
Dyson's deception gave Joanne’s family hope when there was none - an act of evil that only added to their torment. It sparked a huge operation involving hundreds of officers and, even the army.
Divers even used sonar to search fish ponds with searches all across East Yorkshire, parts of North Yorkshire and as far south as Hatfield, near Doncaster, until her body was found six weeks later.
After committing the horrific killing, Dyson drove from Hull to Howden to fill the car with petrol. He then wrapped Joanne's body in bin liners and bundled her into his boot before driving to woodland in Brandsby, near York - 100 miles from their home in Hotham Road North in west Hull.
Dyson reported her missing to police that night. He even joined the door-to-door search for her with worried members of her family and friends.
Sickeningly, he took part in TV appearances and was interviewed by the Hull Daily Mail just three days after to appeal for help. His tearful media appeals were later described as "stomach churning" by the Crown Prosecution Service.
Police were growing suspicious of his crocodile tears but it was Dyson's own mother who would eventually hand him over to them. Dyson made the mistake of confiding in a close friend, who then told his mother. Disgusted by what her own son had done, she went to the police and told them what she knew.
Police have since revealed in documentaries the "tell-tale" signs of Dyson's guilt which were caught on TV appeals. He was seen to be "squeezing" out tears and exaggerating his sobs. A camera also picked up crescent-shaped fingernail marks on his hands that were left by Joanne as she desperately tried to claw away from his clutches.
Tragically, on March 24, 2005, Joanne's family received the news they had been dreading - her body had been found. The missing person enquiry was now a murder investigation.
Joanne’s funeral in April was attended by 300 people with the chapel at Chanterlands Crematorium packed out. The whole of Hull shared in the Nelson family’s grief.
But once police had their man, the trial took a shocking twist when, on the first day on November 7, 2005, Dyson pleaded guilty in front of a packed courtroom. He showed no emotion during the opening of the prosecution's case and Dyson's defence barrister Gary Burrell QC, told the court there were no excuses for what he had done.
On Tuesday, November 8, almost 10 months to the day he murdered Joanne, Dyson was jailed for a minimum of 16 years.
Judge Tom Cracknell, who sentenced him, said: "You lost your temper and throttled Joanne Nelson, a vivacious 22-year-old woman, who you professed to love.
"Having done so, you practised upon her body hideous indignities. You tied her up, put her inside bin liners, bundled her into the boot of a car and set off on a macabre and calculated journey to find a hiding place. You left her lying in a ditch. You went on TV and displayed a nauseating hypocrisy.
"You practised this deception upon Joanne's family, leading them to think there may be some hope when there was none. The grief and torment they went through is scarcely to be imagined. All these matter aggravated what was already and unspeakably evil deed."
After the court case, a friend of Dyson's told how the killer was "proud" of his father who had taken two lives in a stabbing and a hit and run. On Thursday, October 17, of this year, Joanne Nelson's sister Katie told how Dyson idolised his father. She knows that if Joanne had known, there was no way she would have stayed with him.
After he was sentenced, a friend of Dyson's friend revealed how Dyson had revelled in his hard man image and claimed he had links to infamous gangsters, Ronnie and Reggie Kray.
In 2019, when it was revealed Dyson was being moved to an open prison, sister Katie reacted with shock and anger. "It's is heartbreaking,” she said. “It's no time at all. To hear it was just sickening and unbelievable. I can't make sense of it. We want to raise awareness to try and help others too. We want his face back in the public domain to remind people what he has done.
“Joanne isn't getting to live the life she was owed and he could do it again. The thought of him being sat in his cell thinking he is going to start his life now. We want to let people aware he is out walking the streets again."
The Mirror also reported that the family had not received any assurances that Dyson could not return to Hull. “We don’t want him to come back to here,” Katie said in 2019, “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.”
It is safe to say Dyson will not be welcome back in Hull . Whatever he goes on to do in life can never make up for what he did. Those truly living a life sentence are her family who know they will never see Joanne again.
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