Davinia Loynton: Telford victim's brother still haunted by her murder

Dale Loynton remembers leaving his sister Davinia at the gates of Marseille airport. "We had a wonderful holiday; we had been staying in a rented house for two weeks, and spent much of our time sightseeing," he says.

"I had to go to one terminal, and my sister had to go to another. That was the last time I saw her."

A few months later Davinia was brutally murdered in her own flat by cocaine addict Kevin Hyden.

Hyden, 36, who was on licence from prison, had been housed across the road from her home in Wellington following his release from jail.

That was in September 2014, but Dale, a retired BT worker, still breaks down in tears when he thinks about his sister's last moments.

During a visit back to Shropshire, he spoke in detail of his sister and the murder for the first time.

It is a frank and emotional account of how one man's murderous actions can ruin so many lives.

"It is terrible to think of the way she spent her last moment," says Dale, who moved to Canada seven years ago.

"I had booked the flights to come over and see her a couple of weeks later, but then this happened."

Prior to Davinia's death, Dale had regularly returned to his home town of Telford, and kept his house in Trench as a second home.

Now he is back, not for a social visit, but to put his life in Telford behind him.

"I want to sell the house," he says. "I don't want to be here any more.

"I have lived here most of my life, and I have got friends here, so I do want to come back and have a holiday home here, but not in Telford.

"I can't stop thinking about it."

Dale, who is 63, remembers how his younger sister, who was affectionately known as "Dink", used to look after his house in Trench, and would gently scold him about the state of the garden.

"She used to tell me off for letting my grass grow too long," he says.

Dink had lived a quiet life at her flat in St John Street, on the edge of Wellington town centre, since moving there in 1983.

"She moved there with my mother, after my father died," he says.

"She was a quiet sort of person," says Dale.

"I wouldn't say she was lonely, she was very comfortable in her own company, she would do anything on her own.

"She loved to come to see us in Canada."

Dale remembers the moment when he discovered the dreadful news on September 20, 2014.

"I got up in the morning to look at my emails, I had just answered an email to somebody, and then I looked in my inbox and saw a message from my friend Keith," he recalls.

"It said on the title line 'Dink', and the way I read it, I thought it must have been an email from Dink telling me something had happened to Keith.

"When I opened it, Keith said 'Can you call me straight away when you get this message', so I gave him a call, and what he said was truly unbelievable."

That morning, Dink had gone to answer her door when Hyden, who had been living in neighbouring Glebe Street, forced his way in.

"I don't know why she answered the door to him, but at 11.30 on a Saturday morning, anybody should be safe in their own home," said Dale.

Armed with a weapon, probably a hammer, and some tape to bind her wrists, Hyden forced his way into the flat and tied up the petite 59-year-old in her own living room.

He then proceeded to tortured her until she gave him her PIN numbers. Once he had the information he needed, he brutally murdered her, using the hammer or whatever weapon he had brought with him to cave her skull in before grabbing a kitchen knife and cutting her throat.

She was wrapped in a rug and dumped behind the sofa she had been sitting on just moments before.

Hyden then headed to a cash point, where he plundered Dink's bank account within an hour of the murder.

An inquest heard that Dink's injuries resembled those more closely associated with a car crash, and Dale says it is the brutal nature of her death which he finds so hard to come to terms with.

Her killing also bore a chilling resemblance to the crime for which Hyden was still on licence.

Hyden had served just over half of a six-year sentence for a vicious hammer attack on antique dealer Kevin Tomkins in the Burntwood area of Staffordshire.

The killer had responded to an advertisement Mr Tomkins had placed in a local newspaper offering to value and buy jewellery. He lured Mr Tomkins to his home in Chasetown and hit him on the head with the hammer before trying to strangle him.

Mr Tomkins, who was 52 at the time, managed to struggle free and threw about £50 at Hyden, who shouted "Is that all you have got?".

Last month the National Probation Service published a report which conceded that a "more inquisitive approach" may have led to the killer being kept under closer supervision.

It revealed that Hyden had breached the terms of his licence several times, and had failed to complete an offender management programme, which encouraged him to think about his actions. He also failed to turn up for a programme to improve his job prospects but, nevertheless, 14 months after his release from prison he was downgraded from a "high-risk" case to "medium-risk".

The report also said that Hyden appeared to relapse into drug abuse once it was decided to discontinue regular drug tests, and Dale says he cannot understand why Hyden was not recalled to prison.

"He also admitted burgling Dink's flat nine months earlier, so why wasn't he called back to prison?" he says.

"Hyden was a blight on the lives of people living in that area, and there used to a lot of elderly people living around there.

"I'm sure if you took his picture around there now, people would recognise him and say 'he was a rough character'."

For all the bad memories, Dale says he still wants to keep a home in Shropshire, to be close to his friends.

"Shropshire is a beautiful county, I just don't want to come back to Telford any more," he says.

"I have been looking at places around Shrewsbury and Ludlow, so perhaps we will buy somewhere around there.

"My wife is a real foodie, so she would feel right at home in Ludlow."

He consoles himself with the thought that at least the last memories he had of his sister were happy ones.

"We spent all our time together in France, there was lots of Roman stuff in that area, and we were out sightseeing all the time. I'm so grateful we got that time together."

Report by Mark Andrews