Murder in Totterdown 1984 'Battered to Death' In March 1984 the close-knit community of Totterdown was shocked to hear that a 63-year- old neighbour from St Luke's Crescent, a woman who - because she always dressed well and 'spoke posh' - they had nicknamed 'The Duchess', had been found dead after being savagely beaten about the head in her own home. The lonely woman, who, it was later revealed, had been a Bristol Tory party worker for some 30 years and then fallen upon hard times, had suffered eight broken ribs, a collapsed lung, a ruptured spleen and a fractured nose and jaw after receiving repeated blows from her assailant's fists. She had then choked on her own blood. Next door neighbour Fred Pearce told a Bristol Post reporter: 'We are all very shocked about what happened despite the fact that hardly anyone knew her around here.' The widow, he said, had been known to take in young lodgers, some of them homosexual, and at first police conceived a theory that her murderer may have been a homosexual jealous of the widow's friendship with a lover. But inquiries in Bristol's gay community led nowhere. Police had discovered Diana Wilson's half-naked and blood-spattered body in the sitting room of her home after a friend, calling on her after getting no reply from her phone, had become concerned. They said that the murderer could possibly have let himself into the house with a key - as did this particular friend - given to him by the deceased. She had, according to friends Ethel Combs and Dolly Gould, taken in men in the past, when she lived in Kingsdown, because she was desperate for company and scared of living alone. It could have been her kindness, they told a Post reporter, that had led to her death. Mrs Combs, who had known the murdered woman for some 20 years, said: 'She was a lovely person - so very kindly to everyone. She lived alone for most of her life after her husband died. She had lots of men friends and one lived with her for about four years. She was terrified of living alone.' The police managed to trace some of these 'men friends' who, apparently, used to visit her house for drinking sessions that upset the neighbours. A couple said that on one occasion she had sat drinking on her doorstep with two men dressed only in their underpants. The landlord of the nearby Cumberland pub, Len Templeman, told the Post reporter: 'She often came in here with a woman friend and sometimes with young men.' City Tory councillor Gwyneth Hebblethwaite, who had known Diana Wilson for many years, helped add to the picture which police were anxious to build up. 'She was a kind, sweet sort of person, always willing to do jobs,' she said. Detective Jack Payne, who was part of the 100-strong murder inquiry, said that Mrs Wilson had last been seen alive on the Sunday lunchtime at the back of her house. He wanted to find out her movements after the pubs had closed (10.30pm in those days) and asked for anyone who had seen her that evening to contact him. With all of her antique gold, onyx jewellery and savings gone from the house, and with no obvious signs of any sexual assault, although she had been interfered with, police said that they believed robbery to have been the murderer's main motive. The stolen money - as well as the missing murder weapon - would, he said, be heavily blood-stained. Then police got the forensic breakthrough they needed - a palm print in blood on the staircase identified 23-year-old unemployed Paul Mullender as an intruder. There were also eight records, which a publican said he had given Mullender earlier in the day, left in the Totterdown house. The Barton Hill man was arrested at the Punch Bowl pub in Old Market and charged with Diana Wilson's murder, which he denied, although he later formally admitted causing the injuries which led to her death. He allegedly told police when arrested: 'It was the drink. I just stamped on her face. I did not mean to kill her.' In a later statement he was to say: 'I went potty. I kept hitting her and hitting her. Her face was covered in blood. I hit her so hard I thought I'd broken my knuckles.' He said that he had had six or seven drinks before calling on Mrs Wilson, who let him in and offered him a drink. He said that she kissed him on the cheek and seemed pleased to see him. He later retracted a statement saying that he had been intimate with her. But on December 18, 1984 - after a Bristol jury had been out for only 20 minutes and rejected an alternative verdict of manslaughter - Mullender was jailed for life for murder. As he discharged the jurors from hearing any more cases because of the distressing evidence that they had had to sit through, the judge, Mr Justice Farquarson, told Mullender as he was taken down: 'It is quite obvious you had no defence to this horrifying murder. My duty is to sentence you to life imprisonment.' Marks found on Diana Wilson's body, the jury had been told, matched a pair of trainers bought by Mullender on the day of the murder. They also heard that, a few years previously, the defendant had been convicted of causing grievous bodily harm. In that case he had approached a middle-aged woman and asked her for a kiss. When she had refused he had beaten her, breaking her nose and cutting her face. Born in Epping in 1921, Diana Wilson was the daughter of a gifted linguist and the widow of a war hero. Her father George, a Yorkshireman, had travelled throughout Europe as a rep for a top US company. A graduate of Cologne University, he had managed to master some 20 languages. In 1945 he had come to Bristol and, buying Prospect House in Kingsdown, had founded the Prospect House Academy, a well-known teaching and examination centre for language students. It was also the meeting place for Bristol's Linguist's Club. It was wartime when his daughter Diana fell in love with and married 'Kenny' Wilson, a US serviceman. But fate intervened and in France, in July 1944 he was killed. He had apparently stuck to his machine gun post to give cover to his unit's riflemen in an action that won him a posthumous Silver Star for gallantry. His wife had never remarried. A great opera and theatre lover who played the piano and sang, Mrs Wilson lived on in Prospect House until 1982 when she sold up because of mounting maintenance and repair bills on what was then a listed building. After the trial was over, her cousin Keith Clayton said: 'Here was an attractive and gentle person who was always thinking about her lost husband. There was never a bad word for anyone. Her laugh was like a tonic. The laughter has gone out of our lives.'