A RETIRED shop worker from Lyneham was killed by her fiancé in a row over Christmas presents, an inquest has been told.

Bob Broom battered Joy Oakland over the back of her head with a scaffold pole and then strangled her with a rope wrapped around her neck twice.

He then dumped her body in the back of an old van in a field of grazing cattle.

Broom, aged 66, later drove to a police station to give himself up – but he never went on trial because he hanged himself in jail three weeks after admitting killing her.

An inquest in Exeter, Devon, heard that the pair, both widowed, got engaged in January 2015.

But Det Con Paul Burrow told the coroner:”It was a fraught relationship and they argued frequently.”

He said Broom confessed to what he had done in police interviews and said:”She was very possessive and jealous of my relationship and friendship with other females.”

He said he had tried to end the romance but retired shop assistant Joy wanted to ‘give it a go’.

DC Burrow said on a December day in 2015 the pair went to a field at Fenny Bridges, East Devon, to feed cattle.

He said: “They argued about Christmas presents for family and argued about their relationship. They were both worked up, shouting and swearing.”

Broom, of Millhead Road, Honiton, Devon, told police that 71-year-old Joy started to ‘lash out at him and he lost it’.

He took out the scaffold pole and smashed it over the back of her head, knocking her to the ground.

Broom said:”I suppose I must have wanted her gone – to be dead.”

He then fetched the two metre long tow rope from his Land Rover and ‘wound it twice around her neck pulling it tight’ for a minute ‘to make sure that she would be dead’.

He went home to change his blood stained clothing before driving 14 miles to Exeter’s main police station where he told the front desk he had killed his ‘wife’.

He said:”I felt I should tell the police first because that was the way I was brought up.”

Joy’s friends from Wiltshire, from where she had sold up to move to Devon said she was a private person.

They kept in contact and they saw Joy was wearing her new engagement ring.

However she told them how keen bellringer Broom hadn’t even cleared out his late wife’s clothes and possessions.

Joy told pals that she was ‘walking on eggshells’ and Broom was being ‘chippy’ and snapped during arguments.

Her friends called her on December 2 and left a message saying they would ring the following day – but Joy was dead by then.

Dr Russell Delaney, a forensic Home Office pathologist, said the pensioner had died from a combination of blunt force head wounds and compression of her neck by the ligature.

The deputy Devon coroner John Tomalin recorded a conclusion that she was unlawfully killed by Broom.