Family plead for help finding Betty's killler

Heartbroken relatives of a retired teacher murdered at her Midlands home said they are living "in limbo" until her killer is found.

Betty Yates, 77, was beaten with her own walking stick and stabbed at her secluded riverside cottage in Bewdley.

And as the hunt for her killer now enters its fourth week, her children 53-year-old Hazel Costello and David Yates, 51, have shared their memories of their beloved mother.

They said the cottage, off Dowles Road, was her dream home.

The house was designed and built by Mrs Yates and her late husband Ray, and their children said they refused to let what had happened at the house sully their memories of the happy times spent there.

Mr Yates, a delivery driver from Berkshire, said: "I want people to understand just how happy mum was there. There is nowhere else she would rather have been.

"One of the ways I cope is my parents were there in the cottage for 40-plus years.

"They were fantastically happy there. The assault is a few minutes and is not very long in comparison to what they had up until then. I refuse to let that sully my memory of my mum there."

Mrs Costello, who works as a solicitor in Staffordshire, said: "It seems like it was such a savage attack and it's very difficult to imagine it.

"I end up trying to put things in boxes so I put all of this in a box so, in terms of remembering all the things that went before, that's how I cope. I never want my mum's life defined by this because it's like a betrayal."

Mrs Costello added while her mum had been described as "feisty" she was unlikely to have been confrontational.

" If someone became confrontational we think she would probably back away and maybe look for assistance."

They made a dignified appeal to whoever was responsible, or anyone protecting them, to come forward. Mrs Costello added: ""We just do not understand why this happened. We are, to a certain extent, living in limbo. We need to know, we really do need to know."