Her relationship was on the rocks, but as he drove her to her cancer operation, Sian Rees felt no reason to fear her boyfriend….
It was June 30, 2011. Looking out at the dramatic Dartmoor scenery, as her boyfriend drove her to the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, Sian Rees' head was spinning. The fifty-year-old Rees worked for a solicitors firm in Okehampton, and for 14 years had lived nearby with property developer, John Doyle. John dropped her at the hospital and said he would pick her up when she was discharged later that day.
To outsiders, Sian appeared to have it all. But, in fact, life for Sian at that point was very tough. She was about to have a cancerous lump removed from her breast and she worried constantly about her weight. But Sian’s main problem was that she had become so sick of John Doyle, 53, that she'd been looking for love on the internet.
Where had everything gone so horribly wrong?
She had first met John on the Wirral in 1997, having used a dating agency. In those days, John was a charity fundraiser. He had returned to Britain following the break-up of his marriage to Gina Doyle, in Western Australia.
Sian and John soon became lovers, and they did up six properties together in Cheshire, before moving to Devon. There, they bought Merton Mill as a conversion project and agreed that Sian would earn a living, while John renovated the property.
But, by 2010, their relationship was rocky. John had been depressed and his renovations had slackened off, while Sian had been worried about her weight, which was hitting 15 stone. Sian told her best friend since university days, fellow lawyer Marion Boyle, that she and Doyle were not 'making each other happy any more’. She also revealed that she'd met a dentist, David Protheroe, on an internet message board. Despite only knowing her by her pseudonym, 'Sindy Sox', and never having met her, Protheroe had invited her to join him in the light aircraft he owned and piloted. Sian was keen to do this but was determined to slim down first before she met him.
It was not long before John found out about Sian’s platonic relationship with David Protheroe and in early 2011, they had a huge row. Although they made up and went away for some weekends together to Porlock and Bath, nothing rekindled Sian’s fire. She moaned to her secretary that John hadn't made enough progress on the mill and she 'was sick of living on a building site’. She also confided to a pedicurist that once John had finished the conversion, she wanted to 'start a new life without him' back near her South Wales roots in Aberdare.
But, first she had her breast cancer op to worry about….
Later that day, groggy after surgery, Sian waited at the hospital for John to collect her. He was half an hour late and when he did finally turn up, Sian realised that he was very drunk. Before he came to pick her up, John had downed five pints of lager in the Ship Pub, Exeter.
Angry that John was too drunk to drive, and despite having had a general anaesthetic, Sian took the wheel. As far as she was concerned, this was the final straw. On the way home, she stopped in Okehampton and booked a room in the White Hart Hotel, snapping at David that she was only going home to pack.
Arriving back home to Merton Mill, the couple had a volcanic row which culminated in John stabbing Sian with a four-inch blade which penetrated five inches into her abdomen.
While she lay injured on the slate floor, Doyle then throttled her with a leather bra he'd made for her. She struggled hard to fight back but John finally killed her by strangling her with his bare hands.
At first, John thought Sian was just unconscious. Piling her into his van, he set off for Okehampton Hospital, claiming later that he didn't call 999 because he feared the ambulance would never find the remote property. But on the way, he then saw that Sian was dead, so he turned back and went back to the Mill for the night.
The next morning he set off in the van again with Sian's cold corpse strapped into the passenger seat. Whether he was going to the hospital, as he claimed, or trying to dispose of her body, John never reached his destination. In his haste, he hit a traffic island and punctured a tyre. He continued to drive until the rubber tyre disintegrated and he was running on the metal rim of the wheel. Finally, on the A386, he crashed on to the top of a bank near Hatherleigh, West Devon.
Travelling in the opposite direction with her partner, Emma Denton, a nurse, witnessed the crash and stopped. Seeing that Doyle was trying to pull Sian’s body from the van, she rushed to check her pulse but it became clear to Emma that Sian was dead.
Later she recalled that when she told John that Sian was dead, ‘He looked at me in a strange way and that was it. There was no emotion, nothing. It was like he was staring into a brick wall....He was looking at me as if he knew he had done something wrong and was trying to do something about it.’
Called to the crash scene, Home Office forensic pathologist Dr Russell Delaney, who examined Sian's body, said: ‘Rigor mortis was fully developed and the body was cold to the touch. It indicated that she had been dead for a number of hours before the body was discovered.’
Dr Delaney listed 40 different injuries to Sian's body, including pin point bruises on her eyelids, suggestive of slow asphyxiation. Her voicebox had also been fractured.
In the footwell of the van was the kitchen knife used to stab her in the stomach, a leather tan-coloured bra and some shoes.
Arrested and charged with Sian’s murder, John Doyle appeared at Exeter Crown Court. He pleaded not guilty.
Telling the court how Doyle was caught, prosecutor Paul Dunkels QC said, ‘He was on his way to dispose of her body and implements he may have used on her and he was only stopped from doing that when he crashed his vehicle.... ‘He knew one thing: he had to try and get rid of the body of the woman he had murdered before anyone found out what he had done.’
Describing the murder, Paul Dunkels said, ‘It must have been a frightening and painful ordeal for Sian.’
Insisting that Sian’s death was an accident, John Doyle, who admitted he'd been taking Viagra for 'erection problems’, claimed they'd made love on the morning of Sian's murder.
Denying that she'd intended to leave him, he added: ‘Trying to improve our relationship was like climbing the North Face of the Eiger but I felt everything was coming together.’
Admitting she was furious after he'd arrived at the hospital drunk, Doyle claimed that, back at the Mill, she'd started slashing a leather bra with a knife. Doyle claimed he told her to drop it and they struggled. 'She was angry and quite hysterical,’ he said, ‘and screaming at me.’
He claimed that he managed to get the knife from her and dropped it, but she then pushed forward and he held her off with his left hand to her throat. ‘I grabbed her,’ he said, ‘and gripped her neck and pushed her back towards the Raeburn [stove]. I grasped and squeezed her neck as I pushed her back... She was still coming at me at that point. Her left arm was hitting me. I don't know if she tripped over a table leg but she fell over.
‘I had my left hand on her throat as we fell forward between the glass table and the butcher's block. I landed on her with my hand on her throat...I was trying to stop the struggle when I put my hand out. The idea was to get her to put the knife down and then pull her into me.
‘I accept I caused her death. I did not mean for the knife to go into her. It was an accident.’
Insisting that he'd then put Sian in the van to drive her to hospital, on both occasions, he sobbed. ‘I had stopped in a gateway and I knew she was dead. She was cold. I touched her face, her arm and her neck. She was not breathing.
‘After that I have no memory of that journey. I just drove. I had no intention of dumping her body.’
The jury of four men and eight women saw through John Doyle's crocodile tears. At the end of a two-week trial they delivered a unanimous guilty verdict.
Sentencing Doyle to life, with a minimum term of 16 years, Judge Graham Cottle told him: ‘You stand convicted of the brutal murder of Sian Rees....It was not premeditated but your objective was clear.
‘The defence you advanced of self-defence was a preposterous claim in the circumstances.’
Only after the verdict did the judge allow it to be disclosed that Doyle, similarly fuelled by jealousy, had tried to strangle his wife, Gina, 22 years earlier. Still possessive, after their marriage had broken down in 1986, in a drink fuelled rage, on New Year's Day 1989, he broke into her flat in Wanneroo, attacking her and her new partner as they slept.
After assaulting her boyfriend, he punched Gina 20 times, and throttled her, only fleeing after being interrupted by his stepdaughter Michelle and a teenage babysitter.
Gina told police that Doyle had grabbed her around the throat and started squeezing. ‘I managed to say ”don't kill me”, and I kicked at John and got him in the stomach.
‘I was on my last breath and thought I was going to pass out when he let me go and went. At one point I thought he was going to kill me.’
Arrested and charged, John admitted causing his ex-wife actual bodily harm and was punished with community service.
Now, as John Doyle serves his sentence, Sian Rees' friends can finally grieve for her, knowing that at least other women are now safe from the serial strangler. Her mates Marion Boyle and Sally Griffiths said of Doyle after the trial: ‘Every devious step he took after killing Sian was aimed at hiding evidence and concealing the truth. He has shown no remorse for his actions and clearly feels none.
‘Sian was a loving, compassionate, generous, clever and funny friend and colleague, whose untimely death leaves a huge gap in the lives of those who knew her.’
END