Colette Law: 'Unbearable' loss of family of woman found dead in tent in Spalding
The parents of a woman whose body lay undiscovered in a tent for a week after her abusive partner misled police say her loss is "unbearable".
Colette Law, 26, died on 10-11 July last year but was not found until the 17th, when paramedics looking for someone else checked a tent in the grounds of a church in Spalding, Lincolnshire.
Her partner, Paul Neilson, 30, repeatedly told people that she had returned home to Scotland, but later admitted knowing she had died in the tent and had deliberately failed to alert the emergency services.
It later emerged he had assaulted her repeatedly in the days before she died. Some of the incidents were caught on CCTV.
Neilson was initially charged with murder but the Crown Prosecution Service later dropped the charge.
The cause of her death has not been established.
Neilson was jailed for four years and eight months for the assaults on Ms Law and for "hindering the investigation" into her death.
In a statement, Ms Law's parents Trisha and John said: "Her loss has been unbearable.
"Our lives are and never will be the same again, it feels like we have lost a limb."
They described her as "happy and outgoing", "funny" and "the life and soul of the family".
They added: "Colette has left us with lots of amazing memories, ones we will never forget.
"Even something as simple as making the gravy reminds us of her, she would always have to make it for us to avoid the lumps of her mum’s gravy making. We are sure that the gravy at Christmas would have not been up to Colette’s standard but it is yet another memory that we hold dear."
Her parents said the last three years of Ms Law's life were "not what parents would wish for their daughter".
"All she ever wanted was to love and be loved back," they said. "She wanted to be a wee mum, have a nice house and now we will never know how she would have turned out because she was never given the chance."
Det Insp Adrian Czajkowski, who led the investigation for Lincolnshire Police, said: "Nothing we or the court system can ever do can bring Colette back, but we can see that the person who brought misery towards the end of her life, and who prevented us and her family from truly understanding what happened to lead to her death, responsible for his actions.
"I hope that they can now grieve in peace."
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