CONVICTED killer, Robert Crompton issued the chilling warning: "If I can't have you, no one else will," shortly before battering his ex-fiancee to death with a glass vase.

Crompton, aged 43, today began a 10-year jail sentence after he was cleared of murder but found guilty of manslaughter after the jury had been out for more than six hours. The ex-foundry labourer admitted causing the death of divorcee Ann Walls at her home in Ainsworth Avenue, Horwich, last December.

Mrs Walls' family slammed the verdict as an "absolute joke".

Mrs Walls' son Jonathan revealed how his mother had feared for her life and was stalked by Crompton after she ended their relationship a couple of months before the killing.

She changed from being a bubbly confident woman to being frightened and confused in the weeks before the killing, he said.

He said Crompton was violent and possessive and on one occasion hit his mother with an iron when she said she didn't want to go on holiday with him. He said Crompton would follow his mother home from work and hide in bushes and tried to intimidate her despite an injunction banning him from going to her home.

The windows of her home were spray painted, her home was broken into and her dresses were stolen, though Crompton, of Norfolk Grove, Accrington, denied involvement.

The court had heard how Crompton lashed out after Mrs Walls broke his most precious possession, a glass vase given to him by his grandmother.

He then hit her over the head repeatedly with the heirloom, delivering the fatal blow with a heavy ornamental dog as she lay on the floor.

Mr Walls, of Claypool Road, Horwich, said: "As far as I'm concerned he should have been convicted of murder and he should have got life.

"We think he'll only serve about five years and when he comes out he'll be younger than my mother was when he killed her.

"How the jury could come up with that verdict and believe he was provoked is unbelievable.

"She was frightened of him in the end and she never knew when he would appear next. "She told the police he had told her that if he couldn't have her no one would and they were going to put up a camera at her home."

Mrs Walls' daughter, Jayne Hart, said she was disgusted at the verdict.

Jayne, of Buckingham Avenue, Horwich, commented: "The whole system is wrong. All the evidence was there. It's disgusting. Even the judge seemed shocked."

Sentencing Crompton, Mrs Justice Steel said: "This is as bad a case of manslaughter as it is possible to get.

"Mrs Walls died at your hands as a result of appalling injuries probably when she was unconscious. Mercifully, death must have been quick.

"It is clear that, whatever your relationship had been with her, it was in the past.

"You had been warned to stay away by the police but ignored their advice and, on the morning of December 3, went round clearly intent on some sort of confrontation.

"What happened after she came to the door we shall never really know because you have lied continuously.

"But we do know that when this innocent and vulnerable woman lay on the floor, you selected the final weapon -- a concrete ornamental dog -- to finish off the job you started. "And the degree of damage to this lady's skull was among the worst ever seen by experienced pathologist Dr William Lawler."

Crompton, who was brought up in Worcester, had previous convictions for wounding and criminal damage at Droitwich in 1977; arson and wounding at Worcester Crown Court in 1979; and criminal damage in Hyndburn in 1994.

The court heard that Crompton moved from Worcester, where he had lived with his grandparents, to Accrington in 1986.

His grandmother died in 1990 and left him a cut glass vase which was his most precious possession.

He met Mrs Walls at the Northern Link singles club and at one point moved in with her.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.