Funeral to be held next week for murdered pensioner Delia, 85 (From Daily Echo)

Final farewell to a beloved mother ‘so cruelly taken’

1:00pm Saturday 22nd September 2012 in News By Jenny Makin, Crime Reporter

IT will be their chance to say goodbye.

Pensioner Delia Hughes will be finally laid to rest next week – almost six weeks after her body was found in the bedroom of her ground-floor flat in Ocean Village , Southampton .

The grandmother and great-grandmother, pictured, had been killed by several blows to her head, allegedly inflicted with a lump hammer.

Family and friends of the 85-year-old are expected to pack in to Southampton Crematorium to pay their respects and say farewell.

In an announcement placed in the Daily Echo to inform Delia’s many friends, her family told how she had been “brutally and cruelly taken” from them.

It said: “No farewell words were spoken, no time to say goodbye, you were gone before we knew it and only God knows why.”

Delia had lived in her flat in Atlantic Close for around 15 years, having moved to Southampton from the Blackpool area.

Her daughter Beryl and son-in-law John are understood to have made the shocking discovery of her body just before 8pm on Saturday, August 18, having visited her home when they could not raise Delia by telephone.

Manhunt Detectives then launched a murder enquiry which saw vast searches conducted in and around Atlantic Close and Ocean Way in the hunt for clues.

Specialist teams trawled through ponds looking for the weapon and any items which could lead them to the killer.

Three weeks later the focus of the enquiry shifted to the Woolston area as police launched a manhunt for a person captured on CCTV who had entered and left Ocean Village on the day Delia was killed. Last weekend, detectives received their breakthrough when they arrested a man and later charged him on suspicion of murder.

Jamie Boult, 24, from Chessel Crescent, Bitterne , has since appeared in court and has been remanded.

He also faces a separate charge of aggravated burglary concerning an unrelated incident in which he allegedly went into a house armed with an axe.

p Delia’s funeral will take place next Friday, September 28, at 12.30pm at the East Chapel. The family are welcoming flowers or donations to Macmillan Cancer Support via the undertakers J Lawrence & Sons in St Deny’s Road, Portswood .