AN obsessed stalker has been jailed for life for murdering a workmate the day before she was going to make a formal complaint of sexual harassment against him.

Martin Corns killed Heather Jordan in a jealous rage after she rejected his advances and tore up his final love letter.

He lay in wait for Heather and strangled her as she crossed Lyngford Park, Taunton, on her way to work at a cleaning job at 5.15am.

He tried to make the attack look like a robbery by stealing her purse and dropping some of the contents nearby.

He started spying on her home and following her around after they became friends while working together as cleaners at Boots.

She had told her family and colleagues she was going to lodge a complaint on Monday, February 19. He killed her on February 18.

Divorcee Corns, 52, wanted a full sexual relationship with 34-year-old Heather and offered to marry her but she fobbed him off and told him she only wanted a 'committed friendship'.

She told him she was not ready to take the relationship 'to the next level' and ended it by text two days before her death.

He bombarded her with more than 2,000 texts and calls, watched her home, followed her around at work and became increasingly possessive and jealous.

He became convinced she was seeing a supervisor at Boots and refused to accept her repeated denials. He demanded that she leave her home and stand on her front path so he could see she had not slipped out to meet someone else.

Heather's mother, Jennifer Rigby, met Corns once for a few minutes when he came to their home, but described him as creepy.

Heather ended their relationship two days before she was killed because she could not cope with his manipulation, jealousy and unfounded allegations.

He sent her a teddy bear, Valentine's Day card and 12 red roses four days before the killing but she put the flowers in the bin.

The card read:"To Heather, the woman who puts a smile on my face and makes my heart beat faster. I can't wait for you to give us the go ahead. Love always."

Heather had only moved to Taunton from Dorchester a few months before and had few friends in the town other than her parents, Alan and Jennifer, and her brother Matthew.

She suffered bouts of depression, anxiety and self harm, and previous attempts to form relationships had failed. Her family described her as a home bird whose main interests were needlework and her six cats.

Corns often walked Heather to work at weekends from her home in Pickeridge Close to the Priorswood Co-op and was caught on CCTV with her at 5.18am on Saturday, February 17, the day before the murder.

He killed her in a shelter in Lyngford Park after she tore up a love letter he had written to try to win her back. The pieces were found scattered around her body and reassembled like a jigsaw by police.

It said: "I can't wait to spend my life with you. Hopefully, that won't be too long, my darling. Remember, I love you so, so much and always will."

Corns tried to lie his way out of trouble, changing his story repeatedly as new evidence undermined the previous versions.

He started by saying he did not leave his home in Denmark Terrace until after Heather had been killed. When CCTV showed him leaving home at 4am and walking to Lyngford Park, he invented a new lie about going out to steal petrol.

Corns denied murder but was found guilty by a jury at Exeter Crown Court and jailed for life by Judge Brian Forster with a minimum of 17 years.

The judge told him: "I have read the family's personal statements. The house is empty, their days are empty. No sentence I can pass can meet that loss.

"You formed a friendship with Heather when she was a work colleague. You were possessive and extremely jealous and paranoid about whether she was committed to the friendship.

"You clearly imagined situations that did not exist. In my judgment Heather ended the relationship and you feared she might complain at work about your behaviour.

"On the morning in question you confronted her in the park and killed her. You intended to kill her and ignored her frantic efforts to release your grip as you strangled her to death.

"You strangled the person you had previously described in your letters as your beautiful Princess. Even after you killed her, you had the presence of mind to try to escape responsibility.

"You tried to make it look as if it was a robbery. The aggravating features are that this took place in a public park in the hours of darkness, you were motivated in part to prevent her making a complaint, and you tried to make it look like a robbery.

"There are no mitigating factors, although I bear in mind that any period of planning must have been short."

During a two-week trial the jury heard that Heather had several different cleaning jobs, one of which was at the Coop where Corns worked.

They started seeing each other outside work and a friendship developed which lasted for two months.

They went on bus trips to Weston-super-Mare and Bridgwater and exchanged 3,200 texts and calls in the month before the killing, two-thirds from him to her and many checking on her movements.

He wrote her letters professing his love or accusing her of being unfaithful but her replies were always defensive.

He was controlling and paranoid and forced her to write a schedule of when she would be available to meet him. He even set up a system of 'monthly reviews' to try and push the relationship forward.

His web of lies was dismantled by painstaking detective work which showed he had lied about going to the park at the time of the killing and about dumping a black hoodie which contained Heather's DNA.

Corns was caught on CCTV going down an alley near Taunton Station with a bag and returning without it. Police found the hoodie and one of his two phones in scrubland near the railway track.