HEARTBROKEN family members spoke of their grief as the man who killed a Bradford-raised beauty therapist was locked up for life.

Builder Adrian Michael Rodi, 50, strangled beauty therapist Angela Rider, 51, on March 4, the fourth time he had violently attacked her, Kama Melly QC , prosecuting, told Leeds Crown Court.

He sat impassively as the barrister told how Rodi had previously strangled the property owner in Greece and pushed her face into a pillow during their honeymoon in Thailand.

Angela was brought up in Baildon before moving to Allerton, where she attended Rhodesway Upper School, but had since moved to Cawood, near Selby, North Yorkshire.

In personal statements, her mother Wendy Brown said: “I could die of a broken heart” and in a voice breaking with emotion, her sister Tracy Mills said: “I feel like half of me has gone.”

Her daughter Sarah said: “Adrian Rodi stole my mother from many people’s lives.”

After Rodi was convicted in 2014 of causing actual bodily harm to Ms Rider by strangling her until she blacked out, an incident that happened in Britain, the then Recorder of York, Judge Stephen Ashurst, praised her for her magnanimity because she said Rodi needed help for his mental illness. Judge Ashurst sectioned Rodi under the Mental Health Act.

Miss Melly said he was released within months with instructions to take medication to prevent him getting ill again, but did not do so and did not work with a community mental health team.

His mental illness worsened until the day he killed Ms Rider, laid her out on a sofa in her home in Chestnut Road, Cawood, rang the police to say what he had done and fled to the Lake District.

Arrested within hours in a car park on suspicion of murder, he said: “There is no ‘suspicion’ of murder.”

Judge Tom Bayliss QC told Rodi: “You must have known perfectly well what you did when unwell in 2014. Although you were told to take medication, you chose not to.”

He jailed Rodi for life with a hospital order.

Rodi will start his sentence in Newton Lodge secure psychiatric unit, West Yorkshire, before being transferred when better to serve the rest of his sentence. He must spend at least nine years and 114 days behind bars. He will not be released until he is no longer deemed a danger to women and doctors believe he no longer needs hospital treatment.

Rodi, of Chestnut Road, Cawood, pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Psychiatrists said he suffered from severe depression with psychosis.