Police release upsetting images of Norma Bell's torched home

The 79-year-old woman, who lived alone in Westbourne Road, Hartlepool, was a mother of nine and had fostered around 50 children.

Dack, described as a penniless small-time cocaine dealer, used a cable to choke her, ransacked her home, stole a boxed TV and £700 cash, and repeatedly used her phone to call sex lines advertised on the channel Babestation.

Detectives found the pensioner's underwear had been cut with scissors.

Dack started fires in Mrs Bell's terraced home last April and turned on the gas, hoping to cause an explosion to destroy the evidence.

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