Police investigation team, DS Cross with PC Rose, DC Hardman and PC HuntWILLIAMS VERDICT: ON THE surface Randle Williams was every bit the successful businessman.

Self-employed, a swanky £150,000 house, an attractive wife, two expensive cars but it was all an elaborate sham.

Looking closely under the surface of the facade his finances were in tatters, his marriage tainted with insane jealousy and his business dealings were, at best, corrupt.

Lies infiltrated every part of his life as the 43-year-old tried to keep up the glamorous house-of-cards he had carefully constructed.

Det Insp Graham Hatswell, the senior investigating officer in Wiltshire police's £1m inquiry, said he found the wife-strangler to be nothing more than a showman who valued money more than human life.

"He is cold, calculated, devious, ruthless, motivated by greed and financial gain. He thought he could trick us. It was a lack of respect and a farrago of lies."

Williams was born in Winchester and during his life had two brushes with fame, once as a drummer with rock band Overkill, which played at the world-renowned Marquee venue in London, and once as a devoted mourner of the late Princess Diana.

His working life began in the welding industry but he swiftly moved to the IT business where he claimed to command wages of up to £80,000 a year.

Williams boasted to detectives how he was worth millions with the creation of Bath-based internet company Speedy Duck but the outrageous estimations hid a background of forgery and deception convictions.

Det Sgt Andy Cross said Williams created a fairytale around himself to keep up the opulent image.

"He tried to hoodwink the police and his own family. It was a Grimm tale a fairytale all the way."

Despite Williams' pleas he was not the killer, police checked out alibis of up to 15 other suspects but none had the combination of opportunity, motive and evidence against them.

Detectives plan to write to Williams to ask him to confess to the murder, so the mystery surrounding how he surprised and killed Natalie on the riverbank that warm spring night in late April 2002 can finally be unravelled.

DI Hatswell said: "We are going to write to him in the near future and ask to speak to him again. Perhaps he will tell us then. I don't expect him to respond to that in a positive way.

"We are expecting him to appeal, this man just will not accept it."

Until then whether Natalie was drowned under the water or on the riverbank before being dumped in the water we may never know another tragic element of the fateful marriage that ended in murder.

156 officers were tasked to work on the case not including officers from Dorset Constabulary and the National Crime Squad.

900 exhibits were seized.

600 statements and 55 interviews were undertaken.

1,500 documents were submitted.

The FBI was brought into the investigation to retrieve e-mails from hotmail accounts.