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Following the conviction of the 28-year-old mother of four for murdering partner Andrew Gardner, the father of her youngest child, police revealed the reason why Nicholls moved to the region from her home town of Portsmouth.

“She was told by Social Services to leave her first partner - a convicted paedophile and the father of her three older children - or lose her kids,” said a Durham police source.

During a three-week trial at Teesside Crown Court details of Nicholls’ complicated sex life emerged.

She left the family home in Portsmouth at the age of 15 and moved in with a man called Malcolm - she could not remember his second name.

She then told the court she met a man called John Peterson while working in a charity shop, and he fathered her first three children.

Nicholls did not tell the court why she moved North, only saying that she followed her mother Janet to the region.

But she formed a relationship with Simon Martin, her mother’s former partner and a co-killer of Andrew, while living at a house in St Paul’s Road, Jarrow, South Tyneside.

Soon afterwards she also formed a relationship with Andrew, her sister Christa’s former boyfriend, from Gateshead.

Nicholls and Andrew moved to a rented terraced house in Arthur Street, Chilton, County Durham, in July 2008, taking her brother Simon, 24, with them.

Seven months later she got in touch with Martin and he moved into the same house.

After which the prolonged torture and murder took place.

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Victim’s slow and painful death

Andrew Gardner was a quiet but vulnerable man, well-liked by most who knew him and regarded as friendly and harmless.

And why he stayed to be tortured to death by his partner Clare Nicholls, her brother Simon and her on-off lover Steven Martin will never be known.

However, it is thought that the love he had for his one-year-old daughter and his desire to be close to her could have somehow played a part in his enduring months of abuse at their hands.

The cumulative effect of beatings, burnings, scalding, slashing, starving and whippings – which left more than 150 separate injuries on his body – was the build-up to a slow and painful death.

He weighed just 57kgs, under nine stone, even though he was 5ft 9ins tall.

Detective Chief Inspector Mick Nail, who led the investigation, said that over his last few days of his life, Andrew’s injuries were so bad he could not physically have left the terraced house.

Many neighbours didn’t know he even lived there, yet behind the doors of the neat terraced house in Chilton’s Arthur Street, Mr Gardner was being subjected to weeks of beatings and abuse.

A post mortem examination – the first of which took seven hours to complete – found he had endured 21 rib fractures, burns to his feet, neck and back, whip-like marks on his body, severe bruising and brain bleeding.

Crude abuse was daubed on his body in nail varnish when he cried and one cut on his arm was so deep that it exposed a tendon.

Banned from eating, his pockets were torn to stop him from hiding food, which he was forced to steal from cupboards.

Marks caused by a sharp object were found on his body, described by Home Office pathologist Nigel Cooper as "a grotesque game of noughts and crosses".

Boiling water was poured over his feet in the bath, he was held against a hot radiator and scorched with a cigarette lighter.

And because he bled, his controlling girlfriend made him sleep on newspapers and bags to stop carpets being damaged, and he was not allowed to sit on settees.

DCI Nail admitted he had never seen anything like it in his lengthy police career.

"Everyone who saw him was shocked at the extent of the injuries he had suffered," he said.

"There were welt marks where he had been hit with a knotted wet tea towel.

"But probably the worst injuries were burns on his legs where a kettle of boiling water had been poured over him.

"The children were involved in the assaults because they thought it was normal.

"Towards the end I think the adults wanted him to leave but arguably by then he couldn’t walk.

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"He was incapable of doing it."

Torturer's phoney act

To her friends, Claire Nicholls was a loving mum and a caring neighbour.

During the six months she spent in her rented County Durham property, the 28-year-old kept a spotless home and portrayed herself as a perfect parent.

But inside the pitted cream walls of 14 Arthur Street, the twisted attacker carried out a brutal campaign of torture so violent it sickened even hardened detectives.

Her once blood-spattered home now stands empty and many of those who blissfully lived nearby during the abuse have left the area.

However, the legacy of Nicholls’ brutal and savage murder lives on in the haunted street through terrified whispers and frightened myths.

Many of those living in the street are too afraid to talk of what went on in the respectable terraced property.

One neighbour, who the Sunday Sun agreed not to name, said she was still tormented by Nicholls’ screaming - but never dreamed the shouts were accompanying such a wicked act.

The 36-year-old mum said: "I could hear arguing and shouting quite often but whenever I saw her she seemed so lovely and caring.

"Her kids were nice and she seemed like she took good care of them. I saw Andrew around but he never spoke. He was quiet but seemed nice.

"Everyone talks about what happened but it’s not something that people shout about - there’s still a lot of healing to do."

The County Durham pit village of Chilton is a community haunted by the secret campaign of violence carried out on one of society’s most vulnerable men.

Nicholls’ heartbroken family still live just doors away from where the violence took place, tormented by her actions and a secret they never knew.

But while she fooled her closest family and maintained her pristine public image, her victim became an "invisible" man.

At first Andrew Gardner was too in love to flee his captors, but during his final days his body was ravaged by hunger and the scars of physical and mental abuse, and he was too weak to leave.

Danny Turner, 21, a mechanic, who lives on a nearby street, said: "There’s a lot of resentment that she did something like this where we all live.

"People feel helpless that it was going on under everyone’s nose and no one knew anything or could do anything about it. We shouldn’t be made to feel like this was Chilton’s problem - this was one sick woman’s act of violence that has tarnished our entire village."

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