‘Moment I stumbled on horrific scene of fisherman boyfriend’s murder’

A woman has described the horror of finding her murdered lover’s scattered brain.

Scott Wilkinson, 48, was beaten to death with a plank of wood on an island on the River Thames by two brothers and their cousin. His body was then dumped into the water.

The following morning, sick with worry Lisa Lane, 46, went out looking for him, not prepared for what she was about to discover.

When she got to the Donkey Island in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, she could not find him, but says his brain was ‘scattered like blackberries’.

Lisa, who was with Scott for four years, said: ‘Even two years on, it’s hard to even talk about.

‘It feels like just yesterday that I went to look for him and found his campsite covered in what I thought at the time were squashed blackberries… it turned out to be splatters of his brain.’

Readings from his pacemaker revealed he lay dying for over three hours on the night of July 27, 2016, before finally succumbing to his ‘catastrophic head injuries’.

Lisa said: ‘I’ll never stop blaming myself or hating those boys for what they did to my Scott.

‘It was a mindless act of violence and has left his family and I utterly heartbroken.’

Lisa had spent part of the day with him after taking him some sandwiches and tea before sitting with him for what became his final meal.

Donkey Island was a regular haunt for Scott, who was a passionate fisherman and was taking time off work to look after his health.

Scott had reportedly complained about his killers, Shane and Lenny Crawt, then 17 and 16, and Charlie Smith, then 21, because they were being noisy on the island.

The trial court was told that shortly after the murder, the trio went to a nearby park and boasted to another group: ‘I wouldn’t say anything if I were you because we killed someone tonight.’

The brothers, now aged 18 and 19, were sentenced to life for his murder at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday, and will serve a minimum of 15 years each.

During the trial the siblings and cousins turned on one another with each of them blaming the other for Scott’s murder.

Smith, now 25, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 13 years in prison.

But for Lisa the brutal killing was ‘all just a game to them’.

She added: ‘I went to the trial and felt like killing those boys myself as they smirked and smiled throughout the whole thing.

‘There was a point when the judge asked them to take things seriously as they were just showing absolutely no remorse – it was disgusting.’

Since the murder, Lisa has found it hard to cope and spent ‘days on end’ crying before turning to alcohol to ease her grief.

She said: ‘It’s like a nightmare that I can never wake up from. I see those boys faces in my head 24/7.’