A MAN jailed for murdering his partner was a ‘bully’ who subjected his boyfriend to months of violence, police said.

David Fielding, 25, of Lynthorpe Road, Blackburn, stabbed James Todd in the heart and left his body to rot for three weeks in a Clayton-le-Moors flat.

After he was found guilty and sentenced to life in jail yesterday, police said Mr Todd had been the victim of domestic violence.

Fielding was said to have bitten off a chunk of Mr Todd’s ear in one incident.

But, after reporting it to police, Mr Todd, a chef at Sparth House Hotel in Clayton-le-Moors, later withdrew the complaint.

He told friends that he had lost part of the ear in a rugby match.

It was also claimed that Fielding had attacked his partner with a knife previously.

Mr Todd had old stab wounds to both soldiers, and several of his colleagues at Sparth House had apparently seen one wound bleeding through his chef’s whites.

Detective Superintendent Neil Hunter said it was 'the bully' Fielding who controlled Todd and made him 'frightened of seeking medical attention' after they fought.

He said: “Domestic violence can happen in any relationship.

"Particularly in this case I'm convinced David Fielding was the violent one, very quick to resort to violence if things didn't go his way.”

Yesterday Fielding wiped away tears as he was convicted and sentenced at Preston Sessions House for the murder of his lover Mr Todd, 27.

The couple had been living together in Rutland Close, Clayton-le-Moors.

Mr Todd's badly decomposed body was found by police on September 27 last year.

Residents had phoned landlord Hyndburn Homes about the smell thinking it was blocked drains, but when a joiner and officers entered the flat they found the gruesome murder scene.

Mr Todd had last been seen three weeks earlier drinking in a nearby pub and Fielding was arrested the next day.

After the sentencing Mr Todd's adoptive parents, Osbourne and Christine Todd said the news of his death had left them 'anxious, stressed and depressed' and it had caused them 'sleepless nights'.

They said all the family, including his birth parents, regarded Mr Todd as a 'well-loved and fun-loving' person.

Although 'not enamoured' with his relationship with David Fielding, they said they had 'accepted he had chosen to live the life that he did.

A statement read in court said the family had been 'particularly distressed' that his body had lain undiscovered for three weeks.

In mitigation after the guilty verdict, Ian MacDonald QC, said his 'hands were tied' by Fielding's failure to recall the events of the fateful night.

He said: “Outside the passions of this relationship this is a person who would never have gotten into this situation.”

Sentencing, Judge Justice Ernest Ryder told a tearful Fielding: “You portrayed yourself to the jury as the victim and sought to suggest that James Todd had ruined your life.”

Justice Ryder said that allegations of unfaithfulness from both men dogged the relationship, but that the motive for the fatal row was 'unclear'.

He said a stab wound to Mr Todd's buttock was a 'taunting' injury before the single stab wound to the heart.

He said: “That was not self-defence. It was murder.

"After you had killed him you cleared up the blood - or at least you thought you had – and left his body by the bed covered in a duvet.

"You left the body to decompose for three weeks.”

Justic Ryder told Fielding that trying to cover his tracks by lying and concealment and allowing Mr Todd to rot in his own locked flat, despite returning to collect a computer was a 'final indignity'.