A MAN has been arrested over the brutal murder of a widow of a Basingstoke coffee merchant.

Detectives arrested a 31-year-old man from Eastleigh around 5am on Wednesday in connection with the killing of 77-year-old Georgina Edmonds. He remains in custody.

The arrest comes after an investigation spanning more than two years following her death at her home in Kiln Lane, Brambridge.

On January 11, 2008, Mrs Edmonds, widow of Basingstoke coffee merchant Harry Edmonds, was tortured, stabbed and then battered to death by a stranger with a rolling pin.

Her body was found by her son, also called Harry. He ran The Edmonds Group, a coffee merchants with an office in Paddington House in Festival Place.

Detectives believe the attacker used her cash card after her murder, and later released a CCTV image of a man, wearing a fluorescent jacket, using a cash machine on the night of January 11, 2008 just miles from Mrs Edmonds' cottage.

The investigation took detectives to Poland - a trip which came to nothing - and saw them ask 300 ex-convicts where they were on the day of the murder.

Swabs were also taken from local people in a bid to match a DNA profile of the killer.