SARAH’S older brother, Paul Davis, said his suspicions were first aroused when he told Chittock during a phone call he planned to fly out to Gran Canaria to find the missing 23-year-old in July 2010.

Mr Davis said Chittock told him: “Good luck, it’s a big place.”

“I knew as soon as I put the phone down that something had happened,” Mr Davis said.

“I wanted to believe they had argued and he had taken her passport and phone and left her out there but inside I knew he had done something terrible.

“The messages we were getting, allegedly from Sarah, weren’t written by her, we could tell.

“Then the morning after my conversation with Chris, I called her phone and got an English ringtone.

“I knew then the phone was back in this country and called the police.”

Mrs Shields added: “Sarah loved us all and loved her little dog Bruiser, she would never have not come home.

“And we never believed his story about her running off with some man called Jason, she was so kind-hearted, she could never have done that to anyone.

“In the car, when we picked him up from the airport on his own, he told us not to contact Sarah – he told us not to hassle her.

“Then I texted her asking if she was ok and I got back: ‘I’m fine, weather’s fine, couldn’t be better’.

“That just wasn’t like her.

“I felt deep down something was wrong.”

When police broke the news that the body of a young girl had been found off the southern coast of the holiday island, Mrs Shields said her world fell apart.

“That is and will always be the worst thing I have ever heard,” she added.

“He (Chittock) was violent towards her before they went away.

“It was his birthday and they went out. He had one too many drinks and ended up hurting her.

“I begged her not to go back to him. I told her they were going on an all-inclusive holiday and there would lots of alcohol and he would do it again.

“I begged her, but she never saw the bad in anyone.”