MURDER victim Ken Todd was finally laid to rest today - just two days after the funeral of his beloved mother.

Almost a month after the 62-year-old was killed on an island in the Caribbean, family and friends said their final farewells at a private service in St Mary's Church, Thirsk.

The service was held just two days after many of the same mourners gathered for the funeral of Mr Todd's 96-year-old mother Mabel.

Also from Thirsk, she had suffered from a heart condition and died last week. She was said to have been "terribly distressed" at the murder of her son.

Mr Todd was on holiday with his second wife, Bronwyn, on the Venezuelan island of Margarita when he was brutally murdered in his hotel room on October 16.

The father-of-three was bludgeoned to death by what police believe was a pistol butt after four masked men broke into his room. They stole cash jewellery and a camera.

Police on the island have been working round-the-clock to find his killers - and say it is "only a matter of time" before they are apprehended.

Mr Todd used to run Thirsk-based FD Todd and Sons, one of North Yorkshire's leading waste management companies, before gradually handing it over to his children.

For the past four years he had lived in Spain although he regularly used to visit the Thirsk area to catch up with family and friends.

At yesterday's service his son Richard proudly recalled how his father had been brought up in a house on the Green in Thirsk, where his family ran a haulage business.

After studying motor mechanics and building at Scarborough Technical college and a stint as a British Leyland apprentice in Lancashire, he returned to Thirsk to become the third generation within the family business.

After marrying his first wife, Pauline, in Helmsley when he was 21, he settled in Carlton Miniott where they had three children - Julie, Richard and Peter.

"Though Ken worked hard, he always made time for family life, regularly enjoying family holidays in both the UK and abroad, always keen to travel see new places and meet new people," Richard told the congregation.

Two years after Pauline died he met Bronwyn who he married and was on holiday with when he died.