A former wife of Suffolk serial murders suspect Steve Wright has been tracked down to the North-East. Neil Hunter looks at the life of Hartlepool woman Diane Cole.

SHE gave what she vowed would be her final interview to a newspaper only a week ago.

Diane Cole said she wanted to shun publicity because her new-found love did not like being in the spotlight.

Little did she know when she uttered those words that within days she would be at the centre of a national media frenzy.

Ms Cole had been the subject of countless newspaper, magazine and television stories about her battle against illness almost a decade ago.

The 52-year-old almost lost her life to meningitis and blood poisoning in 1997 and had to have both legs amputated.

She was in hospital for six months, and spent 29 days on a life-support machine after being struck down with the illness.

The stories of her battle for life and her fight to get artificial limbs from hospital appeared in The Northern Echo.

Ms Cole also completed the Great North Run in a wheelchair to raise money for meningitis research.

Earlier this week, she told her local newspaper, the Hartlepool Mail, that she had finally found love and happiness.

Ms Cole has rekindled a romance started in her 20s with a man named Bill, who she met in a Hartlepool nightclub.

The couple got together after she used the internet to track down the 49-year-old engineer - who will not reveal his surname - in 2001.

Ms Cole said she was giving the final interview to let her countless well-wishers know she had found her true love.

"I still do get upset for all the years we have missed," she said. "I now believe in soul-mates."

Ms Cole's story after splitting with Bill following a two-year relationship could be one of fiction.

He returned to his native Scotland, and she - already divorced after an unsuccessful three-year marriage to Trevor Cassell - set off around the world as a window dresser on cruise ships.

Ms Cole met divorced father-of-three Mr Wright while he worked as a steward on the QEII liner.

They married in 1987 in Braintree, Essex, because they needed a marriage licence to get a pub - a condition laid down by the brewery.

The couple were offered the Ferry Boat Inn, in Norwich - which was at the centre of the city's red light area - and they accepted.

But Ms Cole said the marriage - which she describes as "a total disaster" and "a nightmare" - was over within a year when Mr Wright went off with someone else.

Ms Cole returned to her home town in the 1990s, changed her name by deed poll and led a single life until meeting Bill through internet site Friends Reunited.

In her "final" interview, she revealed how she put her details on the website after fruitless searches for Bill - and got a reply within two days.

The couple began emailing and after several exchanges, Bill asked if they could turn back the clock and meet again.

"He said he wanted to come and see me," recalled Ms Cole.

"I realised that I would have to speak to him and tell him what had happened to me.

"I thought he would wish he had never started all this, but he phoned me and it was electric.

"I said to him 'Do you remember how I used to get legless? Well I really am now'.

"I explained it in a jokey way."

Bill returned to Hartlepool unannounced and rang Ms Cole from a phone box near her house to say he was in town.

"I was in a state," said Ms Cole. "I said 'If you come without any flowers you can take yourself back to Scotland'.

"He came through the door with a huge bouquet and perfume. We just held each other like it was yesterday, and we were in tears.

"We just kept looking into each others' eyes. It was like we had never been apart."