DETECTIVES are quizzing a man on suspicion of murdering Hampshire grandmother Georgina Edmonds, the Daily Echo can reveal.

Police swooped on a house during the early hours of yesterday morning and made the arrest at around 5am.

The Daily Echo can today reveal the suspected killer is called Matthew Hamlen – a 31-year-old who has lived in the Eastleigh area most of his life.

He is understood to live at the property with his mum, although he works out of the area.

Specialist search officers spent yesterday scouring the terraced home in Hamilton Road, Bishopstoke, looking for evidence.

Police and forensic officers also went to a second location in The Crescent, Eastleigh, where Hamlen lived in a top floor flat at the time Mrs Edmonds was bludgeoned to death in her kitchen.

That property is just a short walk across the railway bridge to the Tesco Express in Twyford Road, where a man attempted to use Mrs Edmonds’ cashcard in the hours after her death.

Hamlen was last night in custody in the north of the county awaiting interview by detectives investigating the murder two-and-a-half years ago.

The grandmother-of-two was beaten around the head with a rolling pin in the kitchen of her cottage. She had also been stabbed with what was believed to be a paring knife – something police thought may have been torture to get her to reveal her cashcard PIN.

Mrs Edmonds was found dead a few hours later at her home on the banks of the River Itchen by her son, Harry.

It’s the first arrest police have made in connection with the killing in January 2008 since the first week of the inquiry, when four people living in a hostel for ex-offenders were questioned. They were all later released without charge.

The arrest comes just weeks after police carried out new searches of the river and towpath close to Mrs Edmonds’ Brambridge home.

Following that, officers revealed they had recovered a potentially vital item which was being sent for forensic tests.

Read more in today's Daily Echo