The authorities "failed in their duty" to protect a woman killed in a house fire started by her son-in-law, according to a report of an inquiry.
Mavis Clift, 75, died and her adult daughter, Susan Barber, was seriously injured in a blaze at her home in Kingsthorpe, Northampton, on January 1 last year.
Mrs Barber, often terrified and in fear for her life, called Northamptonshire Police on at least 20 occasions to report domestic abuse, harassment, damage and threats involving her estranged husband, said the report.
Friends and family phoned another 12 times. But the calls often failed to result in the "desperately needed" deployment of officers, the probe found.
Mrs Barber's estranged husband, Paul Barber, was subsequently charged with Mrs Clift's murder and the attempted murders of his wife and her stepfather, William Clift, who was in the house at the time.
A campaign of domestic abuse and harassment, waged by Barber against his wife in the eight months prior to the fire, then emerged. Barber, 56, died in Wood Hill Prison in March while awaiting trial but a court heard there was no doubt he had started the fire.
The police, who had received more than 30 calls, organisations responsible for tackling domestic abuse, and mental health bodies, knew about Barber's abuse.
But "opportunities were missed" to protect her because of a catalogue of failings in the system, found the Northamptonshire Domestic Abuse Forum.
Northamptonshire Assistant Chief Constable Alan Featherstone said: "My immediate reaction to this report, like that of the Chief Constable, is one of absolute horror. And that's why he met the family last week and gave them an unreserved apology. We failed them and we failed ourselves in the standards we met, or didn't meet, in the investigation.
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"The risk assessment was a lot less sophisticated then and there was not much around the history of a particular case. We have put in place a domestic abuse unit and victims get a level of priority that wasn't available before. Above all, when a call came in two years ago, we wouldn't have been able to identify them as a known victim of domestic abuse."
