A FORMER Amesbury man who was suspected of being a double rapist, made a suicide pact with his devoted wife, gassing themselves in a fume-filled car, an inquest heard yesterday.

Christopher Downes, 54, and his wife Christine, 51, killed themselves in their car at Wherwell, near their home in Andover last October as a police net closed on Downes for the knifepoint rape of two women in Salisbury and the robbing of a pregnant woman in the city, all in the mid-1980s.

Downes, a driver, of Kings Meadow, Andover, was twice convicted for attacking prostitutes in Southampton in 1987 and 1990.

In 1987 he was jailed for six months for slashing a working girl with a Stanley knife, and was sent to jail for four years in 1990 for attempting to choke a prostitute and using a knife to threaten her.

Salisbury police last year reopened an investigation into the Salisbury sex attacks 20 years ago after gaining a DNA profile on the attacker.

The inquest heard that police had visited Mr and Mrs Downes on October 5 last year and persuaded him to give a DNA sample.

The couple were then found dead just four days later.

A letter found at their home and signed by both clearly stated they intended to commit suicide, mid-Hampshire coroner Grahame Short was told at the inquest in Winchester yesterday.

He recorded a verdict of suicide.

Downes was living in Amesbury during the 1980s and the police net was closing on him after a tip-off from a Crimewatch appeal on television.