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.
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