Police chief 'forgiven' by widow

4:48am Tuesday 7th October 2008

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The widow of police chief Michael Todd said she has "forgiven" him after his inquest heard his tangled love life led to his death.

Depressed and suicidal, the former chief constable of Greater Manchester Police sent a text message asking for forgiveness in "another life" as he downed gin and pills.

After his wife discovered his affair with another woman, the 50-year-old surfed internet suicide websites before venturing on to a snowy mountainside in minus 18C temperatures where he drank alcohol and took the sleeping drug Nytol.

Possibly hallucinating, he took his clothes off, a sign of hypothermia and eventually drifted into sleep, dying of exposure, North West Wales coroner Dewi Pritchard Jones concluded.

The father of three was found face-down in the snow, frozen to death the next day, March 11, at Bwlch Glas, near the summit of Mount Snowdon, following a futile rescue search.

After the hearing, Mrs Todd, 47, said: "In his last email to me Michael said 'I really am so sorry for all the hurt I have caused you. I just hope that you will be able to forgive me at least in part some day'. I have forgiven him and Michael's family have forgiven him. The tragedy is that Michael never felt able during his career to seek the help he badly needed and he never knew that we could and have forgiven him."

Police were alerted after he sent a last mobile phone message to a person known only as C, at 7.33pm on Monday March 10. It said: "I'm sorry for what I have done, forgive me in another life."

A call from another person, known only as B, got through to his phone at 9.30pm and was "unintentionally" or "accidentally" answered - the implication being that Mr Todd was slumped on his phone. As he apparently lay dying, B could only hear an "urgent heavy breathing sound", the inquest was told.

He had been confronted by his wife five days earlier after she found out about his infidelity. He went on to send a series of intimate text messages and emails detailing how his life was unravelling in the days and hours before his death.

The coroner concluded that there was not enough evidence to give a definite verdict of suicide or accidental death through misadventure. Instead he recorded a narrative verdict, saying: "Mr Todd died of exposure when his state of mind was affected by alcohol, a drug and confusion due to his personal situation."

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