A JUDGE was assured that a killer policeman was not a suicide risk when he granted him bail it has been revealed. Transcripts of the bail hearing held into Gary Weddell, who was being held on suspicion of murdering his wife Sandra, revealed that Judge Bev

A JUDGE was assured that a killer policeman was not a suicide risk when he granted him bail it has been revealed.

Transcripts of the bail hearing held into Gary Weddell, who was being held on suspicion of murdering his wife Sandra, revealed that Judge Bevan was at first reluctant to grant him bail but changed his mind after hearing evidence from a psychiatrist.

But Weddell, a police inspector with the Met, went on to murder his mother-in-law Traute Maxfield, of Gustard Wood, and then shoot himself later that same day.

The bail transcripts were released because of concerns about why Weddell had been allowed out on bail despite being arrested for suspected murder.

Sandra, aged 44, a mother of three, was found hanged in the garage of their Dunstable home in January 2007. Initially it was thought to have been suicide but police were unhappy about the case and Weddell was charged with murder.

His first two bail applications were heard in front of Judge Bevan at Luton Crown Court last July. On both occasions the judge refused bail because without a psychiatrist's report there were concerns that Weddell intended to take his own life after an aerial cable taken from a television in the interview room when he was arrested was found in his sock and he told police, "I just wanted to go to sleep."

By the time Weddell appeared at Ipswich Crown Court later in July, a psychiatrist told Judge Bevan that he was satisfied he was not a threat to himself and was under no special watch in prison.

Weddell was granted bail - even though Judge Bevan conceded it was not an easy decision - subject to a number of strict conditions including that he was not to contact his children without consent, was not to enter Beds and he had to live at his brother's home in Woking.

But he was back at Luton Crown Court in November after two breaches of bail, one when he met his mother in a pub in Beds near the border with Herts and the second when he contacted his children's guardian about a picture which had been removed from the family home.

No action was taken at that hearing but in early November North West Surrey Magistrates Court allowed him bail on the same conditions after deciding that the pub in which he had met his mother was only 60 metres from the boundary between the two counties and he had not been aware at the time that he had been in Beds.

Mrs Maxfield was shot on January 12 and Weddell was found dead later that day near Broomhills Shooting Club in Markyate. An inquest in their deaths and that of Sandra Weddell was opened and adjourned last week