A former pub landlord died from a drugs overdose in his cell as police were about to question him over the death of a sex cam girl who died performing for him.

Jerome Dangar, who had run the King Arthur’s Arms in Tintagel, was being investigated for manslaughter over the death of 21-year-old graduate Hope Barden.

An inquest jury in Exeter, Devon, was told that 45-year-old Dangar stockpiled prescription medication in his cell before he was found dead at Dartmoor Jail in April 2019.

A Home Office pathologist said he died from being poisoned by propranolol, a drug used to treat anxiety.

Dangar had been on remand at Exeter Jail before he was jailed in January 2019 at Truro Crown Court for 15 months and sent to Dartmoor.

After a raid on the pub in Tintagel in November 2018, Dangar had admitted nine charges of possessing extreme pornography of acts that portrayed threatening a person’s life and endangering their genitals.

Judge Simon Carr said the 47 images and videos included ’the deliberate torture of people who are clearly alive at the beginning and seem to be dead at the end’.

He told Dangar that ’these offences are in my view the worst of their kind’.

The judge said a pathologist reviewed the videos and believed ’at least three of the people being tortured were dead by the end’.

Prosecutor Philip Lee said the images showed a ’pre occupation with strangulation, stabbing, torture, asphyxiation and death’.

The senior Devon coroner Philip Spinney told the jury that Dangar was transferred to Dartmoor Jail a few days after he was jailed at Truro Crown Court.

A day before he was found dead, he was due to be re-interviewed by Staffordshire police about the manslaughter of Hope Barden.

The coroner said Dangar was prescribed medication for anxiety and was allowed to keep the pills in his cell.

Dr Deborah Cook, the Home Office pathologist, said Dangar had an extremely high level of Propranolol in his blood and urine.

At Miss Burden’s inquest, a conclusion of unlawful killing was recorded.

A coroner there heard that Dangar was a depraved ’snuff movie’ fan who left her to die after watching her suffocate on a live sex webcam.

It was said she was paid to perform ’degrading and dangerous’ acts by Dangar after he met her on an adult website where she was earning money to top up her wages as a carer.

Dangar paid £2,300 over three months to watch her and police later found abuse videos at his home.

Hope died from asphyxiation at her digs in Burton, Staffs, in March 2018 - and Dangar watched live but did not call 999, her inquest was told.

The Exeter inquest jury listened to witnesses over Dangar’s assessments in jail, his medication and mental health.

The Exeter inquest jury recorded a suicide conclusion on Dangar after an eight day long inquest at Exeter Coroner’s Court.