A SOUTHAMPTON sex attacker and his wife killed themselves in a fume-filled car at a secluded Hampshire chalk pit, an inquest heard today.

Christopher Downes, 54, and his wife Christine, 51, made a suicide pact and then gassed themselves in their car at Wherwell last October.

It happened just days after Downes had been interviewed by detectives over two knifepoint rapes and the robbing of a pregnant woman in Salisbury 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.

Letter found at their home and signed by both clearly stated they intended to commit suicide, mid-Hampshire coroner Grahame Short was told.

He recorded a verdict of suicide.