WIFE KILLER LEE TRIED TO SMUGGLE GUN AND KNIFE INTO HOSPITAL

CALLOUS murder accused Keith Lee tried to smuggle a fake gun and a knife into a rehabilitation centre.

The wife killer, who hanged himself in prison on Wednesday night, was released from St James’s on March 16 and admitted to the unit in Rathgar, Dublin.

The Irish Mirror has learned that when he arrived, he was searched and the toy gun and hospital butter knife were found. A source said: “It is a mystery what he intended to do with them but he had very erratic behaviour.

“Lee was a very disturbed man and during his stay in hospital tests had shown there were huge quantities of drugs in his system.” On the day he was admitted to St Luke’s rehabilitation centre, Lee was arrested for the murder of his wife Joanne Ball.

The 38-year-old’s body was found in a sleeping bag hidden in a wardbrobe at his apartment on Dublin’s Ranelagh Road on February 15. She had been strangled.

Lee, 42, tried to kill himself by jumping from the third-storey window, breaking both legs.

After his arrest, he told detectives he was on cocktails of ketamine and cocaine. On Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, he hanged himself in the shower section of his cell at Mountjoy Prison. During his stay in hospital, he was seen outside in a wheelchair, flanked by a garda, on regular cigarette breaks.

The source said: “Keith Lee was all over the place. Joanne was a lovely woman but she had no idea he was a drug dealer until the gardai raided their home.

“It seems Lee was living a double life. In the end he was just a pathetic druggie whose paranoia led him to kill his wife.”

Gardai and prison authorities investigating the former chef ’s death.

It is understood they will be checking logs of visits and observations made by officers during the night and morning before Lee’s body was discovered. are