Drug death of inmate linked to tragic Hope
HE HAD BEEN DUE TO BE QUIZZED BY POLICE FOR MANSLAUGHTER OF SEX CAM WOMAN, AGED 21
A DEPRAVED pub landlord died from a drugs overdose in his prison cell as police were about to question him over the death of a sex webcam girl while performing for him in Burton.
Jerome Dangar was being investigated over the death of 21-year-old graduate Hope Barden during an online bondage session at her home in Wood Street.
An inquest jury recorded a suicide conclusion on Dangar after an eightday long inquest at Exeter Coroner’s Court.
Hope died from asphyxiation on March 15, 2018. Dangar had watched live but did not call 999, Hope’s inquest was told.
The jury at Dangar’s inquest heard he had been on remand at Exeter Jail before he was jailed in January 2019 at Truro Crown Court for 15 months.
He 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, who ran a pub in Tintagel, Cornwall: “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 “preoccupation with strangulation, stabbing, torture, asphyxiation and death”.
Senior Devon coroner Philip Spinney told the jury Dangar was transferred to Dartmoor Jail a few days after he was jailed.
A day before he was found dead, he had learned he was to be re-interviewed by Staffordshire Police about the manslaughter of Hope three years ago.
The coroner said Dangar was prescribed medication for anxiety and was allowed to keep the pills in his cell. He wrote letters talking about suicide but told his parents he “did not have the bottle to hang himself”.
Dr Deborah Cook, a Home Office pathologist, said Dangar had an extremely high level of propranolol, a drug used to treat anxiety, in his system.
The therapeutic range is 0.05 to 1 milligram per litre but Dangar had 7.5 milligrammes per litre and the fatal level was 4.
He also had sertraline, an antidepressant, in his system but she said this did not cause his death and was not in a fatal range.
At Miss Burden’s inquest, a conclusion of unlawful killing was recorded. The coroner heard that Dangar was a depraved “snuff movie” fan who left Hope to die after watching her suffocate on the live 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 had paid £2,300 over three months to watch her, and police later found abuse videos at his home.