A convicted paedophile hanged himself in a children's park because he could not face going back to prison.

Michael Latimer was so terrified of being put back behind bars he killed himself with his bootlaces.

The 56-year-old had been jailed in 2002 for compiling what was then Britain's most horrific collection of child porn ever discovered.

An inquest at Brighton County Court was told Latimer was released partway through his sentence but breached the conditions by going on the run from a bail hostel - an offence which would have seen him sent back to jail to finish his prison sentence.

But before police could find him, his remains was found in bushes at the western end of Hove Lagoon on August 14 after a dog walker spotted his body a day earlier.

She reported it to someone at Hove Lagoon when she realised the body had not moved. The police were called and they found the badly decomposed body of a man sitting in the bush with a black bootlace round his neck which was tied to one of the stronger branches.

Latimer, formerly of Goldstone Street, Hove, had been was sentenced to seven years in prison at Lewes Crown Court in 2002 after admitting 23 offences of storing and distributing images of sexual acts with children and babies, some just a few months old.

He had more than 300,000 child porn images stored on his computer - the largest number ever discovered by British police at the time.

When police raided his home in January 2001 they saw a computer on his desk which Latimer had tried to switch off.

There were four hard drives in the computer and a total of 220 CD toms, each containing thousands of porn images. Among the 500 videos seized was one containing images of a young girl being abused.

Some of the images showed children just a few months old involved in buggery. Others showed young girls involved in bondage and being whipped and gagged. When he answered the door to the police he told them: "You've hit the jackpot."

Latimer would receive the pornography from other paedophiles and distribute it on the internet.

In the 23 days before he was arrested he had distributed 1,526 images. The last image he distributed before his arrest was a girl on the verge of puberty doing a striptease.

He had tried to hang himself just before his arrest but had been found.

The inquest heard Latimer had breached the conditions of his licence and had started sleeping rough.

He had stayed with his friend Robert Short, a postman, a couple of times who tried to persuade Latimer to hand himself into the police and return to prison to serve the rest of his sentence.

Mr Short said: "He said that he did not want to go back and he would take action and he said he would hang himself with his bootlace if it came to it. I did not take it seriously because he said it every time he saw me."

Mr Short met up with Latimer in early July, shortly after he had left the bail hostel. He appeared fraught and was crying and upset because he knew he would have to go back to prison.

He asked if he could stay with Mr Short who said no and gave him a clean T-shirt to wear. Latimer left a bag with Mr Short and asked him to give it to his family if anything happened to him. The bag contained personal items and letters which made it clear that if they were being read it would mean he was dead.

A post mortem examination of Latimer's body revealed that Latimer had tomato skin, temazepam, diazepam, and alcohol in his stomach but because of the state of his body the doctor was not able to find a cause of death or tell when the alcohol had been drunk and whether it had reached Latimer's bloodstream before he died.

A bottle of vodka was found near his body and also a loaf of bread and tomatoes which had expiry dates in July. It is believed Latimer died on or around July 15, a month before he was found.

However, there was nothing to identify him and police appeals with a description of Latimer's clothing were published in The Argus.

Mr Short read the description and contacted the police. He was asked questions about what Latimer had been wearing the last time he had seen him and was able to identify him from the T-shirt. A partial palm print which had been taken from Latimer's body also helped to identify him.

Penny Bailey, the coroner's officer for Brighton and Hove, said: "There were certain conditions to his licence that Mr Latimer was not prepared to comply with. This would have resulted in him being re-arrested."

Brighton and Hove Coroner Veronica Hamilton-Deeley said she could not identify the cause of death but recorded a verdict of suicide.