A jury is expected to retire and consider its verdict today over a convicted killer found dead in his prison cell.
Preston Coroners Court heard how, in the weeks before his death, a ban on prison visits by a church elder to “Lady in the Lake” killer Gordon Park was “a game changer”.
Park was found asphyxiated in his cell three years ago at HMP Garth in Leyland, where he was serving 15 years for the murder of his first wife, Carol.
The retired schoolmaster bludgeoned her to death with an ice axe in July 1976 and dumped her in the lake near the family home in Leece, near Barrow-in-Furness.
Her body had come to rest on an underwater ledge and was found by amateur divers 21 years later.
Park was arrested and charged with her murder but the case against him was dropped in January 1998 when the Crown Prosecution Service said it did not have enough evidence against him.
He was later rearrested and in 2005 was convicted of her murder. An inquest into his death has heard that he had regular pastoral visits from elder George Harrison, from Pendlebury Evangelical Church in Swinton, Greater Manchester, whom he first met during his trial.