Michael Todd, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, sent increasingly desperate and suicidal text messages and e-mails to women including his wife and lover as his life unravelled in the two days before he died, his inquest was told yesterday.

On the day of his death, Mr Todd, 50, walked up Snowdon, sheltering from driving snow just below the summit to send a last text to a friend. It read: “Don’t send any more messages — it will only cause you grief. I am sorry for what I have done — forgive me in another life.”

Less than two hours later another unidentified woman tried to call the missing Chief Constable on his mobile phone, but all she could hear were the “urgent” sounds of his breathing.

It is thought that the commander, once tipped as a future head of the Metropolitan Police, had drunk most of a bottle of gin, laced with the non-prescription sleeping drug Nytol, and then, in a confused, possibly hallucinatory and hypothermic state, stumbled or slid 300ft on to the snow-covered slope below, where he lay dying with his head resting on his forearms.

An unopened bottle of champagne had been discarded or dropped and was found in the snow.

Dewi Pritchard Jones, the North Wales Coroner, said that he could not record a verdict of suicide because there were what he described as conflicting messages in Mr Todd’s behaviour. He also rejected the notion that the death was an accident.

He recorded a narrative verdict, suggesting that Mr Todd had died of exposure in conditions where the wind chill factor was -18C (0F) “when his state of mind was affected by alcohol, a drug and confusion in his personal life”.

After the hearing, Carolyn Todd, 47, Mr Todd’s widow, wiped away a tear and said: “In his last e-mail to me Michael said: ‘I really am so sorry for all the hurt that I have caused you. I just hope that you will be able to forgive me, at least in part some day.’

“I have forgiven him and Michael’s family have forgiven him.” The coroner was told that Mr Todd’s troubles had begun five days earlier when his wife, who lives in Hallam, Nottinghamshire, with their three children, had confronted him about an affair.

One of those who had received frantic texts and e-mails is thought to be Angie Robinson, 50, the married chief executive of the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce. Detective Sergeant Kevin Evans told the inquest at the Gywynedd Council offices in Caernarfon that Mr Todd sent 319 texts to friends, colleagues and his lover between Thursday, March 6 and the following Monday night, when he was found dead. He described himself as being “in a dark place” and of intending to take his own life.

Sir Paul Scot-Lee, Chief Constable of the West Midlands, is expected to raise qustions about police leadership in his report into Mr Todd’s death, due to be published soon.

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