A PENSIONER who sexually abused boys in Hereford over a 13-year period died of a stroke days after being given a five-year jail sentence.

Charles Washbourne, aged 79, was found collapsed in his cell in the Gloucester Prison health care unit, an inquest heard yesterday.

The wheelchair-bound pensioner committed a number of crimes, some on a child who was aged only five, between 1976 and 1989.

He admitted six counts of buggery, attempted buggery and indecent assault. He was sentenced at Worcester Crown Court on Friday, April 12.

Washbourne persuaded the five-year-old to perform oral sex on him and tried to force him into another serious assault, the court was told.

He also climbed into a 14-year-old's bed and attacked him, and later assaulted a 15-year-old.

Washbourne, formerly of Golden Post, Hereford, had spent part of his life in the Far East, where he used rent boys for sex.

He had been jailed twice before for sex crimes. In 1981, he was given two years for groping two boys he lured back from a cycling club, and in 1995, he was again jailed for two years for indecently assaulting a 13-year-old boy.

The heavy smoker collapsed in his cell with a brain haemorrhage on the morning of Wednesday, April 17, the Gloucester inquest jury heard.

He was in the health care wing because of his frail condition and the fact that he suffered from asthma and chronic obstructive airways disease.

The jury returned a verdict of natural causes.