A FORMER detective jailed for life for murdering a policewoman from York has been found hanged in his prison cell.

Peter Foster, was reportedly subject to suicide-prevention measures, but was found dead at Lewes Prison yesterday.

His death was the second in four days at the prison.

Foster, aged 38, last year killed his partner and fellow Surrey Police officer Det Con Heather Cooper, a young mum-of-two from Acomb , then buried her in a shallow grave in Blackdown Woods in West Sussex. He was last month jailed for life, after changing his earlier plea to guilty.

Heather’s parents James and Caroline Cooper yesterday said they were aware of Foster’s death, but declined to comment.

Kieran Diamond of Surrey Police Federation, which has been fundraising for Miss Cooper’s children, said: “It’s very sad for his family, and obviously for Heather’s two young children. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family.

“It’s just another tragedy within a tragedy – the whole thing about Heather and the kids was that it was a terribly sad story and this is just another part of it.”

Miss Cooper, pictured, was on maternity leave when she was killed, following the birth of Isabelle, her second child just weeks earlier. She also had a three-year-old son, Joshua.

Courts heard Foster hit Miss Cooper her over the head ten times with a baseball bat before stabbing her in the throat, at their home in Haslemere in Surrey.

Following her death, Miss Cooper’s friends and colleagues set up a charity fund to help support her children and hundreds took part in charity events to help raise almost £40,000 in a few months.

Foster was found hanged at about 3am yesterday. A Prison Service spokeswoman said prison staff tried to resuscitate him and paramedics were called, but he was pronounced dead at 3.25am. The spokeswoman said: “As with all deaths in custody, the independent Prisons and Probation Ombudsman will conduct an investigation.”

Last Friday, fellow inmate Nathan Vaughan-Jones, who was locked up for knifing his controlling stepfather to death, was found hanged at the same jail.

Miss Cooper, who was a keen horse rider, trained at the Naburn Grange Riding Centre, and later studied equestrian science at Bishop Burton College in East Yorkshire, before training to become a police officer. She joined Surrey Police in 2003 and was working with their Public Protection Investigation Unit at Guildford.

In 2009, Miss Cooper was given a commendation by the force in recognition of her “professionalism, dedication and commitment”. Mr Diamond has said that, shortly before she died, Miss Cooper talked about returning to York to be nearer her family.

Sentencing Foster last month, Judge Richard Brown described him as an “extremely dangerous individual” who may never be safe to be let out of prison. He called the killing a “wicked, savage and senseless attack” and said he had deprived Joshua and Isabel of a loving mother.

He said aggravating factors were that the attack was carried out in front of the couple’s children, that the defendant was trained in martial arts, and the ferocity of the attack, which involved two weapons.

In a victim impact statement read to the court, Miss Cooper’s parents said the murder had an unimaginable impact on the children and said: “Joshua and Isabel have been given a life sentence by the loss of their devoted mother.

“Heather would have been devastated to know she would not be able to bring up her children and Isabel would never know her mummy and Joshua would suffer grief at such a young age.”