The judge who sent triple cop killer Harry Roberts to life would have preferred him to hang for his crimes according to his daughter.
Mr Justice Hildreth Glyn-Jones was unable to pass the death penalty because it had recently been abolished – something which caused him regret says his daughter Anne.
Ms Glyn-Jones, 91, attended the trial of Roberts and his two fellow defendants in 1966 where he received three life sentences, with a 30-year minimum tariff, and says her father would not want him to be released.
She said: “If the death penalty had been in force he would have given it to them with no reservation and he would have been very surprised to see him being released today.
“He thought Roberts knew exactly what he was doing when he killed those men and should not be released and said as much at the time.”
“He though he was a very evil man.”
This week it emerged Roberts, now 78, is to be granted parole after serving 45 years for shooting three policemen dead with accomplices John Duddy and John Witney.
At the time sentencing Roberts, Justice Glyn-Jones said: “I think it likely that no home secretary regarding the enormity of your crime will ever think fit to show mercy by releasing you on licence.”
Only a year before the mandatory death penalty for killers of policemen had been abolished and Ms Glyn-Jones says her father had grave reservations about the decision.
She said: “While he did not enjoy passing out death sentences my father was a great supporter of the police and like many others at the time was unhappy about the removal of this protection.
“His view was the police are so much more exposed than anyone else and they put their lives on the line and should be protected.
“He had delivered many death sentences and while he felt unhappy at sending, for example, a poisoner to her death he did not feel that way about police killers.
“If the death penalty had been in force he would have given it to them with no reservation.”
She explained that although death sentences used to be mandatory for serious crimes they could commuted to prison in exceptional circumstances but it was unusual.
She said: “My father presided over the trial of some prison guards at Mauthausen concentration camp. He sentenced 12 to death and with one of them I know he felt there were extenuating circumstances.
“He went to see the boss of the control commission in Austrian about it and tried to get the death sentence he passed commuted but it was refused.
“It is not something he would have done in the case of Roberts and the others – he thought them very evil men.
“He would not gone out of his way at all for them.”
When the crimes happened almost 50 years ago they caused a sensation with Roberts going on the run before being found hiding in Essex using survival skills learnt during a period in the Army.
Recalling the trial Ms Glyn-Jones said: “I went with some friends.
“My boss gave me some time off so I could attend and I was able to get a privileged seat inside the court room.
“The trial started with only two of them and then midway through Roberts was found camping in Epping Forest and had to make the difficult decision to continue with him not start again.
“It's been a long time but I remember some details, Harry Roberts was I think a sergeant in Malaya and a very good one I recall.
“I recall him being very brazen, he stood in the dock looking around catching the eye of any females.
“His hands were on the front of the dock and I was very riveted by them, they had beautiful sensitive long fingers, not what you would have expected of a Malayan jungle sergeant.
“The person next to me at the trial asked me if I had noticed them and they were very unexpected.
“They were very elegant and could have been the hands of an artist.
“There was a charisma about him, he was leader who inspired a certain amount of admiration despite what he had done.
“My father didn't think that Roberts was at the bottom of it all but he was certainly aware of what he was doing.”
Witney was released in 1991 but died eight years later when he was beaten with a hammer and strangled in Bristol, Duddy was never again freed, dying in Parkhurst prison in 1981.