A woman who was to be a key witness in a double murder trial has told of her fears she would become the killer’s “next victim”.

Jayne Pickard, of Haworth, said she was horrified to discover former junior school classmate Barry Morrow was at the centre of a European police manhunt after the bodies of Angela Holgate and her mother Alice Huyton, 54, were discovered strangled on a bed last December.

Morrow, who had been lodging with Mrs Holgate, 75, at her home in Southport, Merseyside, then went on the run but continued making a stream of texts and phone calls to Mrs Pickard.

The supermarket checkout worker, 52, said: “It makes me feel sick to think what could have happened. I could have been his next victim. Who knows what was on his mind?

“We were in constant contact, texting and ringing even when he was on the run. I got the impression if he’d asked me out and I knocked him back, he wouldn’t have taken no for an answer.”

A Coroner has concluded Morrow had unlawfully killed the two women.

He fled to France before handing himself in. He was charged with murder, butwas found hanged in his cell at HMP Manchester in February.

Mrs Pickard said: “He rang me to say he was a long way from home and it would be a long time before he returned. Barry said he had an almighty row with Angela and came home to find her hanged, but he didn’t know what happened to her mum. It was at that moment I knew he had done it. I later found out that when he was ringing and texting me asking for a friend, his landlady was already dead.

“It was a huge shock. We were in the process of arranging a school reunion. He told me how he made his fortune in South Africa and had become a millionaire, but I am sure none of it was true.”

An inquest in Manchester into Morrow’s death has been adjourned.