The life of Judge Andrew Chubb

Mr Chubb's death was ruled accidental

Andrew Chubb has a small and rather factual entry in Who's Who, and one which omits what was perhaps his most famous case.

Mr Chubb was one of the prosecutors - albeit junior - in the case against serial killer Rose West in the mid-1990s.

She was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 10 young women and girls in Gloucestershire.

He was described by a journalist who covered the case as "a really nice bloke".

Just a few years later, Mr Chubb's career would take off, and he would become a recorder and then a circuit judge based further south in Portsmouth.

Here he would meet Kerry Sparrow - the woman who would become his mistress and who would refuse to accept his death was an accident.

Andrew Vyvyan Chubb, or His Honour Judge Chubb to give him his proper title, was a married man with two sons and a daughter when he met Ms Sparrow in 1999.

But only two years after meeting Ms Sparrow, his wife learned of their affair.

Kerry Sparrow (l) and Jennifer Chubb

One of his closest friends, Iain Leadbetter, said the judge had a "deep sense of doing the right thing" - and would not have entered into the relationship lightly.

But several weeks after his wife learned the truth, the judge asked Jennifer, his wife of 34 years, for a divorce.

Hours later he was dead - and a second inquest has now ruled the reason will remain a mystery: the cause of death is "unascertained".

Mrs Chubb, who did not attend the second inquest, now lives in Australia.

She works as a community nurse after inheriting her husband's £1m estate.