BROADMOOR hospital's longest serving patient requested doctors let him die months before the horrific murder case he was acquitted could have been reopened.

In March 1986 then 24 year-old Patrick Reilly was found innocent in the sex killing of seven year-old Leonie Darnley by a jury unaware he was a self-confessed rapist.

Members of the jury reportedly burst into tears when his rap sheet was read out at the end of the trial.

The Tufnell Park resident was later handed three life sentences for numerous sexual assaults, indecent assaults and rapes at knifepoint on victims as young as 11 years-old.

Leonie's brutal killing was the most high profile crime he was connected to however, the nation reeling when her mutilated body was discovered in the basement of the block of flats where she lived in Battersea, South London.

Her mother had left her unattended for 15 minutes when she was abducted.

Earlier in 2017 the Crown Prosecution Service appealed at the High Court to quash his acquittal and put him back on trial after the double jeopardy law was scrapped.

Prosecutors were set to argue DNA found under the young girl's nails belonged to Reilly before his death at the Crowthorne psychiatric hospital on October 6.

At Reading Coroner's Court on November 27, it was revealed the 56 year-old had died of oesophagus cancer having requested not to be resuscitated.

Peter Bedford, senior coroner of Berkshire, said: "He was a patient at Broadmoor for many years. The focus of my enquiry is how he came to his death and there appears to be only one conclusion I can draw.

"He died of natural causes."

Reilly had lived in Broadmoor for 33 years, making him the longest serving patient at a hospital that has previously housed Charles Bronson and Peter Sutcliffe.

No family members were present at the inquest and had not visited Reilly since the early 1990s.