Emma Walton (centre) and Vicky Horgan (right) were very close

Stuart Horgan, 39, a bricklayer, from Plaistow, London, was on remand at HMP Woodhill, Buckinghamshire.

He was in the jail's segregation unit after being taken off suicide watch.

He was arrested after Vicky Horgan, 27, and her sister Emma Walton, 25, were shot dead at a barbecue in Highmoor Cross, Oxfordshire, on 6 June 2004.

On 20 June, Father's Day, Horgan was found dead in his blood-spattered cell by the jail's Anglican chaplain, Melvyn Gardner.

Gunned down

"As I opened the hatch (in the cell door), I was immediately aware of brown stuff all over the place, which I thought was probably blood," he told the inquest jury.

Pathologist Dr Nicholas Hunt gave the cause of death as hanging and incised wounds to the neck.

Horgan obtained the razor on the morning of his death from jail staff, the inquest heard.

He had managed to convince staff he was not a suicide risk.

The jury at the civic offices in Milton Keynes was told how Horgan had gunned down the two women at a family barbecue.

The mother of the victims, Jacqueline Bailey, was also seriously injured in the attack, which took place in front of Ms Horgan's two daughters, aged four and seven - the youngest of whom is Horgan's.

'Level-headed'

He was arrested the day after the shooting near a pub in Peterborough and was remanded into custody at HMP Bullingdon in Oxfordshire, where he was put on 24-hour suicide watch.

He was taken off three days later when he was transferred to HMP Woodhill and staff reassessed him and considered him "level-headed".

The day before he killed himself, he took advice from a fellow prisoner after speaking of the desire to end his life.

He also told the prisoner that he wanted his wife dead because "they did not get on too well" and that his marital problems stemmed from his alcoholism.

The inquest was adjourned until Tuesday.