A PAEDOPHILE serial killer has died in a North-East prison.

Ronald Jebson, who killed three children in the ‘Babes in the Woods’ murders in the 1970s, died while a prisoner at HMP Frankland, near Durham, aged 76.

A Prison Service spokesman said Jebson, also known as Ronald Harper, died in hospital at 10.25am on Friday, April 17.

“As with all deaths in custody, there will be an investigation by the independent Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, but he is believed to have died from natural causes,” he added.

Jebson snatched Susan Blatchford, 11, and Gary Hanlon, 12, from Enfield, north London, in March 1970, drove them to Epping Forest, in Essex, and sexually assaulted and strangled them, before dumping their bodies in the woods.

He was arrested four days later after he was caught indecently assaulting an 11-year-old boy – a crime for which he was jailed for five years.

After being released in 1973, he strangled his friend Robert Papper’s eight-year-old daughter Rosemary.

Jebson only confessed to the murder of his first victims decades later.

He is believed to have died of kidney failure in the University Hospital of North Durham.