A watchdog has found a child rapist who died while serving his sentence at HMP Frankland received a reasonable standard of care in prison and died from natural causes.
Gordon Preece, 80, had been serving a 25-year sentence at the high-security Durham jail when he fell ill last summer.
He was jailed in May 2016 for a series of historic sexual offences, including rapes of a child in the 1970s
Preece was taken to hospital from the Brasside jail and died on July 10, 2025, while still a serving prisoner.
Now, an Ombudsman investigation ruled the child rapist received an acceptable standard of care behind bars and passed away from natural causes.
A coroner gave a provisional cause of death of cardiomegaly – an enlarged heart – and at an inquest held this month concluded Preece died from natural causes.
In a newly published report, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO) said the medical care Preece received at Frankland was of a reasonable standard and at least equivalent to the care he could have expected to receive in the community.
Two recommendations were made for the prison’s Head of Healthcare, but the PPO stressed these did not relate to the circumstances of Preece’s death.
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A separate PPO investigation into the non-clinical aspects of his care found no issues of concern and made no recommendations.
The Ombudsman’s office wrote to Preece’s next of kin at the start of the investigation to explain the process and invite any concerns, but received no response.
A draft of the report was shared with His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service and prison healthcare provider Spectrum Community Health CIC, and neither raised any factual inaccuracies.
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