A woman police officer committed suicide after accidentally sending her husband a text message meant for her lover, an inquest heard.
WPC Gail Crocker, 46, met up with a man while her husband Peter, 49, was away on a business trip.
She later wrote a message thanking the unnamed fellow officer, but sent it to Mr Crocker by mistake.
Gail Crocker, 46, committed suicide after sending a text meant for a man she had dated to her husband
The mother of two wrote: ‘Thank you for a wonderful evening. Only wish we could do this more often.’ When her husband returned home, she admitted to having a ‘one-off’ meeting with the male colleague but insisted it had never happened before.
The couple, who had been together for 30 years, had an argument, and the next day Mrs Crocker took sleeping tablets and climbed into the boot of her car where she was found dead.
Friends spotted her white Audi TT and Mr Crocker opened the boot to find his wife’s body beside an empty pill bottle and suicide notes.
Mr Crocker said his wife had begged him for forgiveness when he got back from his trip.
He told the inquest: ‘I got out [of the car] and she was in floods of tears saying she was sorry.
‘She told me it was a one-off and she had never done it before.’
Paying tribute to his wife, he continued: ‘She was my life. We had plans. Nothing was worth her taking her life. I’m lost without her.’
Mr Crocker found his wife's body in the boot of her white Audi TT in this car park at Hornick Hill, near St Austell
The inquest heard that Mrs Crocker sent the text on June 12 and the couple argued on Mr Crocker’s return to the family home in St Stephen, Cornwall, the next day, as well as the following morning.
Mrs Crocker then called her husband at work and he became so angry that he threw his phone to the floor, breaking it.
He arrived home later that day to find his wife had vanished and had called in sick to work.
Mr Crocker told the hearing: ‘I got home and Gail was not there and neither was her car. I didn’t sleep at all. I didn’t hear from Gail during the night.’ The following morning a couple who were close friends with the Crockers spotted the missing officer’s Audi in a local car park.
They called Mr Crocker, who discovered his wife’s body in the boot next to an empty sleeping tablets bottle and suicide notes written to him and the couple’s daughters Chloe, 22, and Gemma, 25.
Consultant pathologist Ilona Hopkins recorded the cause of death as an overdose of sleeping pills and painkillers.
Mrs Crocker's husband, Paul, told the inquest in Truro, pictured, that he was 'lost' without his wife of 30 years
Returning a verdict of suicide, Emma Carlyon, coroner for Cornwall, told the hearing in Truro that Mrs Crocker’s death resulted from a deliberate act to take her own life. In a tribute to Mrs Crocker, her colleague Robin Hogg said: ‘I will always remember her as an excellent officer with a bright, happy and positive disposition.
‘Her work and work ethics were of the highest standard and I am particularly proud of the way she performed her duty.’
He added: ‘Gail leaves a husband and two daughters who miss her deeply and are very proud of the role she carried out in the community.
‘Her loss leaves a huge hole in the police family and this will be felt by all who knew her.
‘She was more than just a colleague; she was a good friend to us all. She will be truly missed.’
Culled from dailymail
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