The widow of former Greater Manchester police chief Michael Todd said today she has “forgiven” him after his inquest heard that his tangled love life led to his death.

Depressed and suicidal, Mr Todd sent a text message asking for forgiveness in “another life” as he downed gin and pills.

After his wife discovered his affair with another wom- an, the 50-year-old surfed internet suicide websites before venturing on to a snowy mountainside in -18C (0F) temperatures where he drank alcohol and took the sleeping drug Nytol.

Possibly hallucinating, he took his clothes off, a sign of hypothermia and eventually drifted into sleep, dying of exposure, North West Wales coroner Dewi Pritchard Jones concluded.

The father-of-three was found face-down in the snow, frozen to death the next day, March 11, at Bwlch Glas, near the summit of Mount Snowdon.

After the hearing, Mrs Todd, 47, said: “In his last e-mail to me Michael said ‘I really am so sorry for all the hurt I have caused you. I just hope you will be able to forgive me at least in part some day’. I have forgiven him and Michael’s family have forgiven him.

“The tragedy is Michael never felt able during his career to seek the help he badly needed and he never knew that we could and have forgiven him.”

Angie Robinson, the married chief executive of Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce and former Shropshire Chamber of Commerce chief executive, was linked to the police chief after his death – one of a series of women reportedly involved with Mr Todd.

The coroner concluded there was not enough evidence to give a verdict of suicide or accidental death through misadventure and recorded a narrative verdict.