A CHILD rapist – once quizzed over the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in Portugal – died of natural causes while serving at 17-year sentence at Channings Wood Prison, an inquest heard.

Birmingham-born Anthony Woodhouse, 69, died in Torbay Hospital on March 1 from alcohol-related conditions, including cirrhosis of the liver.

Dr Ryan Miller from the hospital said Woodhouse was admitted from the Denbury jail on February 21 with abdominal pain and rectal bleeding.

Woodhouse spent more than 10 years on the run in Portugal after raping a 14-year-old girl in Hertfordshire in 1998. She later became pregnant.

He was jailed in 2008 after giving himself up at the British Embassy in Lisbon.

It has been claimed that detectives spoke to Woodhouse about a cleaning business he ran in the Algarve, near where three-year-old Madeleine McCann went missing from a holiday apartment in 2007.

South Devon Coroner Ian Arrow recorded Woodhouse died of natural causes.