A CONVICTED murderer and rapist will be returning to prison after he admitted downloading indecent images of children.

Peter Heneghan, 58, was convicted at Manchester Crown Court in 1986 of the gangland shooting of a nightclub doorman in Stretford.

After receiving a life sentence, Heneghan escaped during a visit to the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham in 1994 when two men wearing crash helmets sprayed his two guards with CS gas.

Later that year he was arrested in Alicante in Spain and charged with rape and sexual assault of a man for which he served six years in a Spanish jail before returning to the UK to serve the remainder of his sentence.

At Bolton Crown Court, Peter Cadwallader, prosecuting, said police officers went to Heneghan’s address at Grosvenor Road, Walkden, on June 2, 2019, in relation to another matter.

A laptop was seized, and officers found a category B image of a boy performing a sex act and 16 category c images of children aged between nine and 14. On his arrest, officers also found a small quantity of cocaine in Heneghan’s wallet.

Mr Cadwallader added that Heneghan had been released on license for life in 2015.

Nick Holland, defending, said there was “a constantly evolving risk assessment” surrounding Heneghan since his release from prison adding that Heneghan’s cocaine use was linked to him “socialising in the gay village in Manchester”.

Sentencing Heneghan, who appeared via videolink from prison, Honorary Recorder of Bolton, Judge Martin Walsh, said: “Your position is complicated by your antecedent history and the parole board will have control over any release. Effectively, your future will lie in their hands.”

Handing Heneghan two 34 week prison sentences to run concurrently, Judge Walsh also indicated he would have to sign the sex offenders’ register for 10 years. He imposed a sentence of seven days imprisonment fop possession of cocaine, also to run concurrently.