Leah murder suspect Neil Maxwell wrote polite note warning people before he hanged himself in Milton Keynes bin cupboard

The murder suspect in the tragic Leah Croucher murder case wrote a polite note before he took his own life, it has been revealed.

Neil Maxwell hanged himself in a communal bin cupboard in a block of flats at Campbell Park in April 2019 – two months after Leah went missing.

On the door of the bin cupboard he taped a handwritten note saying: ‘Please do not come in. There is a dead body inside. Call the police,’ sources have revealed.

The note was spotted by a member of the public, who did indeed call the police.

Maxwell, who was 49 when he died, was wanted by police at the time for a sexual assault on a woman in Newport Pagnell in November 2018. He had assaulted the victim, fled the scene and evaded arrest 18 times in the months leading up to his death.

He’d told friends he was scared and couldn’t face going back to jail.

The Newport Pagnell assault had come the same month that handyman Maxwell collected the keys of number 2 Loxbearne in Furzton, the house where human remains and Leah’s possessions were discovered last week.

Maxwell had been recruited by the overseas owner to maintain the property.

He already had convictions for sex attacks, including one for rape in 2009, which resulted in a prison sentence of four years and 10 months.

His friends say the Loxbearne Drive house was one of many that he looked after on Furzton, Campbell Park and other estates around MK.

Police, after speaking to the overseas owner of Loxbearne Drive, say Maxwell was the only person to have keys to the property.

This week forensic scrutiny is continuing on the Furzton house. There has yet to be an official identification of the human remains, which it is believed were hidden under floorboards in the loft or upstairs cavity.

The grim discovery is believed to have been made when estate agents visited the house.

A post mortem has been held but the results have not yet been made public.