October 2007 SUICIDE PACT PAEDOPHILE JAILED A SENIOR detective today said that only a fast-paced police investigation stopped a Whitehaven man fulfilling a suicide pact he entered with his schoolgirl lover. Michael Paul McAdam, 44, was planning to kill himself and the girl with a cocktail of whisky, paracatemol and cough medicine after abducting her. But before he could do so he was arrested after a nationwide manhunt by police. McAdam pleaded guilty to abducting the underage girl and to five charges of having unlawful sex with her. He was jailed for six years at Carlisle Crown Court yesterday and ordered to register as a sex offender for life. He was also banned indefinitely from working with children and banned from having unsupervised contact with anyone aged under 16. Speaking after the verdict, Detective Chief Inspector Jeff Ashton, who led the investigation to trace the pair, said: “He (McAdam) is a dangerous individual, a paedophile, who saw a window of opportunity to satisfy his desires with a child.” DCI Ashton confirmed that a number of items found in the car – combined with other intelligence – confirmed the pair intended to pursue a suicide pact. He added: “This was only averted due to a detailed and fast paced investigation conducted by Cumbria Constabulary.” The court heard that McAdam, of Broom Bank, started having a full sexual relationship with the girl within weeks of meeting her. Prosecuting counsel Hilary Manley said that on June 12, police went to his house looking for her, because of fears for her safety, but did not find her. The next day, officers searched the house again and found some of her clothes, along with pornographic DVDs. After being interviewed at Workington police station, McAdam was allowed bail on condition that he had no contact with the girl, but on June 15 he collected her from school and hired a car. They disappeared for several days. When interviewed by police following his arrest, McAdam claimed the couple intended to kill themselves, either by taking the whisky and drugs or by gassing themselves in a car. In mitigation, defence barrister Greg Hoare said that since suffering a personality change after being injured in a road accident 20 years ago McAdam had only had “fruitless and financially disastrous relationships” with women. When he met the girl, he said, he believed she “presented a very different type of relationship to the ones he had had in the past”. Mr Hoare said McAdam had now learned a hard and valuable lesson. “He knows he must make special efforts to rein in some of the more bizarre ideas he gets from time to time,” he added.