MATTHEW Williams refused to engage with the probation service in the two weeks between his release from prison and his fatal attack on Cerys Yemm - and it had no power to intervene, an inquest was told.

Because Williams had completed his 27-month sentence, probation officers had no power to compel him to keep in touch with them.

And the inquest into the deaths of Williams and Miss Yemm at the Sirhowy Arms Hotel, Argoed, on November 2014, was told that Williams turned down potential support available through the probation service.

It meant that Gwent Police - through its integrated offender management team at Blackwood - was solely responsible for monitoring him.

Nick Tetley, Williams’ probation officer since March 2014, had recommended Williams not be released on licence in September 2014, just weeks before his final release date.

At a prison meeting at the end of August, Mr Tetley said Williams appeared “totally disinterested” and told him he had had enough of police and probation, and “just wanted to get on with his life”.

Mr Tetley said he was told at that visit that there were no mental health issues to consider, but Williams had told him he would like medication when he came out of prison, as a “safety net.”

There had been a plan for Williams to work with his father in Newport if he were released that September, but a proposal for accommodation in the city was deemed unacceptable by Mr Tetley.

Mr Tetley however, “disagreed strongly” with a suggestion by Nicholas Bowen QC, representing the Williams’ family, that he had told the woman who offered to house Williams that she should keep away from him as there would be trouble.

Mr Tetley continued to have concerns about Williams - whom he thought posed a “medium risk” of causing serious harm to the public - leading up to his release.

He agreed with Mr Bowen’s use of the phrase “you can take a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink” in terms of Williams being unwilling to engage with the probation service on his release.

But he did not think the probation service could have done more, in the knowledge that Williams was unlikely to co-operate