A convicted paedophile who admitted killing two children found in Epping Forest has died in prison.

Ronald Jebson, who kept the murders secret for three decades, died aged 76 on April 17 of kidney failure at the University Hospital of North Durham, it has emerged.

In 1970 the bodies of Susan Blatchford, 11, and 12-year-old Gary Hanlon were discovered in Lippitts Hill, in Epping Forest huddled together in a shallow grave covered in twigs and bracken.

The case of the ‘babes in the wood’, as they came to be known, baffled detectives for decades until Jebson confessed to the crime 30 years later.

East London and West Essex Guardian Series:

Ronald Jebson confessed to the murders of Susan Blatchford and Gary Hanlon in 2000.

The pairs' disappearance from Enfield 11 weeks earlier had sparked one of the biggest police searches of the century.

A mobile police base also was set up in Crooked Mile, Waltham Abbey and around 600 officers had searched the area interviewing nearly 15,000 people.

The investigation was lead by Detective Chief Superintendent Leonard “Nipper” Read, who had put Reggie and Ronnie Kray behind bars.

The deaths would become the only unsolved murder case during his time in charge.

Following the initial stages of the inquiry, a 20-year-old man out walking his Labrador was alerted by the dog to something unusual in a copse of trees at the edge of Epping Forest.

There the man discovered the bodies of Susan and Gary.

Their clothes were askew and they lay with their arms around each other.

The bodies had been there for several weeks during a hot summer and were badly decomposed, leaving little forensic evidence at the scene.

Thirty years later, while serving a life sentence for murdering eight-year-old Rosemary Piper in 1974, Jebson confessed to the crime.

Jebson had been under renewed scrutiny for two years after the babes in the wood investigation was reopened and Susan’s body exhumed.

East London and West Essex Guardian Series:

Susan Blatchford was found in Lippitts Hill in 1970 (Tony Sapiano)

Eventually he cracked and admitted plying the children with drink and cannabis in Epping Forest before sexually assaulting Susan, strangling both of them and dumping their bodies in the woods in Lippitts Hill.

He had kept Susan’s undergarments as trophies.

Following Jebson’s conviction, Susan’s mother Muriel reflected on the last time she saw her daughter.

She said: “I was working in the afternoons and I remember being in such a rush that I never got to kiss her goodbye.

“Can you imagine that? I never got to kiss her goodbye.”