20/05/98 - Police call for curbs on prisoners' letters
JOHN STEELE
The Daily Telegraph

PRISON rules should be tightened to prevent killers and other criminals sending letters that distress their victims' families, a national police conference will be told today.

Howard Hughes, who murdered seven-year-old Sophie Hook, and the gay serial killer Peter Moore, responsible for the deaths of four men in North Wales, were named as having distressed victims' families with correspondence from inside prison.

In a motion from North Wales officers, expected to be overwhelmingly passed, Det Sgt Peter Kendrick will tell the annual Police Federation conference that Hughes, who murdered Sophie in July 1995 after abducting her from a tent in a relative's back garden, sent a letter through his solicitor.

Extracts later appeared in newspapers. The letter, in which he maintains his innocence, was copied 650 times and distributed by his mother. Mr Kendrick wants curbs on similar letters, which cause relatives "distress".