A DETECTIVE who went missing while charged with the murder of a

pregnant woman, has been found dead in his car in isolated woodland.

It is understood Detective Constable Vincent Hand's car was filled

with fumes and had a hosepipe connected to the exhaust.

Relatives of the dead woman believe he took his own life because he

could not live with guilt.

Mr Hand, 31, failed to answer bail at Bradford Magistrates Court in

West Yorkshire on Friday. He disappeared, leaving a note for the coroner

and another detailing his funeral arrangements.

He had been due to make his twelfth appearance before the court over

the murder of Miss Angela Jenkinson, 32, who was found strangled on

waste ground 100 yards from her home in Bradford on Good Friday.

She was seven months pregnant but surgeons failed to save her unborn

baby.

The hunt for Mr Hand, whose wife is a vice-squad officer in the city,

had concentrated on the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales.

He was found on Saturday night in his red Fiat Panda car in isolated

woods near the village of Melton Constable, outside Norwich.

Norfolk Police would not confirm how he had died but a spokesman said:

''We are not treating his death as suspicious.'' The coroner will

conduct an inquiry.

Mr Hand is understood to have left a note to his wife and her parents

when he disappeared on Wednesday, two days before his scheduled court

appearance.

He was held for 17 weeks but released on conditional bail by Mr

Justice Sachs on July 29. He was understood to have been staying in the

Norwich area.

The detective was accused of murdering Miss Jenkinson between March 30

and April 2. Her partly clothed body was found in Barkerend, Bradford --

the city in which Mr Hand and his wife both worked.

Miss Jenkinson was

a former supermarket check-out operator who lived alone with her

five-year-old daughter Nicola.

Her sister, Mrs June Kellett, 41, of Wakefield, said yesterday the

whole family was stunned by the news of Mr Hand's death.

''This is not what we expected, it has come as a complete shock to us.

Obviously, after the hearing on Friday, we were beginning to think he

may have killed himself but we also thought it might be a ruse.

''My mother Pat thinks it is an admission of his guilt and the fact he

could not live with what he had done.''

Mr Rodney Lester, the detective's solicitor, said yesterday: ''When I

first learned there was a six-page letter to the coroner, in which he

put his affairs in order and wrote to his family, I did have fears this

would be the outcome.''

''Police have the notes but, as far as I know, they contain no

confession.''

At an earlier court hearing, Mr Chris Foren, for the prosecution, told

the court that Mr Hand had known Miss Jenkinson for eight years. At

first, she was a police informant, but they became lovers in August

1993.

Mr Foren claimed Miss Jenkinson put pressure on Mr Hand to take care

of her and the baby when she became pregnant. The baby was later found

not to be his.

She was threatening to tell the Child Support Agency that he was the

unborn baby's father.

The night of her death, Mr Hand was keeping watch on a mill near her

home. Miss Jenkinson went out three times to try to meet him to give him

supper but did not return the third time. Her body was found at 7am the

following morning and Mr Hand was arrested nine hours later.