Farmer shot and killed two women just weeks after cops returned his guns so he could shoot foxes
Prosecutors decide there is 'insufficient evidence' to charge officers who gave double murderer his weapons back
AN evil farmer shot two women dead after police returned his seized guns so that he could shoot foxes.
Cops had taken seven firearms from double murderer John Lowe, 84, before he gunned down his partner Christine Lee and her daughter Lucy.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission later found two police licensing officers may have been criminally negligent in giving the guns back.
Prosecutors decided there is insufficient evidence to charge them on Thursday.
Surrey Police said one of the employees will face a gross misconduct hearing while the other has retired.
A friend of the shooting victims said: "We are dumbfounded by this decision.
"Police knew about Lowe and his threats to kill, yet decided the lives of chickens were more important than the lives of people."
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Lowe's guns were returned after he complained to cops that 80 of his hens had been slaughtered by foxes.
He murdered Christine, 66, and Lucy, 40, at his puppy-breeding farm near Farnham in Surrey in February 2014.
Lowe later told cops he "put them down" because they had been "giving me s*** for weeks".
He will die behind bars after he was convicted of both murders at Guildford Crown Court in October 2014.
His weapons had initially been taken off him after he pointed a gun at Lucy and threatened to "blow her head off".
Three weeks after Lucy was threatened by Lowe she told cops she didn't want to press charges because of his age.
An internal report gave three reasons for why the farmer's guns were returned to him.
The first was that his livelihood was apparently suffering because his chickens were being killed.
The second and third related to medical and financial matters.
IPCC investigators found staff failed to review Lowe's police filed properly.
A source apparently revealed to the Mirror that they may have "committed a criminal offence".
The Crown Prosecution Service will take no action.
It can now be reported that Lowe's stepdaughter Stacy Banner was convicted in January of defrauding Lowe's dying ex partner.
Banner was initially charged with Lowe, but the the details can now be revealed after the Crown decided it was not in the public interest to prosecute him.
Banner, 42, took more than £100,000 from the bank account of Lowe's former partner Susanna Wilson.
She was sentenced to 12 months in prison suspended for eight months.