Willis fell from grace spectacularly after admitting possession of indecent images of children while running as a Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate in 2010.

But he went on to reoffend and was jailed for possession of more than 500 child abuse images in 2020.

Since his release, Willis, who changed his name to David Evans, spent time alone on his private yacht.

His death was originally missed by the public and media as an inquest into his death referred to him only by his new name.

A source said: ‘His boat was unlocked and his phone was inside.

‘His torch was found still lit on the pontoon next to the boat. Something happened and he must have gone into the water.’

Despite extensive searches of the River Dart by coastguards and the RNLI, Willis’s body could not initially be located.

Around a month later, however, on January 20, a body was found around half a mile downstream – it was later identified by a coroner as the body of David Evans – or ex-Radio 1 DJ Michael Willis.

Devon area coroner Alison Longhorn said: ‘The circumstances are David resided on the boat which was moored on the River Dart. He was reported missing to the police as he had not been seen for several days.

‘A body was located further down the river several weeks later. There are no suspicious circumstances. The medical cause of death is unascertained.’

The Sun approached the convicted paedophile’s ex-wife, Julia, for comment but she declined. Her new husband, however, responded: ‘Good.’

The 79-year-old was imprisoned in 2020 for possessing more than 500 indecent images of children. The images were discovered during a police raid of Willis’s private yacht in 2017.

He was jailed for 18 months – his second conviction for possessing indecent images of children.

In court, Willis denied possessing 238 Category A indecent images of the worst nature on his computer.

The former college lecturer and school governor pleaded guilty to having just ten pictures in the least severe class, Category C, on a memory stick.

He took to the witness stand to declare that he found some of the more severe images ‘absolutely disgusting’.

But the jury heard he was also caught with Category A images when he was arrested in Loughborough back in 2013.

Willis admitted that he used file-sharing software to find indecent images.

But he claimed he had no idea how the more obscene pictures appeared on his laptop, desktop and the memory stick.

A jury quickly dismissed his story and found him guilty by unanimous verdicts after a two-day trial.

Willis had previously pleaded guilty at trial in Leicester in 2015 to nine counts of downloading indecent images and movies of children between 2006 and 2013.

He claimed at the time he had been ‘intrigued by the Jimmy Savile affair’, but was spared jail and handed a suspended sentence of nine months.

He had claimed to the police that while some of the images were downloaded others appeared because his computer had been hacked.

Willis was found in possession of the images while standing as a Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for Loughborough at the 2010 General Election. He lost to future Tory education secretary Nicky Morgan.

After his first conviction in 2015, Willis moved from Loughborough to Plymouth and began living on his boat, Appalachian Spring.

Willis, as his DJ alias Steve Merike, was a presenter on the television show called Pop Quest and interviewed stars such as T-Rex’s Marc Bolan.

He began his career with Radio Caroline and then progressed to a short spell on BBC Radio 1.

He had also worked at Radio Trent in the 1980s, where a colleague was late television presenter Dale Winton.

Willis ran stations in Australia and lectured for 15 years at New College Nottingham and Nottingham Trent as well as being the governor at a number of schools in the Midlands.

He also stood unsuccessfully for various councils in Leicestershire.