COLD-BLOODED killer David Bieber will never be tried for his alleged part in an American execution, it has been revealed.

The former United States Marine, who murdered Pc Ian Broadhurst and left another officer for dead on Boxing Day, 2003, in Oakwood, Leeds, will spend the rest of his life behind bars at the expense of British taxpayers.

Florida officials have decided it would be too costly to have Bieber extradited, because they would be forced into a lengthy legal process with the UK to give a watertight assurance he would not face the death penalty.

Deputies in Lee County, who spent nearly a decade trying to track down the former bodybuilding champion, had previously made it clear that Bieber should be taken back to the USA - no matter what sentence was meted out to him in the UK courts.

They wanted to make sure he paid for his alleged part in the execution of love rival Marcus Mueller in Fort Myers in February, 1995, and the attempted murder of ex-girlfriend Michelle Stanforth six months later. Sgt Dean Taber, who worked on the inquiry from the beginning, said families of Bieber's alleged US victims deserved justice by finally seeing him found guilty of first-degree murder and attempted murder.

But a spokeswoman for Florida state attorney's office said officials had decided the former club doorman should be left to live out the rest of his days in a British prison.

The standard punishment for Bieber's alleged crimes in Florida is the death penalty, either by lethal injection or electrocution.

But with the UK refusing to extradite anyone to any state or country where capital punishment is practised, US officials have decided to give up their pursuit of Bieber.

Chere Avery, communications director in the state attorney's office, said: "England won't send him back to face the death penalty here; they won't extradite him.

"So the decision has now been made that we will not be spending taxpayers' money to try to get him back.

"We have spoken to English officials, who told us that David Bieber received a `life means life' sentence and that he will never be released."

Bieber fled America in 1996 to escape being arrested for first-degree murder after he allegedly paid a teenage hitman and a middleman to shoot Mueller, the man Bieber's new wife was in love with.

He was initially held over the killing, but freed because he had an alibi.

When Bieber arrived in Britain later that year he managed to keep a low profile.

He lived in Selby before moving to Leeds in 1998.

On Boxing Day, 2003, he shot dead Pc Broadhurst, of Birkenshaw, and tried to murder Pcs Neil Roper and James Banks.

Last December, a judge at Newcastle Crown Court sentenced him to life imprisonment, ordering that life must mean life.