Man charged with 2004 murder of retired colonel

A former gamekeeper has been charged with murder six years after a retired colonel was shot dead with a shotgun as he answered his front door.

Christopher Puncheon-Docherty, formerly Nudds, 31, will go before Stevenage magistrates on 30 July accused of murdering Lt-Colonel Riley Workman.

Colonel Workman was 83 when he was killed at his £300,000 home in the village of Furneux Pelham in Hertfordshire in January 2004.

He had been a career soldier who served in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Regiment and then the Royal Green Jackets before retiring in 1965. Several theories were aired as to why he might have been targeted, including a botched burglary and a hit linked to his antiques business.

Hertfordshire Police charged Mr Puncheon-Docherty, 31, after conducting a review of the case which identified further lines of inquiry. Temporary Superintendent Bill Jephson said: "The constabulary pledged never to close the books on the murder of Riley Workman and spent thousands of hours on the case."

Crown Prosecution Service case lawyer Luke Bulpitt said: "We have concluded that there is a realistic prospect of conviction and a prosecution is in the public interest."