The funeral of a Bradford man wanted for murdering his former girlfriend will take place next Monday.

Police had launched a manhunt for 35-year-old Martin Collett after the body of Red Cross worker Angela Hoyt was discovered strangled at her home in Hertfordshire last month.

Four days after the discovery in Hatfield, and despite a massive police search, Mr Collett was found dead near the town’s railway line – bringing the murder inquiry to an end.

Mr Collett, who grew up in Bradford and whose family still live in Shipley, will be cremated at Rawdon Crematorium at 11.40am on Monday with friends invited to join family there.

Mr Collett is believed to have attended Nab Wood school in the 1990s.

Mr Collett’s parents, Val and Derek, have been visited by police and are being supported by specialist family liaison officers – they have told police they do not want to speak publicly about their son.

Detective Chief Inspector Mark Ross, from the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Major Crime Unit, said it was “an extremely tragic case involving two people who were known to each other.”

An inquest opened and adjourned into Miss Hoyt’s death heard how a preliminary report gave her cause of death as compression to the neck.

At Mr Collett’s preliminary inquest, his home address was the same as his victim’s at Glebeland, Hailey, Hertfordshire and he died from multiple injuries. Meanwhile the Independent Police Complaints Commission has started an investigation into Hertfordshire Police Force’s response to a report of harassment made by Miss Hoyt just days before her death on May 25.

The former couple had worked at the Home Office together. Mr Collett worked as a briefing manager for labour home secretaries David Blunkett and Charles Clarke at around the same time that Miss Hoyt was employed as a junior member of the Home Office media team.

Miss Hoyt, 34, had gone on to work with the Red Cross and recently returned from a three-month role in Pakistan as part of her work as a public affairs and communications adviser.

  • Read the full story in Tuesday's T&A