UK Doctor who vanished after NHS money went missing 'shoots girlfriend and self dead

A GP who left Britain after up to £400,000 of NHS money went missing is believed to have shot his girlfriend dead before taking his own life.

Titus Bradley, 42, is suspected of gunning down his 28-year-old partner, Noemi Gergely, in a guest house in Cape Verde before turning the same pistol on himself.

Police on the Atlantic island of Santo Antao confirmed they are not looking for anyone else in connection with the deaths, which they are treating as a murder-suicide.

Dr Bradley had left the UK a year ago after staff pay and pension money went missing from his four practices around Hastings, East Sussex.

Sussex Police confirmed they launched an investigation into the missing NHS cash last May, a month after the GP, a keen angler, failed to return from a three-week fishing trip to Santo Antao.

A source told The Sun the missing money included up to £200,000 of NHS money due to pay wages and fund the practices, as well as up to £200,000 that was supposed to have been paid into staff pensions.

Dr Bradley and Ms Gergely checked into the Divin Art guest house in the town of Ribeira Grande on April 15, two days before their deaths, authorities confirmed.

Local officials said they were killed by single bullet wounds to the head after reports of a row.

Helder Bentub, the guest house manager who found the bodies, said: "There was a terrible argument. They were in their room but we could hear shouting and the banging of doors and windows.

"They came out of their rooms and went to the restaurant and argued again and the woman told one of our staff that her companion had hit her.

"We heard the shots ring out a couple of minutes later when they were both back in their room. We found them lying dead in the bathroom after forcing our way in."

Local police chief Cipriano Bandeira said the matter was still under investigation, but added: "We are not looking for anyone else at this stage. As far as we are concerned with the evidence we have got at the moment, this is a homicide-suicide.

"We believe the man shot the woman with a 6.35 pistol before using it to kill himself. We recovered the weapon from the scene. Both gun wounds were fatal wounds to the head.

He added: "Our understanding is that they had been living on a fishing boat or yacht in the marina on Sao Vicente for at least three months before this happened."

The Cape Verde archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, about 350 miles off the west of Africa near Senegal, consists of ten islands and eight islets.

Santo Antao is the westernmost and largest of the so-called Barlavento islands of Cape Verde. - The Telegraph