Radiation expert, 46, who investigated the ‘assassination’ of KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko ‘killed himself by stabbing his arms and chest repeatedly five months after a trip to Russia’ via DailyMail

A radiation expert who investigated the ‘assassination’ of Alexander Litvinenko was found dead five months after a trip to Russia, an inquest heard.

Father-of-two Matthew Puncher, 46, bled to death at his home from multiple stab wounds inflicted by two knives.

A pathologist said he could not ‘ exclude’ the possibility that someone else was involved in the death – but concluded the injuries were self-inflicted.

It led a coroner to record that Dr Puncher – who discovered the amount of toxic polonium inside ex-KGB agent Litvinenko after he drank poisoned tea in London in 2006 – committed suicide.

[…]

He was an expert in radiation protection dosimetry and worked for Public Health England at the UK’s Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, Oxfordshire.

He had been given sole responsibility over a contract with the US Federal Government for a programme measuring polonium levels inside people who previously worked on the USSR’s nuclear weapons. 

Head of department at Harwell, George Etherington, described Dr Puncher’s concerns that his ‘miscalculation’ of the effects of the radiation on the workers would land him prison as ‘irrational’.

The inquest also heard that redundancies and restructuring at Public Health England’s premises in Harwell, near Didcot, had resulted in Mr Puncher receiving a much greater workload.

Read more at Radiation expert, 46, who investigated the ‘assassination’ of KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko ‘killed himself by stabbing his arms and chest repeatedly five months after a trip to Russia’