Briton with one arm and one leg is found dead in car boot

ITALIAN police are investigating the death of a retired British teacher with one arm and one leg who was found in the boot of his car.

The circumstances of Anthony Collinssplatt’s death appear to make suicide unlikely, but friends said they thought murder was equally improbable, describing him as a jovial, mild- mannered man with no enemies. Mr Collinsplatt, 76, was found with cut wounds to his neck in the boot of his white Nissan Micra in the garage beneath his apartment in Pavullo nel Frignano, a town of 17,000 people in the foothills of the Apennines, near the city of Modena. His two prosthetic limbs were nowhere near him but a crutch that he sometimes used was on the ground near the car. His right hand was covered in blood. Mr Collinssplatt, who taught English in Italy for decades, lost his leg in a road accident when he was a young man and his arm in a horse-riding incident.

Police found traces of blood in the spare room of his apartment and the lift that links the flat with the ground floor.

The vehicle’s engine was running when the body was discovered. A postmortem found there were traces of car- bon monoxide in the pensioner’s blood, showing that he was still breathing when he was in the boot of the car.

“There were no signs of a struggle,” police said in a statement, adding that the cut marks were compatible with a razor blade found in his apartment.

Police are now scrutinising his bank accounts and checking who he was in contact with in the days before his death on March 10.