A respected GP has been charged with soliciting a murder after he allegedly attempted to hire a hitman to kill a financial adviser.
Dr David Crichton, 63, is alleged to have plotted the killing of Andrew Bolden from his luxury home on February 26 this year.
Prosecutors claim he ‘solicited, encouraged, persuaded or endeavoured to persuade or proposed to a person unknown’ to murder the finance expert.
Dr Crichton, of Bournemouth, Dorset, has also been charged with sending threatening e-mails and text messages to Mr Bolden over a nine month period.
Dr David Crichton,who worked at this GP surgery in Bournemouth, has been charged with soliciting the murder of a financial adviser
Mr Bolden works for Edinburgh-based Brown Shipley Financial Advisers and specialises in offering members of the medical profession advice on pensions, tax and investment legislation.
Married Dr Crichton has been a long-time director of the Tolpuddle Gardens GP surgery in Bournemouth, Dorset and of the Muscliff Care Home which is situated on the same site.
He is still listed as one of the practising doctors at the surgery but is understood to have been off sick recently.
The long-standing GP appeared before magistrates in Poole on September 21 to answer the charges. He did not enter a plea at the brief hearing.
The messages are said to have been sent between July 26, 2016 to March 4 this year with the intention of ‘causing distress and anxiety’ to him.
His case was adjourned to Bournemouth Crown Court for a plea and trial preparation hearing on October 19.
He has been released on bail on the condition that he doesn’t contact Mr Bolden or the employees of Brown Shipley Financial Advisers directly or indirectly.
Mr Bolden has worked in financial services for 31 years and specialises in advising members of the medical and academic professions.
A spokesperson for the Muscliff Care Home confirmed that Dr Crichton continues to hold his directorship. However, he said he was unable to comment further.
Dr Crichton was previously director of the South Coast Medical Group Ltd, which oversees the Providence Surgery general practice in Walpole Road, Boscombe, Bournemouth. He resigned the post in 2013.
He has relinquished his registration to the General Medical Council. Dr Crichton studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1977.
The GP lives in a large detached house in the affluent Talbot Woods area of Bournemouth. Today a woman, believed to be Dr Cichton’s wife Janet, answered the door of the £750,000 property but refused to make any comment.
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