Murder Hunt Reward

A £10,000 reward was offered yesterday in the hunt for the killers of a betting shop manager beaten and stabbed to death for a few hundred pounds.

John Shepherd, 66, was stabbed repeatedly with a carving knife and beaten about the head with a hammer just after he closed the betting shop where he had worked for 20 years.

Det Supt Alan Partridge said the motive for the murder in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, on 3 December was almost certainly robbery and the offenders were probably local people. "I feel certain that there could well be local knowledge or suspicions about those who killed John Shepherd. I think it is possible he may have known the person who killed him. He may even have let him into the shop.Mr Shepherd, a married man with a grown-up daughter, who lived in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, was found d ead inside the John Horwood betting shop in Cambridge Street.