DETECTIVES have today charged a man with the murder of Capel St Mary pensioner Joan Albert.Simon Hall, 24, of Hill House Road, Ipswich, will appear before South East Suffolk Magistrates Court tomorrow morning accused of stabbing the 79-year-old to death in her home.

DETECTIVES have today charged a man with the murder of Capel St Mary pensioner Joan Albert.

Simon Hall, 24, of Hill House Road, Ipswich, will appear before South East Suffolk Magistrates Court tomorrow morning accused of stabbing the 79-year-old to death in her home.

Mrs Albert was found dead in her night clothes in the hall of her Boydlands house on December 16 last year.

Her brutal murder sparked one of Suffolk's biggest police murder inquiries during which more than 1,000 statements were taken, 750 homes visited and 1,595 vehicles logged. Police also sent out more than 700 letters to Capel residents.

Throughout the investigation, headed by Detective Superintendent Roy Lambert, detectives remained confident the killer would not evade justice.

Yesterday morning, day 221 of what was known by police as Operation Magdala, they swooped on Hall's home and arrested him.

Mrs Albert was well known in Capel but she had complained about being pestered by kids. Therefore, in the months before her murder, Mrs Albert had increased security at her home, where she lived alone with her spaniel Rusty.

She had installed a motion sensor at the front of her house and kept a phone by her bed.

She was the second eldest of seven children to Elias and Agnes Tuckwell and the family became well known in Suffolk when Mr Tuckwell began farming at Pettaugh.