British justice on Tuesday kept in detention a 28-year-old man suspected of having killed former MP Ann Widdecombe, a figure of the conservative right, by hitting her in the head with a hammer 21 times at her home in the southwest of England.
• Also read: UK: Ann Widdecombe murder suspect charged
• Also read: Murder of former British MP Ann Widdecombe: a “targeted attack”, according to the police
The murder of this 78-year-old woman, spokesperson for Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK party, has reignited concerns about the security of political figures, ten years after the assassination of Labor MP Jo Cox.
Joshua Kerry, a Briton living in Rotherham in the north of England, nearly 300 miles from the Devon village where Ann Widdecombe lived, appeared briefly before Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London on Tuesday, then before the Old Bailey Criminal Court.
The trial date has been tentatively set for June 8, 2027.
The suspect was arrested on July 11, two days after Ms Widdecombe’s body was discovered at her home in Haytor, a picturesque village in Dartmoor National Park.
Local law enforcement initially ruled out a political motive, before anti-terrorist police announced that they were taking charge of the investigation and that it was a “targeted attack”.
Counterterrorism police chief Laurence Taylor said Monday that investigators were still trying to determine whether there was “a possible political motivation.”
Summing up the case on Tuesday at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, prosecutor Kashif Malik said Joshua Kerry was suspected of hitting Ann Widdecombe 21 times on the top of the head with a hammer.
The former Conservative MP was having lunch when the suspect entered her home and attacked her.
He is accused of then stealing the wallet which was in the victim’s handbag before fleeing by car. He only stayed in the property for a total of two minutes, according to information provided to the court.
It was Ann Widdecombe’s gardener who discovered her body, lying face down on her kitchen floor.
According to the prosecutor, the provisional cause of death is “head trauma caused by a blunt object”.
Ann Widdecombe is the third political figure to be the victim of a targeted attack in the last decade. Labor MP Jo Cox was murdered in 2016 by a neo-Nazi sympathizer, while Conservative MP David Amess was killed in 2021 by an Islamic State group supporter.
