Joshua Kerry, a 28-year-old who lived alone in a council house in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, has been charged with the murder of Ann Widdecombe, the former Conservative minister and Reform UK spokeswoman found dead at her Devon home on Thursday, 9 July.
Kerry appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Tuesday, where prosecutor Kashif Malik alleged he walked into Widdecombe's kitchen as she sat eating lunch and hit her on the head 21 times with a hammer. The court heard a doorbell camera captured his red Vauxhall Corsa pulling up outside the house, and that he allegedly asked her "Don't suppose you have bank cards and ID?" before the attack.
He then allegedly tipped her out of her chair, took a wallet from her handbag and drove off, having spent roughly two minutes in the house. A provisional cause of death was given as a "blunt force injury to the head", though the opening of the inquest heard the precise medical cause "has yet to be established". Widdecombe was found the next day by a gardener who'd been asked to check on her after she missed a Channel 5 interview.
The charge came on Monday after almost a week of questioning: Kerry was first arrested on suspicion of murder on Saturday, 11 July, then rearrested on suspicion of terrorism offences. The charge laid is murder alone, but the Crown Prosecution Service says enquiries into his motives are ongoing, "including a potential political or terrorist connection". Frank Ferguson, chief crown prosecutor of the CPS Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division, announced the decision.
"We have decided to prosecute Joshua Kerry for murder following a police investigation into the death of Ann Widdecombe in Haytor, Dartmoor."
Mr Ferguson also warned that "it is vital that there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information which could in any way prejudice these proceedings".
Kerry remanded in custody with a trial pencilled in for June 2027
Kerry has since faced the Old Bailey, London's central criminal court, where he was remanded in custody on the murder charge. Prosecutor Alistair Richardson told the court that before his arrest Kerry had been living in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, about 430km from Widdecombe's home in Devon.
He'll be back before the same court on 9 October for a case management hearing, with a plea and trial preparation hearing to follow on 20 November. A provisional trial date has been listed for 8 June 2027, close to a year from Widdecombe's death.
Widdecombe, 78, sat in the House of Commons for 23 years as the Conservative member for Maidstone and held ministerial posts under John Major, before a late career that took in the Brexit Party, Reform UK and Strictly Come Dancing. Detectives believe she was attacked at about 12.30pm on Wednesday, 8 July in the bungalow on the edge of Dartmoor where she lived alone. She was due to appear on Channel 5 by video call half an hour later, and the Daily Express reports she'd last messaged a producer at 12.19pm. Her body wasn't found until 11.40am the next day.
Police called it a burglary gone wrong. Then the terror squad took over
Devon and Cornwall Police said on the Sunday after her death there was "nothing to suggest" the killing was politically motivated, and the Daily Mail reports the case was initially treated as a botched burglary. Within a day, counter terrorism police had taken over the investigation, citing new information and evidence, and Kerry was rearrested under the UK's Terrorism Act.
Jonathan Hall KC, the British government's independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, told BBC Radio 4 the early steer away from a political motive made no sense to him.
"I don't know why it appears Devon and Cornwall Police were trying to steer away from the idea of terrorism even once they'd discounted the idea of some local burglary that had gone wrong, and I simply can't explain that."
No motive has been made public. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, Britain's equivalent of a home affairs minister, told the House of Commons the suspect wasn't known to Prevent, the UK program meant to catch people being radicalised before they turn violent. Whoever killed Widdecombe wasn't on the counter terrorism radar at all.
A quiet loner who stopped working when his father died
The picture of Kerry assembled by the Daily Mail's reporting in Rotherham is of the last man neighbours expected armed police to come for. He'd worked an office job at a local lift company, where staff once described him as "part of the engine room" of the firm, and he posed for a charity fundraiser photo holding a jar of Easter eggs. Neighbours on the Kimberworth Park estate called him "quiet and shy", a man who took their bins out and held onto their parcels.
His father, a former steel industry research engineer who'd lost a leg and been diagnosed with cancer, died around Christmas after being admitted to hospital. Relatives told the paper Kerry stopped working after the loss and withdrew into the council house they'd shared.
CCTV first reported by The Sun appears to show the suspect leaving a house in Rotherham at 7.51am on the day of the attack with a long object protruding from his shorts pocket, before getting into a red car. Widdecombe's home in Haytor Vale is about 430km away, a drive of roughly four and a half hours. According to the Mail, neighbours say Kerry then didn't leave his house between the Wednesday and the Saturday, when about a dozen officers, some armed, arrived at 9pm.
"We saw officers running up. Some were armed. Then they banged on the door very loudly. They asked him his name, he confirmed it and they took him away," next door neighbour Courtney Foster told the Daily Mail.
His red Vauxhall Corsa was towed away the next day.
Farage takes the security of every Reform politician to Ravec
The killing lands on a party already counting threats. Reform UK has logged 1,577 threats against its people, and a man was arrested this month over a threat to shoot Nigel Farage in the head. An Aberdeen University worker has already been charged over a social media post about Widdecombe's death.
Mahmood has offered Farage a meeting with the chair of Ravec, the committee that decides which public figures get state protection, and Farage said he'll take it, posting on X that he wants to "discuss the security of all Reform politicians, including those who are not MPs". Widdecombe, out of the Commons since 2010, had none of that protection: in Britain the security ends the day you leave the job, whatever public profile you keep, and her death has forced the government to concede the gap. A review of the lessons from the 2021 murder of Conservative MP Sir David Amess, led by former Lord Chancellor Sir Robert Buckland, was already under way.
Kerry remains in custody ahead of the October hearing, and the CPS has warned that proceedings against him are active and that nothing should be published that could prejudice a fair trial.
