A man has been charged with the murder of Ann Widdecombe.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The former Conservative minister was found dead at her home in Haytor, Devon, at around 11.40am on Thursday 9 July after suffering serious injuries.<\/p>\n
A 28-year-old man was arrested in Rotherham, Yorkshire, on 11 July on suspicion of murder.\u00a0He was later rearrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.<\/p>\n
The Crown Prosecution Service said Joshua Kerry, 28, from Rotherham, has now been charged with Ms Widdecombe’s murder.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He is due to appear at\u00a0at Westminster Magistrates\u2019 Court on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Officers believe Ms Widdecombe was attacked at around 12.30pm on Wednesday 8 July, nearly 24 hours before she was found.<\/p>\n
The 78-year-old’s death was announced by her management the following Friday.<\/p>\n
A 26-year-old man who was initially arrested on suspicion of the murder was released from custody on Saturday, with police stating that he was no longer part of their investigation.<\/p>\n
Widdecombe served as a Tory MP from 1987 to 2010.<\/p>\n
She then returned to frontline politics as a prominent voice in the Vote Leave campaign ahead of the 2016 EU referendum before joining the Brexit Party in 2019, serving as a member of the European Parliament.<\/p>\n
Widdecombe joined Reform UK in 2023 and became the party’s immigration and justice spokesperson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man has been charged with the murder of Ann Widdecombe.\u00a0 The former Conservative minister was found dead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":702478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-702477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=702477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/702478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=702477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=702477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=702477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}