{"id":703698,"date":"2026-07-21T17:03:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T17:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/703698\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T17:03:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T17:03:10","slug":"murdered-ex-minister-was-struck-on-head-with-hammer-21-times-u-k-court-told","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/703698\/","title":{"rendered":"Murdered ex-minister was struck on head with hammer 21 times, U.K. court told"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former British politician Ann Widdecombe<\/a> was struck 21 times on the head with a hammer as she was eating lunch at home, a prosecutor told a court hearing on Tuesday for the man charged in her murder.<\/p>\n

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Joshua Kerry, 28, appeared at Westminster Magistrates\u2019 Court <\/a>in London over the killing that shocked the public and the political establishment.<\/p>\n

Widdecombe, 78, was eating around noon on July 8 when Kerry drove to her house in an isolated southwest England village, prosecutor Kashif Malik said. Kerry walked through the front door and beat her with a hammer, took her wallet and was gone two minutes after the attack began.<\/p>\n

Blunt force injury to the head was listed as the provisional cause of death.<\/p>\n

Kerry was charged Monday while in custody after being arrested on suspicion of murder and acts of terror. Police are investigating his motive, including a potential political or terrorist connection, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

Kerry, who wore a gray sweatsuit, spoke only to confirm his identity and did not enter a plea. He was ordered held in custody and is scheduled to appear in the Central Criminal Court on Oct. 9.<\/p>\n

Widdecombe, a former member of Parliament and government minister, was a prominent political voice known for her blunt-spoken, socially conservative views opposing abortion<\/a> and the expansion of LGBTQ rights<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When she failed to appear for a scheduled interview on July 8, TV producers called her assistant, who contacted her gardener, prosecutors said. He found Widdecombe lying face down on her kitchen floor the next day.<\/p>\n

Kerry was arrested July 11 in South Yorkshire, a northern England county where he lived, more than 250 miles from Widdecombe\u2019s home in the village of Haytor, on the edge of Dartmoor National Park.<\/p>\n

Widdecombe was a MP in the House of Commons from 1987 to 2010, serving as a prisons minister in Prime Minister John Major\u2019s 1990s Conservative government.<\/p>\n

She found fame after leaving Parliament as a contestant on the reality television shows \u201cStrictly Come Dancing\u201d and \u201cCelebrity Big Brother.\u201d<\/p>\n

She later joined the Brexit Party, briefly serving as a member of the European Parliament before Britain left the European Union<\/a> in 2020. Most recently, she joined the anti-immigration Reform UK<\/a>, often appearing in the media as the party\u2019s immigration and justice spokesperson.<\/p>\n

Widdecombe\u2019s killing has renewed concerns over the security for politicians, which had been tightened in the past decade after the murders of two prominent MPs. Labour lawmaker Jo Cox was shot and stabbed<\/a> in 2016 by a far-right extremist, and Conservative David Amess was stabbed in 2021 by an attacker inspired by the Islamic State <\/a>group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former British politician Ann Widdecombe was struck 21 times on the head with a hammer as she was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-703698","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\/703698","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=703698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}