Ann Widdecombe, the right-wing British politician whose killing this month sent shock waves through the country’s political establishment, was struck 21 times on the head with a hammer during the fatal lunchtime attack, prosecutors said in a London court on Tuesday.
The suspect, Joshua Kerry, 28, made a brief appearance at Westminster magistrates court, confirming his name and address in the city of Rotherham in the north of England. At a second hearing later Tuesday at London’s Central Criminal Court, he was ordered to be held until the next hearing on October 9.
Ms. Widdecombe was sitting at a table at her home in the village of Haytor in southwest England on July 8, eating lunch, when a man entered her home and asked her, “Don’t suppose you have bank cards and ID?,” according to images from a security camera recovered by police who investigated the crime scene, prosecutors said. They did not say whether or how she responded.
The man, wearing black gloves, then struck Ms. Widdecombe 21 times with the hammer before tipping her out of her chair onto the floor, taking her wallet and leaving, all within around two minutes, a prosecutor, Kashif Malik, said. He did not say anything about a potential motive.
After she failed to take part in a prearranged media interview, a gardener was asked to check on her and found her body the next day, Mr. Malik, told the court.
Footage from Ms. Widdecombe’s doorbell camera showed the attacker pulling up outside the property in a red Vauxhall Corsa car, the prosecutor said, adding that pathologists gave the provisional cause of death as a blunt force injury to the head.
Ms. Widdecombe, who was 78, was a British lawmaker from 1987 to 2010. She served as a minister in the government of Prime Minister John Major in the 1990s.
After leaving Parliament, she found new fame by appearing on a popular TV dance show.
After Britons voted in 2016 to leave the European Union, she became a staunch supporter of Brexit and was a senior figure within Reform U.K., the right-wing populist party led by the pro-Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage.
Ms. Widdecombe, who represented the forerunner of Reform U.K., the Brexit Party, in the European Parliament between 2019 and 2020, was not an elected legislator at the time of her death. However, she made frequent media appearances for Reform, and her death has increased fears about the risks run by politicians in Britain, many of whom face frequent threats.
Two lawmakers have been murdered in the past decade: Jo Cox of the Labour Party in 2016, and David Amess, a Conservative, in 2021. A man who had expressed white supremacist views was convicted in Ms. Cox’s death, and an Islamic State sympathizer in Mr. Amess’.
Mr. Kerry was first arrested on suspicion of murder two days after the discovery of Ms. Widdecombe’s body. He was later rearrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
The local police in the region of Devon and Cornwall, who initially investigated, have been criticized for ,early in the inquiry that there was no information to suggest a politically motivated attack.
Britain’s counterterrorism policing unit is now leading the investigation.
Last week, Laurence Taylor, the head of that unit, said officers were “working to understand the extent of any planning or preparation and the motivation that sits behind that attack.” He added that Ms. Widdecombe’s killing had not yet been declared a terrorist attack.
