Ann Widdecombe killed in hammer attack at Devon home, court hears

Ann Widdecombe was eating lunch in her kitchen when the attack came. On the afternoon of July 8, a man entered her Devon home through the front door, struck her repeatedly with a hammer—21 times across the head—and left with her wallet. The entire assault lasted two minutes. Security cameras recorded what happened. By the time anyone found her, she was dead.

Joshua Kerry, 28, from Rotherham in South Yorkshire, arrived at Widdecombe's house in Haytor that day in a red Vauxhall Corsa. Prosecutors told Westminster Magistrates' Court that he wore black gloves during the attack. After hitting her, he knocked her from her chair, took her wallet, and drove away. No one knew immediately what had occurred. Widdecombe was supposed to appear on a Channel 5 interview with Matt Allwright just before 1 p.m. that same day. When she didn't show up, the production team contacted her personal assistant, who asked her gardener to check on the house.

The gardener found her the next morning, July 9, lying face down on the kitchen floor with catastrophic head injuries. Emergency services were called, but she was pronounced dead at 12:20 p.m. A pathologist determined the cause as blunt force trauma to the head, though the precise medical cause of death was still being established at the time of the inquest hearing. The security footage from her home showed she had been fatally attacked the day before.

Kerry was charged with murder on Monday night following an investigation led by counter-terrorism detectives—a detail that signals the authorities' concern about the motive behind the killing. When he appeared in court, he spoke only to confirm his name, date of birth, and address. He showed no visible emotion in the dock and was not asked to enter a plea. He was later remanded in custody at HMP Belmarsh in southeast London.

Widdecombe had spent a long career in public life. She served as a Conservative MP for Maidstone in Kent for 23 years and held ministerial positions in John Major's government during the 1990s. After leaving Parliament, she became a television personality, appearing on Strictly Come Dancing in 2010 and finishing as runner-up on Celebrity Big Brother in 2018. More recently, she represented South West England as a Member of the European Parliament for the Brexit Party and joined Reform UK as a party spokeswoman in 2023.

Prosecutor Alistair Richardson described the attack as carried out with a "ferocity of violence." Prosecutor Kashif Malik told the court that police were still investigating whether there was a terrorism connection or political motivation for the killing. Kerry is next scheduled to appear at the Old Bailey on October 9 for a case management hearing. A provisional trial date has been set for June 8, 2027.