The manhunt is back on after police released the man they previously thought to be their suspect over the alleged murder of Reform UK Immigration and Justice spokesman Ann Widdecombe at her home in Devon, England.
The 26-year-old “white British national” male, who was quickly arrested by Devon and Cornwall Police on Friday, just miles from the alleged murder scene of former Member of Parliament, government minister, Member of the European Parliament, and Brexiteer politician Ann Widdecombe, has been released and is no longer part of the investigation.
A police spokesman said that after this early lead turned out to be a dead end, the force’s priority remains “identifying those responsible and ensuring that all available evidence is thoroughly examined.”
He said: “Detectives continue to carry out numerous inquiries as part of the ongoing investigation and we remain committed to establishing the full circumstances surrounding the incident.”
Ann Widdecombe’s rural home in the remote village of Haytor in Devon’s famous Dartmoor National Park, where she was found dead on Thursday and having suffered “serious injuries” reportedly consistent with having been bludgeoned around the head, remains cordoned off. Police forensics support vehicles are at the scene, and the investigation continues.
Citing police sources, The Sun states the alleged killer is thought to have been caught on security cameras at Widdecombe’s home. The property is not gated, has Widdecombe’s name prominently displayed at the drive, and the location was publicly available online, including photographs.
As the immigration and justice spokesman for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, Widdecombe was a regular on British daytime TV talk shows and last appeared on the TalkTV channel on Wednesday morning, speaking about political persecution and a dirty tricks campaign against Mr Farage by the Westminster “establishment”. She was booked to appear on another current affairs talk show, Channel 5’s Matt Allwright, on Wednesday afternoon and exchanged telephone calls and direct messages with a show producer around midday that day in preparation, but is reported to have suddenly stopped responding.
Dan Walker of Channel 5 said in a statement that: “Ann was due to appear on 5 Daytime on Wednesday afternoon, but stopped responding to messages and didn’t turn up for the show. The team contacted her agent to ask them to check in on her. This information has been passed to police as it’s part of the investigation.”
The Sun report notes Widdecombe was responding to messages from the show producer until they started going unanswered at 12:19, and an invitation to be patched into the studio from her home computer received no response at 12:48. Given Widdecombe was a regular on the show, this was seen as out of the ordinary. The report quoted a Matt Allwright show source as saying: “It was very strange that Ann wasn’t on. Nobody could understand it.
“She was usually very keen to be on and she is popular with viewers. The producers couldn’t get a hold of her… There was some fear that she’d had a medical incident, or maybe needed someone to check on her, but nobody thought she might be dead.”
Widdecombe was subsequently discovered dead at home on Thursday morning after a neighbour was sent to investigate after colleagues and relatives couldn’t reach her by phone.
As previously reported, Devon and Cornwall Police said they are conducting “extensive enquiries” in a fast-moving investigation into the presumed murder of Ann Widdecombe.
Speaking at a press conference on Friday evening, a spokesman for the force said they were at an early stage of investigation and keeping an open mind as to potential motive. Saying they had not at that time seen any evidence about a potential political motive, evidently, they had also not ruled it out. When asked whether the attack may possibly have been a burglary-gone-wrong, they restated their “open-minded” position.
Speaking on Friday evening, Nigel Farage hailed Widdecombe as an “extraordinary woman” Widdecombe, who he called “without doubt the best-known female politician in Britain since Margaret Thatcher” and noted that she’d reached far beyond politics nationally with her well-received appearances on popular reality television shows. He went on: “Frankly, this was someone who gave her life to public service, to fighting for the things that she believed in. She herself would not have harmed a fly and I am deeply, deeply upset by the nature of her death”.
Mr Farage is himself subject to daily death threats, and how he has met the cost of his personal protection detail has led to public controversy. Reflecting on the danger to people in public life, Farage said of the alleged murder that it is a “terrible reflection on modern Britain” and said: “I do fear that for anybody in public life or especially the political space, things have become even more dangerous today”.
As earlier stated:
…dedicated Christian Ann Widdecombe first emerged in British politics in the 1980s when she co-founded and led Women and Families for Defence. Intended to push back against left-wing pressure groups campaigning against nuclear weapons, Widdecombe then went on to be elected to Parliament as a Conservative under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and later served as a government minister.
Widdecombe was a staunch Brexiteer and known for her uncompromising socially conservative views including on homosexuality, abortion, ‘assisted suicide’, and the death penalty. She left the Conservative Party after the modernining, centrist era of Prime Minister David Cameron and joined Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, serving as a Member of the European Parliament alongside Farage in Britain’s final year of membership of the bloc.
Moving on from the Brexit Party to Reform UK, Widdecombe was appointed justice and immigration spokesman for the Farage-led party.
This story is developing, more follows