Chilling new details have emerged following the brutal murder of former MP Ann Widdecombe at her Devon home. Investigation reports and released correspondence now reveal the unreleased last text message sent from her phone just moments before her scheduled Channel 5 interview. While authorities confirm 28-year-old suspect Joshua Kerry stormed the house in a targeted strike, producers at Channel 5 noticed a disturbing detail in her final response — and the sudden, absolute silence that followed.
On the afternoon of Wednesday 8 July 2026, Ann Widdecombe, 78, was due to appear via Zoom on Channel 5’s Matt Allwright show. She had already given an interview that morning to TalkTV from her remote bungalow in Haytor Vale on Dartmoor. The Channel 5 appearance was scheduled for around 1pm. What happened in the minutes leading up to that planned interview has now become one of the most haunting elements of the case.
WhatsApp messages exchanged between Widdecombe and a Channel 5 researcher/producer have been examined by police and later reported in detail. At 12:14pm the researcher messaged about a Zoom link that had been sent. There was brief confusion over the correct email address. At 12:19pm Widdecombe sent what would prove to be her final known message:
“Received! Panic over!!”
The producer replied almost immediately: “Amazing! Let me know if there’s any issues.” Read receipts show Widdecombe opened that message. She never responded to anything after it.
At 12:48pm the producer messaged again, asking her to join the Zoom call. The message went unread. At 12:53pm a voice call was attempted. No answer. At 12:55pm came the message that now stands out in its tragic simplicity: “Hi Ann is everything okay?” Further calls followed at 1:05pm and 1:14pm. All went unanswered.
Police believe the attack took place around 12:30pm — roughly eleven minutes after Widdecombe sent her last text. According to prosecutors, Joshua Kerry arrived at the property in a red Vauxhall Corsa, entered through the front door while she was eating lunch in the kitchen, and struck her on the head with a hammer 21 times. He was inside the house for approximately two minutes, took her wallet from her handbag, and left. Security camera footage is said to have captured the sequence.
Widdecombe was found the following morning, 9 July, by her gardener. She was lying face down on the kitchen floor. Emergency services pronounced her dead at the scene. The provisional cause of death was given as blunt force trauma to the head.
The text exchange has taken on a grim significance. The cheerful, almost relieved tone of “Received! Panic over!!” stands in stark contrast to the violence that followed within minutes. Producers, initially concerned that she had simply forgotten the slot or was experiencing technical difficulties, gradually realised something was seriously wrong when she failed to appear live on the show. At 1:27pm, presenter Matt Allwright told viewers on air that Widdecombe had been scheduled to join but had not arrived.
The messages also help establish a tight timeline. Widdecombe was clearly alive, alert and communicating at 12:19pm. By shortly after 12:30pm, according to the prosecution case, she had been subjected to a ferocious and targeted assault. The fact that she read the producer’s immediate reply but never opened any subsequent messages has been noted by investigators as consistent with the estimated time of the attack.
Joshua Kerry, 28, from Rotherham in South Yorkshire, was arrested two days later at his home, more than 270 miles from the scene. He was later additionally arrested on suspicion of terrorism-related offences. Counter-terrorism officers have been involved in the investigation into possible political or ideological motivation. Kerry has been charged with murder, denied bail, and remanded in custody. A provisional trial date has been set for June 2027.
For those who knew Ann Widdecombe — the former Conservative prisons minister, Brexit Party MEP and later Reform UK spokesperson — the final text has become a particularly poignant detail. A woman who spent decades in public life, known for her direct and unflinching style, was in the middle of ordinary professional correspondence when her life was violently ended. The last words she is known to have typed were light, practical and completely unaware of what was about to happen.
Channel 5 and the producers involved have cooperated fully with police. The messages were treated as relevant evidence from an early stage. Their release into the public domain has only deepened the sense of how suddenly and completely ordinary life was interrupted that afternoon in the quiet Devon bungalow.
As the case moves toward trial, the final exchange continues to stand as one of the clearest markers of the timeline: a brief moment of resolved technical panic at 12:19pm, followed by silence, unanswered calls, and then the discovery of a brutal crime the next day. For investigators, the messages help close the window on when the attack occurred. For the public, they offer a final, ordinary glimpse of Ann Widdecombe in the last minutes of her life — just before the targeted strike that ended it.