PCSO murder: 36 more hours to grill suspect
DETECTIVES were granted more time yesterday to question a man arrested over the murder of a police community support officer.
Last night, forensic teams were searching a £370,000 property in a cul-de-sac in Aylesham, Kent, – the village near where Julia James was bludgeoned to death while walking her dog.
Neighbours described officers in plain clothes bursting into the two-storey building on Friday night just hours after appealing for information on a man said to be of ‘crucial importance’ to the investigation.
Now the force has been granted a 36-hour extension to question a suspect – a man in his 20s from the Canterbury area.
Yesterday officers were seen pulling up paving stones, scouring bushes and emptying a skip in the drive as the hunt for the murder weapon continued. They were also spotted removing several items from the property linked to the inquiry.
The apparent breakthrough in the case came after the victim’s daughter Bethan Coles, who is a police officer, urged a potential witness to contact the force.
Police appealed on Friday for information about a man seen around half a mile from the murder scene the day after Mrs James’s body was found on April 27 in the hamlet of Snowdown, near Dover.
Responding to the appeal, one woman from Canterbury claimed her daughter recognised the man.
Mrs Coles, 31, wrote back: ‘Please go the police if you have any information. We would be so grateful x.’ The woman, who did not want to named, later posted to say that she had been contacted by officers.
On the same day, the victim’s niece Saffron Ghost posted a photograph on a local community page of her aunt on her wedding day saying: ‘Julia deserves justice, her husband deserves justice. Her children deserve justice… her death can’t be in vain.’
Police have enlisted specialist profilers from the National Crime Agency to examine the motive for the killing. Detectives say they are considering ‘all possible’ motives including links to Mrs James’s work as a PCSO where she was recently assigned to a domestic violence unit in Canterbury.
Yesterday two survivors of domestic abuse, who Mrs James had helped, paid tribute saying that she made ‘you feel so calm and safe around her’ and ‘she was a force of nature’.